On Saturday, May 10th, the 2008 Silverton Wine and Jazz Festival will take place, showcasing many Portland musicians in venues all over Silverton. Performers include Dave Frishberg, Darrell Grant, Randy Porter, Dan Schulte, Mel Brown, and many more. The music takes place from noon until 9 PM, with a late set by Bobby Torres finishing out the evening. Find more information at the festival’s website.
This week, the International Association of Jazz Educators declared bankruptcy. One of the many unfortunate results of this is the cancellation of the 2009 IAJE conference, which was to be held in Seattle. The details can be found in an extensive letter at the IAJE website.
This August, the Mount Hood Jazz Festival will return to its roots, and take place on the Mount Hood Community College campus, where it began over twenty-five years ago. Here’s the info from the press release on the festival website:
The Mt. Hood Jazz Festival and Mt. Hood Community College have joined forces again to provide an exciting musical and cultural collaboration for the 2008 Mt. Hood Jazz Festival, taking place August 15 and 16. Renowned for its excellent jazz performances, the festival returns to Mt. Hood Community College where it originally began in 1981. But the 2008 event will be unlike any jazz festival that has been produced before. Organizers from both the Jazz Festival and MHCC are working to make the new Jazz Festival an experience for the whole family. College programs will provide hands-on workshops for festival goers that could include experiences in everything from art activities to rock wall climbing.
In the April edition of All About Jazz, Managing Editor Laurence Donohue-Green wrote an extensive review of this year’s Portland Jazz Festival. He covers many of the headliners, including Ornette Coleman, Tim Berne, and the Bad Plus. He also wrote a section about Portland musicians, but sadly, although it appears in the online version, most of that segment got cut from the print version that you can pick up on the street in New York.
In the local section, he spells a number of Portland musician’s names incorrectly. Here’s my list of corrections, in the order they appear in the article:
And my personal favorite: as far as I know, it’s just Jof Lee, not "Jof Lee Johnson" as he’s listed in the article.
Last month, Matt Jorgensen from Seattle’s Origin Arts label came down for the Portland Jazz Festival with his band, +451. From Origin-Records.com:
The performance featured Matt’s longtime bandmates Mark Taylor, Ryan Burns and Phil Sparks along with special guest Thomas Marriott. They opened the show with two tunes from their new CD, Another Morning.
You can download Mp3s of both sets from their performance from the Origin Arts website.
JazzPDX.org is introducing a new category - “Community Discussion” in an attempt to make the site more interactive. Since the 2008 Portland Jazz Festival just concluded, why not have that be the first topic?
You don’t have to be a registered user to comment and your e-mail address won’t be used or published, so comment away!
JazzPDX.org took a little break during the jazz festival, but now the festival has concluded and we’re back to help you find jazz events to attend for the other 51 weeks in the year. While the Oregonian is pessimistically saying “Farewell to Jazz,” JazzPDX.org is optimistically saying hello to some exciting upcoming music, including the return of the Rob Scheps Big Band, Alan Jones with Ingrid Jensen, and more. Don’t let the festival events be the only jazz you hear all year.
The lineup for the 2008 Portland Jazz Festival has been announced, including artists like Joshua Redman, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and Dave Douglas. More info can be found at the official website and a recent Oregonian article.
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(updated on Fridays)
