Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble: The Heroine's Journey
The Old Church Concert Hall / Online
*Please note this is an in-person, indoor event and that this venue will require proof of vaccination and mask-wearing when not actively eating or drinking.
In this double bill concert, Rebecca Sanborn and Marilyn Keller step forward as lyricists and songwriters, each contributing a set of new songs about how recognizing and honoring dreams, both literal and figurative, can change lives. Keller’s lyrics for My Dreams, My Journey, with music written by Darrell Grant, celebrates faith, love, and family in joyful and sometimes poignant gospel-infused songs. Sanborn’s composition collection, Shadow Work, arranged by Douglas Detrick, is inspired by the connection between dreams and waking life, and the compassionate integration of our light and dark sides into a fully realized vision of becoming whole.- All Day
2022 Biamp PDX Jazz Festival
Multiple Locations
Welcome to the 2022 Biamp PDX Jazz Festival, February 17 – 26, 2022, celebrating jazz music and culture in Portland for 19 consecutive years!
The 2022 Biamp PDX Jazz Festival includes artists spanning the full breadth of the genre; artists who are driving the evolution of jazz figure prominently alongside GRAMMY® Award-Winning masters.
*NEA Jazz Masters RON CARTER, BILLY HART, and DONALD HARRISON, JR. to perform at the 2022 Biamp PDX Jazz Festival*
*GRAMMY® Award Winners RON CARTER, ROBERT GLASPER, GARY BARTZ, DIANE SCHUUR, BRAD MEHLDAU, and FLOR DE TOLOACHE take the stage at the 2022 Biamp PDX Jazz Festival*
*2022 Biamp PDX Jazz Festival features DownBeat Rising Stars MAKAYA MCCRAVEN, LAKECIA BENJAMIN, BRANDEE YOUNGER, DEZRON DOUGLAS, ANGEL BAT DAWID, SASHA BERLINER, JAMES BRANDON LEWIS, CHAD TAYLOR, IMMANUEL WILKINS, and GERALD CLAYTON*
The music begins with shows on Thursday by Angel Bat Dawid, whom Chris Richards, The Washington Post proclaims, “will bring you to tears” and a special solo piano performance by Brad Mehldau, 2020 GRAMMY® Winner – Best Instrumental Jazz Album ‘Finding Gabriel’.
Opening weekend shows set the tone for the coming musical journey featuring NEA Jazz Master Ron Carter, the most recorded jazz bassist in the world; jazz steward and pioneer Diane Schuur…Stan Getz once said about Schuur “she’s taking from the tradition, and what comes out is her own conception and advancement of the tradition”; guitarist Marc Ribot performing solo who as Rolling Stone points out helped Tom Wait’s refine a new Americana on ‘Rain Dogs’; Carlos Niño and Friends featuring Nate Mercereau and Josh Johnson weaving free jazz-ambient-new age-hip hop-contemporary classical-and beat music; beat scientist, cutting edge drummer, producer, and sonic collagist Makaya McCraven; the R&B psychedelia jazz of MNDSGN accompanied by a free beat making workshop; jazz legend Gary Bartz whose indelible playing influenced hip hop and reshaped the trajectory of jazz; Flor de Toloache, the GRAMMY® Winning all-female Mariachi group whose members hail from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Australia, Colombia, Germany, Italy and the United States; Icelandic-Chinese Gen Z singer-songwriter Laufey bringing to life a modern-day Ella Fitzgerald; and Max Ribner’s unique classical and improvisational jazz blend on flugelhorn and trumpet.
Additional layers unfold during the first full-week with trumpeter Marquis Hill who tirelessly breaks down barriers that divide musical genres – contemporary and classic jazz, hip hop, R&B, Chicago house, and neo soul, are essential elements woven into his work; Immanuel Wilkins whose debut ‘Omega’ was named NPR Music’s ‘Best Debut Jazz Recording of 2020’ and the New York Times number one Jazz Recording of 2020; jazz supergroup The Cookers, featuring Billy Harper, Cecil McBee, George Cables, Eddie Henderson, David Weiss, Billy Hart, and Donald Harrison, Jr.; genre defying harpist Brandee Younger and bassist Dezron Douglas; and vibraphonist Sasha Berliner hailed as “a young mallet master” by Jazz Times; five-time GRAMMY® nominated Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah featuring Weedie Braimah; and keyboardist-composer-producer John Carroll Kirby.
During the final weekend of the Festival a high energy musical kaleidoscope emerges, The Soul Rebels affectionately coined ‘New Orleans finest brass ensemble’ Vice and ‘the missing link between Public Enemy and Louis Armstrong’ Village Voice share the stage with Nate Smith + KINFOLK’s blend of jazz, R&B, pop, and hip hop; our hometown drum prodigy Domo Branch brings his trio to town featuring four-time GRAMMY® nominated Gerald Clayton and emerging bassist Ben Feldman; James Brandon Lewis “a saxophonist who embodies and transcends tradition” the New York Times is joined on stage by percussionist Chad Taylor; charismatic and dynamic saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin shares a fusion of jazz, hip hop, and soul; Lady Blackbird will blow listeners away “the jazz she sings is timeless – her voice is timeless” NPR Music; and Robert Glasper whose Black Radio was the first album in history to debut in the top 10 of 4 different genre charts simultaneously: hip hop, R&B, Urban Contemporary, and Jazz and Contemporary Jazz, closes out the Festival with the third installment of Black Radio.
Additional shows and events to be announced.
Big Band of Brothers: A Jazz Celebration of the Allman Brothers
Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave, Portland, OR 97202, USA
*Please note this is an in-person, indoor event and that this venue will require either proof of full vaccination or a negative COVID test from the previous 48 hours for entry. Multnomah County residents are also advised to wear masks both indoors & outdoors when not seated or eating/drinking, even if they are vaccinated.
Join the Big Band of Brothers touring ensemble – a celebration of the Allman Brothers Band songs done big band jazz style featuring: original Allman Brothers legend Jaimoe, Sammy Miller & The Congregation, Lamar Williams Jr., & Drew Smithers.
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This touring package is based on and inspired by the acclaimed album Big Band of Brothers: A Jazz Celebration of the Allman Brothers Band. Released by New West Records in celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Allman Brothers Band’s debut, the album features a 10-song set of jazz interpretations of ABB favorites.
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While jazz interpretations of Allman Brothers Band classics might come off as a surprise to some, the genre always held great inspiration for the band and its members. Gregg Allman, recalling the band’s early days, told the journalist Bob Beatty, “Jaimoe [Allman Brothers Band drummer Jai Johanny “Jaimoe” Johanson] turned all of us on to so much neat stuff. He gave us a proper education about jazz and got us into Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Kind of Blue was always on the turntable — Duane really got his head around that album — and he also seriously dug Coltrane’s My Favorite Things.”
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“Albums offering jazz renditions of rock songs are commonplace nowadays, so the element of surprise has faded. But A Jazz Celebration Of The Allman Brothers Band is an accomplishment of a higher order.” Downbeat
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“That it’s a larger ensemble bringing the Allmans’ music into the jazz realm, rather than a smaller combo, is a curious but ultimately brilliant ploy. In lesser hands it might have swerved into novelty, but the payoff comes right away…” JazzTimesSons of Kemet
Star Theater
*Please note this is an in-person, indoor event. Current CDC recommendations state that events such as these are only safe for fully vaccinated people.
PDX JAZZ, SOUL’D OUT & KMHD are proud to present the long awaited return of London’s
SONS OF KEMETShabaka Hutchings – saxophone, woodwinds
Theon Cross – tuba
Edward Wakili-Hick – percussion
Tom Skinner – percussionSaxophonist, composer, philosopher and writer Shabaka Hutchings returns with a brand new album Black To The Future the fourth album of his SONS OF KEMET and their second album on the legendary Impulse! Records home of John Coltrane. This is the band’s most dynamic project yet, with members Theon Cross (tuba), Edward Wakili-Hick (percussion), Tom Skinner (percussion) and Shabaka Hutchings (saxophone, woodwinds) being joined on the album by special guest vocalists Angel Bat Dawid, Kojey Radical, Lianne La Havas, poets Moor Mother and Joshua Idehen, and grime artist D Double E.
Black To The Future, is a politically poignant and musically rich album, which feels destined to be placed on the shelf next to Archie Shepp’s Attica Blues or John Coltrane’s Alabama and SONS OF KEMET live are not to be missed !
About Shabaka Hutchings:
The British-born Barbados-raised saxophonist and clarinetist is the centrifugal force in three critically-acclaimed bands: Sons of Kemet, The Comet Is Coming, and the South African-centered Shabaka and the Ancestors. He signed to Impulse! in 2018 after a six-year stretch rising to prominence with international sold-out shows that dissolved old genre boundaries and attracted eminent attention. Along the way he picked up accolades including two Mercury Prize nominations, a MOBO and a 2020 inclusion as one of Downbeat’s “Musicians Shaping The Future Of Jazz.”PDX Jazz Presents: Vieux Farka Touré
Star Theater
*Please note this is an in-person, indoor event and that this venue will require either proof of full vaccination or a negative COVID test from the previous 48 hours for entry. Multnomah County residents are also advised to wear masks both indoors & outdoors when not seated or eating/drinking, even if they are vaccinated.
PDX JAZZ, proudly present the return of African blues star
VIEUX FARKA TOURÉ
Often referred to as “The Hendrix of the Sahara”, Vieux Farka Touré was born in Niafunké, Mali in 1981. He is the son of the late legendary Malian guitar player Ali Farka Touré.
Vieux is also the director of The Ali Farka Touré Foundation, an international organization dedicated to the preservation of Ali’s legacy and the cultural growth of Mali.
His live performances are highly energized and Vieux is known for dazzling crowds with his speed and dexterity on the guitar, as well as his palpable charisma and luminous smile, both of which captivate audiences from all audiences in spite of any language barriers (though Vieux does speak 8 languages).
Vieux was initially a drummer / calabash player at Mali’s Institut National des Arts, but secretly began playing guitar in 2001. Ali Farka Touré was weakened with cancer when Vieux announced that he was going to record an album. Ali recorded a couple of tracks with him, which can be heard on Vieux’s debut CD, were amongst his final ones.
Ali Farka Touré’s work to tackle the problem of malaria is continued as 10% of proceeds are donated to Modiba’s “Fight Malaria” campaign in Niafunké through which over 3000 mosquito nets have been delivered to children and pregnant women in the Timbuktu region of Mali. On this first album, produced by Vieux’s manager of Modiba Productions, Vieux pays homage to his father and follows Ali’s musical tradition, giving new versions of the West African music that is echoed in the American blues. The album features Toumani Diabaté, as well as his late father.
On his second record, Fondo on Six Degrees (2009), Vieux branched out and presented his own sound to great critical acclaim: while remaining true to the roots of his father’s music he uses elements of rock, Latin music, and other African influences and Vieux was clearly moving out of his father’s shadow.
By June 2010, Vieux was performing at the opening concert for the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. That month Vieux also released his first live album, LIVE.
In 2011 Vieux released his 3rd studio album, The Secret, so named because the listener will hear the secret of the blues with a blend of generations from father to son and features South African-born vocalist Dave Matthews, Derek Trucks on electric slide guitar and jazz guitarist John Scofield. The title track is the last collaboration between Vieux and his late father. With the heralded release of The Secret, Vieux Farka Touré has clearly established himself as one of the world’s rare musical talents and guitar virtuosos with a distinct style that always pays homage to the past while looking towards the future.
Vieux released The Tel Aviv Session in 2012 a collaborative project with Israeli superstar Idan Raichel dubbed ‘The Touré-Raichel Collective’ that has been hailed by fans and critics alike as a masterpiece and one of the best collaborative albums in the history of international music, drawing comparisons to Ali Farka Touré and Ry Cooder’s legendary Talking Timbuktu album.
In 2013, Vieux Farka Touré’s beautiful and critically acclaimed album Mon Pays was released as an homage to his homeland. Being that his native Mali had recently been splintered by territorial fighting between Tuareg and Islamic rebels since January 2012, Mon Pays was devoted to reminding the world about the beauty and culture of his native Mali.
Translated as ‘My Country,’ this predominantly acoustic undertaking transformed into an artifact of cultural preservation. Two songs on the project – ‘Future’ and ‘Peace’ feature Sidiki Diabate’s kora leading an emotional charge complemented by Touré’s spectacular guitar work. Both tracks represent an important generational “passing of the torch” as Sidiki’s father, Toumani is considered one of the greatest living kora masters and was a close friend of Vieux’s father Ali. Mon Pays has been widely hailed as the most mature and lovely record yet from one of this generation’s most exciting artists to come out of Mali and one of world music’s true rising stars.
Vieux reunited with Idan Raichel in Paris to record, release and subsequently tour their 2nd collaborative album as The Touré-Raichel Collective in 2014. The result was yet another musical and critical triumph, titled ‘The Paris Session’ revered by many as not just a musical gem for the ages but a powerful testimonial to the power of art and fraternity to transcend vast cultural and political divides.
In 2015, Vieux released another genre-bending collaborative album, this time with New York-based singer Julia Easterlin, aptly titled ‘Touristes’. The album shot to the top of the iTunes World chart and earned critical acclaim, including that of John Schaefer (NPR) who called it “brilliant.”
On April 7, 2017, Vieux released his latest album ‘Samba’, recorded live in front of a small audience at Applehead Studio in Woodstock, NY. The album was hailed by critics as Vieux’s finest, most well-rounded and mature album to date. With each new project, Vieux expands his horizons, embraces new challenges and further entrenches his reputation as one of the world’s most talented and innovative musicians.Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue with St. Paul & The Broken Bones
McMenamins Edgefield, 2126 SW Halsey St, Troutdale, OR 97060, USA
Trombone Shorty's new album opens with a dirge, but if you think the beloved bandleader, singer, songwriter and horn-blower born Troy Andrews came here to mourn, you got it all wrong. That bit of beautiful New Orleans soul-"Laveau Dirge No. 1," named after one of the city's most famous voodoo queens-shows off our host's roots before Parking Lot Symphony branches out wildly, wonderfully, funkily across 12 diverse cuts. True to its title, this album contains multitudes of sound-from brass band blare and deep-groove funk, to bluesy beauty and hip-hop/pop swagger-and plenty of emotion all anchored, of course, by stellar playing and the idea that, even in the toughest of times, as Andrews says, "Music brings unity."As for why it's taken Andrews so long to follow 2013's Raphael Saadiq-produced Say That to Say This, the man simply says, "I didn't realize so much time passed. Some artists don't work until they put a record out but I never stopped going." Truly. In the last four years, Andrews banked his fifth White House gig; backed Macklemore and Madonna at the Grammys; played on albums by She & Him, Zac Brown, Dierks Bentley, and Mark Ronson; opened tours for Daryl Hall & John Oates and Red Hot Chili Peppers; appeared in Foo Fighters' Sonic Highways documentary series; voiced the iconic sound of the adult characters in The Peanuts Movie; inherited the esteemed annual fest-closing set at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in the tradition of Crescent City greats like the Neville Brothers and Professor Longhair; and released Trombone Shorty, a children's book about his life that was named a Caldecott Honor Book in 2016.
Adding to that legacy, his Blue Note Records debut Parking Lot Symphony finds Andrews teamed with Grammy-nominated producer Chris Seefried (Andra Day, Fitz and the Tantrums) and an unexpected array of cowriters and players including members of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, The Meters, Better Than Ezra, and Dumpstaphunk. Considering Andrews' relentless schedule, it's all the more surprising that this LP began with him in a room, all alone, back in New Orleans.
"I had two weeks at home so I went to the studio and set up the 'playground,'" he recalls. "I had everything in a circle: tuba, trombone, trumpet, keyboard, Fender Rhodes, Wurly, B3 organ, guitar, bass, drums-and me buried in the middle." He recorded an album's worth of ideas and then, well, walked away for a year. Not because he was too busy, but because he wanted to hit the road and see how the music changed on him. When Andrews came back with a full band, the songs came to life.
Take the album's two covers, a pair of NOLA deep cuts: there's "Here Comes the Girls," a 1970 Allen Toussaint song originally recorded by Ernie K-Doe that here (with Ivan Neville on piano) sounds bawdy and regal, like something from a current Bruno Mars album; and The Meters' lovesick "It Ain't No Use," which swirls a vintage R&B vibe with resonant choir vocals and upbeat guitar from The Meters' Leo Nocentelli himself to transport the listener to the center of the jumpingest jazz-soul concert hall that never was.
The story there is almost too good. The session band-guitarist Pete Murano, sax men Dan Oestreicher and BK Jackson, and drummer Joey Peebles with Dumpstaphunk's Tony Hall in for Orleans Avenue bassist Mike Bass-Bailey-were in the studio to lay down "It Ain't No Use." Hall even had the vintage acoustic he bought from Nocentelli years ago, which was used on the original Meters session. On the way to the bathroom, Andrews saw Nocentelli coming out of a different tracking room: it was meant to be.
But that's not unusual for a man raised in one of the Tremé's most musical families. Andrews got his name when he picked up his instrument at four ("My parents pushed me toward trombone because they didn't need another trumpet player," he laughs). By eight, he led his own band in parades, halls and even bars: "They'd have to lock the door so the police couldn't come in." Promoters would try to hand money to his older cousins, but they'd kindly redirect them to the boy. In his teens, Andrews played shows abroad with the Neville Brothers. Fresh out of high school (New Orleans Center for Creative Arts) he joined Lenny Kravitz' band.
Across that time, three Trombone Shorty albums and many collaborations since, Andrews nurtured a voracious appetite for all types of music-a phenomenon on fluid display with Parking Lot Symphony. On "Familiar," co-written by Aloe Blacc, they practically mint a new genre (trap-funk?) while Andrews channels his inner R. Kelly to spit game at an old flame. Meanwhile, the instrumental "Tripped Out Slim" (the nickname of a family friend who recently passed) bends echoes of the Pink Panther theme into something fit for James Brown to strut to. And if you listen closely to "Where It At?," written with Better Than Ezra's Kevin Griffin, you may even hear a little Y2K pop. "I know it wasn't cool to listen to *NSYNC or Britney Spears in high school," says Andrews, "but those bass lines and melodies are funky." They pair astonishingly well with all the Earth, Wind & Fire that bubbles beneath these songs.
It's worth noting that Andrews' vocals sound better than ever (he credits Seefried for that), because Parking Lot Symphony might be the man's most heartfelt offering yet. The breezy title track, which Andrews wrote with Alex Ebert (Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros), is as much about walking the Tremé, being uplifted by the music that seems to seep from every surface, as it is about moving on from a broken heart. And the shuffling, bluesy "No Good Time" reminds us, with a world-weary smile, that "nobody never learned nothin' from no good time."
But Andrews is clear that this isn't some kind of breakup record. "It's a life record," he says, "about prevailing no matter what type of roadblock is in front of you." That message is clearest on "Dirty Water," where over an easy groove, Andrews adopts a soft falsetto to address just about anyone going through it-personal, political, whatever. "There's a lot of hope turning to doubt," he coos. "I've got something to say to them / You don't know what you're talking about / When you believe in love, it all works out." Amen. Now let the horns play us out.
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