Vocalist Retta Christie is releasing her newest CD this Sunday at the Old Church.  The CD features an all-star trio with saxophonist/clarinetist David Evans and piano-legend Dave Frishberg.  Tim DuRoche at Willamette Week has the following to say about Retta:

Retta Christie has a singular knack for that curious, vastly entertaining form of Americana that swings in the recesses between jazz and country. Think Jimmie Rodgers, dustbowl prophets like Cowboy Bob Wills or Floyd Tillman, or the flatland plains poetry of Hoagy Carmichael, and you’re in the neighborhood. Fans of Irving Berlin saloon songs will be swinging till the cows come home.

The show starts at 6:30 PM - tickets are $10 in advance through brownpapertickets.com or $15 at the door.

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.

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This Friday (3/21), Tim Willcox will perform with his quartet at the Hollywood Music Center. The quartet (Willcox - Saxophone , Toby Koenigsberg - piano , Bill Athens - Bass , Randy Rollofson - Drums) will be releasing their new CD “Sound Architecture.”

The Hollywood Music Center is located at 4200 NE Sandy. There is an $8 cover, which includes food and drink. The show starts at 8 PM.

This past Saturday, Alan Jones and his new quartet held their Portland CD release event for “Day” at Jimmy Mak’s. The quartet (Alan, Darrell Grant, Tom Wakeling, and Canadian saxophonist Phil Dwyer) has released this inaugural recording on the Seattle-based label Origin Arts.

The recording features a mix of standards and originals recorded beautifully by Nick Moon in the new recording studio at Clackamas Community College. On the days that they recorded the CD, they also recorded live gigs in the evenings which will be released in September as another CD (appropriately named “Night”).

You can hear a low-fidelity clip of the new CD at Alan’s website.

On February 8th, Jeff Lorber came to Jimmy Mak’s to play two sold-out shows alongside Patrick Lamb, Marlon McClain, Reinhardt Melz, and Damian Erskine. Patrick has sent along an Mp3 of part of the performance, as well as several videos to check out. Enjoy!

MP3 Audio file

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

Video 4

Drummer Drew Shoals is releasing his debut CD, “The Greatest Haven’t Been Born Yet” (Diatic Records) on Saturday, December 22nd. The release show will feature all of the musicians from the CD, including Damian Erskine, Ben Darwish, John Nastos, Dan Duval, Nick Sweet, and Jeff Picker. Also appearing will be Chris Mosley with his quartet, as well as original artwork by Pyar Anderson, Courtney Erskine, and Emmitt Pollard. The party starts at 8 PM at Design Counsel (1020 NW Lovejoy).

Rob Scheps, saxophonist and ex-Portlander, has a new CD coming out on the JazzCode label. The CD was recorded at in Norway and features a number of originals and standards. At JazzCode’s website, you can check out a video documenting the recording of the disc, as well as some discussion from the group on how they approach jazz and improvisation.