Join me this Wednesday, April 30 at the Tugboat Brewing Co. (711 SW Ankeny) in Portland for an evening of duos with free-bop tenor great Rich Halley. Followed by another tenor-drums deployment on Sunday, May 4 at the Someday Lounge (125 NW 5th Avenue) with the mighty Michael York. Brought to you by the key […]

Better Homes & Gardens will be hitting it at Valentines (232 SW Ankeny) tonight, April 7 around 9:30 pm.  We’ll be sharing the intimate bill with the redoubtable Fly!Fly!Fly!Fly!Fly! 

Some things on the horizon to check out in the Portland area:
Sunday, March 30, 8 pm, Someday Lounge (125 NW 5th Avenue in Old Town)—San Diego drummer/composer Nathan Hubbard and I will play a duo set, followed by a trio featuring Hubbard and wonderful local winds players Lee Elderton and Ward Baxter. Hubbard’s on tour […]

Last evening, our dear friend Paul Middendorf of Gallery Homeland invited myself, Phillip Greenlief and Citta di Vitti (a wonderful project of Bay Area saxophonist Greenlief’s compositions inspired by the classic films L’Avventura, L’Eclisse, and Deserto Rosso by Michelangelo Antonioni with Monica Vitti, featuring bassist Lisa Mezzacappa, drummer/percussionist Jason Levis), Reed Wallsmith, and Andrew […]

 

 Phillip Greenlief | Tim DuRoche duet [11:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Enjoy this recent performance of Ornette Coleman’s “Song X” from a recent appearance of Better Homes & Gardens (Reed Wallsmith, alto; Bob Jones, bass; TdR, drums) at Ethos, Inc.—a community-based music organization in North Portland.

Thelonious Monk, the great American composer-pianist, died 26 years ago today.
[I was just coming into jazz then, but distinctly remember buying Genius of Modern Music, Volume 2 and being fascinated by his version of the lovely waltz “Carolina Moon.” I’m sure Benny Davis and ol’ Joe Burke had no idea their tune would […]

 

 Comin' on the Hudson (redux) [1:09m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Cecil Taylor comes to Portland this week. To commemorate the festivities, here’s a recent Occasional Jazz Conjecture on the man, the myth, the moment.
If you stopped and measured the 20th century’s considerable residue, the left-over facts and froth of modernity, the loam of cultural revolution and the flicker of the avant-garde’s ember (to wring […]

This week in jazz is pretty exciting, at least as far as Portland’s concerned—Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Tim Berne, Myra Melford, Cuong Vu, and a host of others will be hitting town.
Fifty years ago we started debating “the shape of jazz to come” (actually to nit-pick, the same moldy fig vs. time-marching-on spat […]

Below and beyond is a little bit of what you might have heard on a misty night in February in Portland if you’d been in Old Town with the other thiefs, imposters and other assorted prophets and poets of the city. Collective improv with a jazz foundation courtesy tenor saxophonist Michael York, contrabassist André […]

 

 Eleven Minutes to Takeoff [11:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Below and beyond is some more what you might have heard last night from tenor saxophonist Michael York, contrabassist André St. James and myself at Someday Lounge in Portland.

 

 YST [12:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download