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| 5th Annual Portland Jazz Festival A great deal of contemporary mainstream jazz, generally speaking, is risk free. Most jazz festivals in America play it safe, sticking with a successful and predictable stable of artists who rarely take the music beyond its resting place in history. The fifth annual Portland Jazz Festival, presented by Qwest & The Oregonian A&E, set for February 15-24, dares to go where few jazz festivals in North America have ever been -- moving ever forward. Indeed, any jazz event which opens with free jazz innovator Ornette Coleman and later closes with avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor, is admittedly 'out there.' But, along with the likes of Parker, Coltrane, Rollins, Monk, Mingus and Miles, these were the players who kept pushing jazz foward; more afraid of standing still perhaps than spinning off the road out of control. Yet even with the emphasis on the cutting edge art, the 2008 Portland Jazz Festival remains a diverse experience -- a kaleidoscopic view of the myriad sounds and of jazz. When one adds during this 10-day event the names of Joshua Redman, Béla Fleck & The Flecktones, Kenny Barron, Ron Carter, Maceo Parker, Tord Gustavsen, Nik Bartsch's Ronin, Jillian Lebeck, Avishai Cohen, Rob Scheps, Glen Moore, Myra Melford, Tim Berne, Joe Lovano, Dave Douglas, Stefon Harris, the Spanish Harlem Orchestra, Bill Charlap, Nancy King, Fred Hersch, The Bad Plus, Portland Jazz Orchestra, Miguel Zenon, Renee Rosnes, Eric Harland, and the Oregon Symphony, you've got the ingredients for a spicy, yet delicious jazz stew that should please the tastes of just about everybody who claims to be a jazz aficianado. Two weekends of headline programming act as bookends to support community education and outreach efforts on the festival week days. A focal point of these outreach efforts are performances of The Incredible Journey of Jazz, a 60-minute music-theater piece tracing Black History movements and events in parallel setting to the evolution of jazz music as America's only indigenous art form. These performances are staged for free at selected Portland area middle schools, and are presented exclusively for full-school assemblies where students are exposed to African rhythms, drumming, the singing and chanting on slave ships, to the eventual evolution of gospel, ragtime, blues, and the syncopated swing of jazz through rap and hip hop. Last year's highly popular PDX Jazz Pavilion at Pioneer Courthouse Square, a heated tent, has expanded from 1, 600 to 8, 000 square feet in order to accommodate various student jazz ensembles from big bands to smaller trios and quartets. Student bands will have the opportunity to audition in November. The PDX Jazz Pavilion, which acts as the hub of the festival, will operate from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM, February 15-17. It is the primary meeting site during the frenetic festival pace, a place to hang and relax, and to secure essential facts from representatives at the Festival Information Booth. Through support from the Portland Center for the Performing Arts, Portland Jazz Festival has secured the Winningstad Theater for expanded instructional programs, including workshops, master classes, and individual clinics on Saturday and Sunday, February 16-17, between 11:00 AM and 5:00 PM. Within an open learning environment, serious music students can participate in separate 60-minute instructional sessions ranging from percussion, horns, reeds, keyboards and bass to improvisation methods and composition. For some time, Portland Jazz Festival has worked on a plan to form a resident jazz ensemble comprised of the region's finest musicians and music educators. The Portland Jazz Orchestra, as the resident ensemble of the Portland Jazz Festival, is an integral part of the PDX Jazz goal to spread the language of jazz throughout the Northwest. Under the direction of Charley Gray, chairman of the Portland State University Music Department, and trombonist Lars Campbell, the 17-member band plays new arrangements of classic compositions by Thad Jones, Clare Fisher, Charles Mingus, and among others, plus original new work by Gray. The superior musicians who form this group also teach at regional middle schools, high schools, and college music programs. The personnel consists of Brian Dickerson, Mary Sue Tobin, Tim Jensen, Scott Hall and Tim Bryson on saxophones and reeds; David Bryan, Jeff Uusitalo, Lars Campbell and Doug Peebles on trombones; Paul Mazzio, Farnell Newton, Rich Cooper and Matt Carr on trumpets; Ken Ollis, drums, Tom Wakeling, bass, Dan Gaynor, piano, and conductor Charley Gray. Portland Jazz Orchestra will perform on Wednesday, February 20, 7:30 PM, at the Crystal Ballroom. As the resident ensemble of the Portland Jazz Festival, members of the Portland Jazz Orchestra will also act as instructors in conducting seminars, workshops, and master classes in fulfilling the Winningstad instructional schedule. Other members will act as guest soloists with student ensembles performing in the PDX Jazz Pavilion. Included among these are the intimate and insightful Jazz Conversations, a jazz oral history collection with participating artists and journalists involved in one-on-one Q&A sessions before an intimate, live audience. Those sessions are subsequently broadcast on KMHD-FM and also available at the Portland Jazz Festival website, pdxjazz.com. write your comments about the article :: © 2007 Jazz News :: home page |