Concerts & Events in Lents

For 29 years, The Bite of Oregon has rolled out its tents, tables, and stages every summer for a multiday celebration of the state’s food, culture, and residents. Attendees raise their forks to the idea that “Life Tastes Better Here,” a mantra the festival lives up to by offering a culinary bounty crafted by some of Oregon’s most talented chefs. From small plates to full meals, vendors distribute their creations and, in between bites, regional wines and craft beers splash both new and familiar flavors across palates. As visitors wine and dine, local and national bands provide the soundtrack from multiple stages.

Demonstrating its respect for the community, The Bite of Oregon strives to be a Zero Waste event, each year producing less waste by lining its grounds with recycling stations and hiring unemployed goats to eat everyone’s napkins.

The "From Darkness to Light" program presents a somber yet sonorous journey from the darkness of Gregori Frid's The Diary of Anne Frank to the luminous heights of Beethoven's soaring Seventh Symphony. Soprano Ani Maldjian takes the tragic titular role, accompanied by the Portland Symphonic Girlchoir and a special screening of Shelley Jordon's hand-painted animation Anita's Journey. Friday's performance takes place at Hillsboro's Venetian Theatre and Bistro, where live music and theater are a constant inspiration to the gondola-steering waitstaff. Tying into the eighth grade's current curriculum, Saturday and Sunday's shows are hosted at the Catlin Gabel School.

The Portland Trail Blazers made their NBA debut as an expansion team in the 1970–71 season. In 1977, they won their first and only league championship, though they made subsequent Finals appearances in 1990 and 1992 during a stretch from 1983–2003 in which they dazzled foes in the playoffs every season. The success of their ’77 championship run sparked a streak of 810 consecutive sold-out home games between 1977 and 1995. This led them to move into the newly constructed Rose Garden Arena in 1995, where to this day, up to 19,980 fans cheer in appreciation of every Blazers basket and every dazzling referee hand signal.

Before it mutated into a weaponized haze of reality shows, MTV aired a novelty known as the music video. These bite-sized works of art, which married pop songs to striking imagery, revolutionized the entertainment industry and ushered in an era of music known as “new wave.” For the task of curating and introducing these fresh sounds and flamboyant sights to audiences, MTV even created its own version of the disc jockey—the VJ.

Though MTV has sent its stable of video jockeys out to pasture, VJ Kittyrox carries the pastel, shoulder-padded torch of Adam Curry and Nina Blackwood as she masterminds the 80s Video Dance Attack. For the last seven years, this popular shindig has united generations of Portlandians with its five-hour feast of '80s-centric sensation. Across 10-foot screens, VJ Kittyrox projects classic videos from artists such as Duran Duran and Michael Jackson as audiences of Breakfast Clubbers and Pretty in Pinkers perfect their cabbage patch, running man, and Pat Benatar shimmies. A bombastic, thumping sound system and a dazzling light show accentuate the time warp as audiences deck themselves in '80s garb and shake away memories of unsolved rubik’s cubes.