Oregon Music News

Read OMN’s daily coverage of the Festival.

Opinion

Yes, it was smaller by half, but so is the economy. That we had a Portland Jazz Festival at all is a good thing. That they sold out seven of the eight major events says a lot for Portland. The only one that didn’t sell out was Dave Douglas at the Crystal Ballroom on Sunday night, ending the Festival.

Someone wondered if they had flip-flopped Pharoah Sanders and Douglas, with Sanders at night and Douglas in the afternoon, they might have sold them all out. That’s interesting speculation, but the truth is that there weren’t that many seats left at the Crystal.

Is Jazz Dead? Or has it moved to a new address? — A bogus question

I understand why it was chosen as a topic of discussion for the lead Jazz Conversation and as a sub-theme for the Festival. The question causes Jazz fans to become indignant, to point fingers and grumble, “Of course, it isn’t dead. What a dumb question.”

It is a dumb question and was written to sell books for Stuart Nicholson, the author who posed it. It is a naked straw man, but marketing is marketing. A little controversy sells, bogus or not.

So the straw man turned out to be the burning man of the Festival, set ablaze by the music, local and national and international. But it was still a straw man. It was an exercise designed to have a happy ending. That it did is hard to complain about.

Those Norwegians

Frode Haltli PJF photo by Fran Kaufman

I must admit that I was one of the multitude who said, “Say what?” when they announced that three Norwegian bands were going to be in the Festival. Three? Really? Norwegians? Puzzled looks all over town.

On second thought, this guy Bill Royston has brought in some amazing talent, musicians like Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman, folks we never ever thought we’d get to see in Puddletown. He had the balls to feature ECM throughout an entire Festival! Maybe we should trust him on this? But three bands from Norway?

While they did not provide my top three moments at the Festival, I noted this, “For first-time listeners to In The Country, there may have come a time after a tune or two when it dawned on them, ‘This is what ECM sounds like.’ The landmark label is known for (the teeth-gritting title) “Chamber Jazz.” It has documented many bands like the Norwegians in the Festival this year.

“What’s happy about the sudden realization that you’re hearing ‘ECM’ is that there’s an accompanying thought, ‘I never get to hear this in Portland.’”

On Festival Friday, Tim DuRoche wrote a story on OMN, Norwegian Would: Why Globalism is Good for Jazz in which he said:

…if we limit Jazz’s definition to Crouch et al’s monoculture, conservative, blues-based, swinging model then we do a disservice to the future of the music, and we choke jazz in the same way that Bush/Rove suffocated democracy, one of our other great ‘gifts’ to the world.

About Seim and Haltli, I wrote, “The audience stayed absolutely silent for the next 25 or so minutes as the two were a living example of the old ECM slogan, “The most beautiful sound next to silence.”

Holding the Norwegian’s performances in Norse Hall was cute and quaint and totally appropriate.

Whether or not they took you to the same place you go when you hear Fables of Faubus, or My Favorite Things, or a seductive Brazilian Bossa Nova or the brilliance of Dave Douglas is not the point. They took you somewhere you might not have ever been, and I don’t mean Norway.

That’s what this Festival has always been about.

Images that won’t go away

Pharoah Sanders

Pharoah Sanders at the Newmark. PJF photo by Fran Kaufman

• Dancing onstage, including that deep knee bend. We were all hoping he would make it to his feet. He did.

• Faking us out with two melodic pieces at the beginning of his set. The guy next to me grumbled, “He didn’t sound like this in the sixties.” I replied, “Well, maybe he don’t feel that way anymore…anyway COLTRANE sounded like that!”
• Hearing him playing out and knowing that he’s welcome to do any damned thing he likes.
• Wishing there had been a more skillful interviewer at the Jazz Conversation.
• Pharoah and Nancy King sitting together for the first time in fifty years over dinner at Typhoon.
• Devin Phillips, after playing with his idol, telling me he was going to, “Go home and sit on the sofa and think about what I just did.”
• The inevitable wonder if this might be the last time.

Mingus Big Band

Handy solos. PJF photo by Fran Kaufma

• That they could be so passionate and play so hard after having spent so much time and energy trying to get out of New York in a blizzard and arriving too late for a sound check.
• Sound person Shira Otchis of She Rock Sound who dialed them in on the fly.
• Seeing drummer Justin Faulkner for the first time. Yes, he bangs too much, and lacks subtlety at age 18, but am I going to argue with Craig Handy, Sue Mingus, Branford Marsalis and Pharoah Sanders, all of whom have him in their bands? No, I’m not.

Portland Jazz Composer’s Orchestra

Andrew Oliver conducts

• Dan Duval’s amazing composition, Jive Cactus, which followed no one’s rules.

• Sam Howard’s titanic, Mingus-like Courage Like a Mountain, which I didn’t realize was Mingus-like until I heard him talk about Mingus at the Jazz Conversation. I’m not sure he realized it either.

Dave Holland

• Walking the bass and conjuring the spirit of Leroy Vinnegar.
  

Foreground: Kikoski and Grant. L-R Nastos sax, Newton trumpet, Hunter trombone, Moore bass. PJF photo by Fran Kaufman

The Jams

• Darrell Grant holding things together, playing beautifully and swinging madly.
• The playing and singing of Amazing Grace for Dick Bogle, who passed away on the eve of the Festival.
• Robert Moore singing the lyrics to Blue Monk.
• Craig Handy bending over and reaching every soul with a lengthy alto solo.
• The young woman from Amsterdam who tried to decorate my hat with a toothpick.
• David Ornette Cherry dragging the room into singing Malinyea…and finally the room responding as it should.
• The Norwegians trying to figure out Witchi-Tai-To.
• Discovering players you’ve never seen anywhere else before, like saxophonist Julian Jacobs.

ETC.

• Hearing David Friesen’s Charles Mingus stories, including the one about the first time he met the man and Mingus kissed him on the cheek and told him how much he loved Friesen’s playing.
• Wondering why there was no place for Gordon Lee, Thara Memory, Nancy King, Glen Moore, Scott Steed, Mel Brown, John Stowell, Dan Balmer, Renato Caranto, Phil Baker, Reggie Houston and many other Portland Jazz virtuosi at this year’s Festival.
• Realizing what a hard-working bunch of folks there are who actually making the Festival function.
• Just being in audiences who love the music and all of us feeling the inspiration at the same time.
• Being just as thrilled by the OMN writers who covered the Festival as I was with the music. Jack Berry, Tim DuRoche, Don Campbell and Angela Allen gave us unprecedented, full daily coverage…previews, reviews, flavor and substance. I’m so proud. I’ve said this before, but quoting David Bromberg, “I always like to have a guitar player in my band who plays better than me.” I love my band.
• And those are just a few of the images that stay with me. My fingers are done wore out.