I review the Seattle and Portland operas for concertonet.com, based in Paris, France, featuring worldwide contributors and music. I write about Portland classical and jazz music for Northwest Reverb and Oregon Music News. For more stories and music reviews, check the archives at www.columbian.com (The Columbian) between 1995-2006. My National Endowment for the Arts and Columbia Journalism grant in 2005 helped immensely in music coverage.
SF JAZZ at Portland Jazz Festival 2011
SF JAZZ Collective premieres Stevie Wonder in all its wonder
Oregon Music News Review of SF JAZZ at Portland Jazz Festival 2011
How were we to know that Portland would be the first audience to hear SF JAZZ Collective’s interpretation of the great Stevie Wonder, who as vibes man Stefon Harris says, “played the sound track of my life.”
There was exuberance – the kind among families who all know the same joke — Saturday afternoon on the Crystal Ballroom. stage as the 3 Cohens lit up the big, airy Portland music space with their new-wave originals and updated standards. A new, and yet unnamed CD, will follow soon, and it was clear some of the pieces we heard came from that.
Gary Houston has been hand-pulling silkscreen collectibles since he began Voodoo Catbox in 1995 in Portland. It was born from his 8-year-old graphic design and screen-printing business, so he was poised to find a place in the rock ‘n’ roll poster world. He doesn’t use a computer. He does everything by hand – from lettering to drawing to silk-screening. Many of his posters go for $30, but some bring in $450. He’s sold one piece for $600. The Chinese invented screen-printing 2000 years ago, he says, and nothing much about the craft has changed. He calls the work hands-on, physical, creative and romantic. “It’s leaving a little bit of history.”
Opera, as the hype goes, promises high drama and grand emotions. Oddly, I can’t remember an opening night soaring to such heights when I take along a date.
I’ve reviewed the opera for a dozen years from the best seat in the house. I dis a few. But mostly I swoon, even over a warhorse, like Verdi’s “Otello” where a fat baritone writhes on the floor in deep emotional pain.
Portland’s long-lived and much-loved Nu Shooz has turned its band into an orchestra and its musical talents to its newly released CD, “Pandora’s Box,” a mix of tunes described as “James Bond meets James Brown.” Expect a lot more than that — including a honeyed version of the 1955 jazz standard, “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most.”
ndeed the recording is packed with surprises, musical leaps and 14 tunes, many originals by Nu Shooz’ songwriter John Smith, who happens to be lead singer Valerie Day’s husband. Day is the face and the voice of the two-decades-plus-old group, who burst on the scene with its breakthrough mid-‘80s hit, “I Can’t Wait.” An anniversary edition of that song is the final cut on the new CD.
I talked with Day to find out what’s up with the new and the old Shooz.
Tony Starlight’s Supperclub & Lounge, 3728 N.E. Sandy Blvd., hunkers down in a fitting location — Hollywood. The one in Portland, not the place with the big sign on the hill near LA.
Nee and aka Brett Kucera, Tony Starlight opened his namesake place in January 2007, determined to bring Portland a nostalgic entertainment venue it didn’t have. Not a jazz club, a New York City-style piano bar, high-end resto, nor a concert hall, his room would be a supper club with a variety show, starring himself as Dino, Tom Jones, Frankie, Neil Diamond and made-up characters. He’d make people laugh, connect with the audience, get to know the community — at least the ones who showed up at his nightclub.
What’s odd is that by now the club has become all of those things.
Seattle—Seattle Opera lacked a crucial element since lauded general director Speight Jenkins has run the show for 27 years. Until now, he has never commissioned an opera.
With Amelia, which made its elaborate two-hour world premiere in May, operagoers should have even firmer confidence in Jenkins' vision. Beginning in 2002, when he sorted through contemporary composers' works with director Stephen Wadsworth, settling on Daron Aric Hagen's music, he never looked back from his original intention to make an American opera with American themes.
Lucky for us, Bill Beach rose from the dead Benson Hotel's basement and went to Brazil.
This spring the pianist released his energetic Brasil Beat (yes, Brazilians spell it that way) on his label, Axial Records. Six of the 12 tracks feature Beach's breathy baritone-bass shaping original Portuguese lyrics. Cross-checked with Portuguese linguists, the lyrics are precisely articulated and beautifully phrased. Beach is a stickler for details and authenticity, as relaxed as his vocals sound.
Portlander Ben Darwish and his quartet stepped it up a notch at the caramel-corn-scented Palace Theater as part of the Silverton Wine & Jazz Festival. If you missed this gig, you lost out on the most innovative of the day, though certainly the sexy mid-century couple of bass genius Glen Moore and the inimitable crooner/scatter/partner Nancy King, accompanied by pianist Dan Gaynor, attracted a way bigger crowd later in the evening.
OK. Dr. Lonnie Smith and Gil Scott-Heron, even Nicholas Payton, reaped the lion's share of publicity for the Soul'd Out Music Festival continuing through this week in Portland.
