Oregon Music News

George Colligan

All of a sudden George Colligan is everywhere. The pianist, composer, trumpeter and drummer moved to Portland in November of 2011 from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg after fifteen years in New York City where he played with dozens of top Jazz musicians (including Jack Dejohnette,Cassandra Wilson, Don Byron, Buster Williams and Ravi Coltrane),  to become a professor of music at Portland State University.

Since then, in addition to a full teaching schedule, he has become one of the busiest musicians in town. In the first week of February he’ll be at Ivories on Wenesday, February 1 with Farnell Newton playing the music of Wayne Shorter, 8:30pm, $7; at “Jazz dans La Cave”, Friday, February 3 at the new downstairs room at Brasserie Montmartre, 9pm, $6, with Eric Gruber (bass) and Matt Jorgenson (drums); at Vie de Boheme on Saturday, February 4 with Rob Scheps and Greg Gisbert; at the Blue Monk on Sunday, February 5 with the Kenny Politzer Quartet and at Jimmy Mak’s on Monday, January 6, 8pm, free with Dan Balmer.

He chronicles his musical odyssey on his blog jazztruth.

We spoke to him after he had just finished teaching a class at PSU:

Listen to his trio (Colligan on piano, Josh Ginsburg on bass and E.J. S) play Stevie Wonder’s  ”Living For the City” from the album of the same name:

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Watch Colligan’s trio in New York City in 2010

Watch Colligan in another context, a sampler from Mad Science with Tom Guarna, guitars and Kenny Grohowski drums

Watch Colligan with Jack DeJohnette’s band with Rudresh Mahanthappa (as) – George Colligan (keys) – Dave Fiuczynski (g) – Jerome Harris (b). Excerpt from concert in Hamburg, Germany::