JazzPDX.org had a server-related problem this week and went offline for a while.  Luckily, all is resolved and the site is back to normal.  Look for updates this week about upcoming summer festivals.

Be sure to check out the JazzPDX.org Picture Gallery for pictures of some of Portland’s top musicians including:

• The Incredible Journey of Jazz at the Portland Jazz Festival - featuring Stan Bock, Derek Sims, Bryan Dickerson, etc.
• Ron Steen’s Produce Row Jam Session - featuring Russell Scott, Greg Goebel, Dan Gaynor, etc.
• Shelly Rudolph’s Band - featuring Ron Steen, Dave Captein, and Clay Giberson
• Thara Memory’s Superband - featuring Janice Scroggins, Stevie Ray Mays, Marylin Keller, etc.
• Diesel 10 - featuring Dan Balmer, Jeff Leonard, and Alan Jones
• Another Produce Row Jam - featuring Phil Baker, John Stowell, Derek Sims, etc.
• Shelly Rudolph Trio - featuring Clay Giberson and John Nastos
• Sweet Baby James - featuring Louis Pain, Renato Caranto, and Micah Kassell
• Drew Shoals Collective - featuring Ben Darwish, Farnell Newton, Eric Gruber, and John Nastos

At the bottom of every post on JazzPDX.org, you’ll find a button that says "ShareThis" next to it.  You can use this button to e-mail the post to a friend, save it using a social bookmarking service, or post it on a profile like Facebook or MySpace.  Click on the button to see what all it can do.

Just a reminder that JazzPDX.org has pages on both Facebook and MySpace that can help keep you updated with what’s going on in the Portland Jazz Community.

For Facebook:

• Become a fan of our page.  We’ll send you occasional updates, but keep checking the page - new articles to JazzPDX.org are linked to in the "Notes" section.

For Myspace:

• Become of a friend at our main myspace page.  Then, surf over to the blog at blog.myspace.com/jazzpdx and click "Subscribe" in the left hand column to get notifications when we post new articles.  You can also subscribe to friend updates for JazzPDX on the main page.

Things are starting to change here at JazzPDX.org - there’s a new look to the homepage, a couple of new features, and some upcoming changes.

New features:

• There’s a “Featured Album” section on the right-hand sidebar. Different albums will rotate through here fairly often. Artists can submit their album information (artwork and a link) to submit@jazzpdx.org
• Instead of a full calendar, we’re trying out a “Recommended Shows” section, which is near the top of this page on the right.
• All of the posts on this site now get linked to from the JazzPDX.org MySpace page. If you go to http://blog.myspace.com/jazzpdx and click on “Subscribe,” you will be notified of updates to the site. You can also use RSS feeds to keep up with the site.

Upcoming features:

• A podcast is in the works - more news about this soon.
• We’re working on a picture gallery that everyone can submit images to.  Submit photos of anything related to Portland jazz to submit@jazzpdx.org

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 site is almost three months old and going strong. Recently there has been a great response from artists sending gig announcements for the calendar. Look for more of these to start appearing in the next week or so. Artists: if you want your announcement to appear on the front page in the blog section, send me some more information about the gig, as well as an image if you can.

Some statistics:

Among the last 500 visitors to the site:
100 are from Portland
46 from Vancouver, WA
34 from Beaverton
23 from Seattle
14 from Wilsonville
10 from Tigard
6 from Hood River
3 from Gresham
1 from Hillsboro
1 from Salem

Of course, not all visitors’ browsers report a city, so these aren’t hard statistics, but they do paint a rough picture of the visitor demographics. JazzPDX.org’s response: there should be more jazz (and jazz fans) in Gresham and Hillsboro. Does anyone know of anything going on in either of these two suburbs?

Weekly gigs:

I’d like to put together a comprehensive list of all of the jazz gigs that occur each week, such as Mel Brown on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at Jimmy Mak’s, Neil Masson on the weekends at the Benson Hotel, Ron Steen’s jam sessions, etc. Please get in touch or leave a comment on this post if you have ideas for this listing.