It’s summertime, and Portland, Oregon, has free concerts in several parks. The Portland Festival Symphony performs classical music, slightly different concerts at several parks; I attended the concerts at both the Cathedral Park and Laurelhurst Park. During the first concert I went by myself and discovered that peopled talk during the music, so for the second one (for which I met up with friends) I showed up early and brought two straw mats that I lay out almost at the very front.

On Sunday, August 1, I went to Cathedral Park for the first time. The concert included Haydn’s Symphony #104 (his last), his Horn Concerto, Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony (3^rd), and Haydn’s Toy Symphony, with children from the audience gathering in front of the orchestra and playing whistles, rattles, and recorders.

Cathedral Park got its name because it is underneath the gothic St. John’s bridge. After the concert, I explored the park a bit and ended up by the Willamette River, where I walked along a gently rocking pier and gazed out at the scenery: the river and the tree-covered mountains across the river.

The second concert included mostly the same music, except Mendelssohn’s Nocturne and Haydn’s String Quartet instead of the Horn Concerto. This time, I could hear the variety of tooting and rattling toys much better from up close.

The classical concerts are over for this year, but they will be back next year, and meanwhile there are quite a few other free concerts, such as folk music and Gypsy music, listed on the Multnomah County website (http://www.portlandonline.com/parks/index.cfm?c=42670).