The PDX Jazz Festival in Portland, Oregon last week began to garner good reviews for its programs, many of which celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of Blue Note Records. Yet as the first major jazz festival of 2009, it may be the canary in the coalmine regarding effects of the economic downturn. Last fall Alaska Airlines rescued the fest from folding after its major funder, Seattle-based Qwest Communications, pulled out, having been one of the decade’s 25-worst performing S&P 500 Index stocks. Now, according to PDX Jazz artistic director Bill Royston, severely disappointing ticket sales forced his cancellation of a major show scheduled for Friday 2/20 headlined by singer Cassandra Wilson, with pianist Jason Moran‘s band as an opening act.
Al Green and Sonny Rollins, now and then
Al Green, age 62, won two Grammy awards last week  — Best R&B Performance by a Duo for “Stay with Me (By the Sea)” and Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance for “You’ve Got The Love I Need” — and of course out-classed Justin Timberlake on the televised award program singing his 1972 classic “Let’s Stay Together.”Â

Eddie Palmieri sets Jazz at Lincoln Center afire
Eddie Palmieri, the genius and prophet of Afro-Caribbean jazz, showed Herbie Hancock, maybe Wynton Marsalis and certainly the roaring audience at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall a thing or three last weekend. His band La Perfecta II, reconstituting the instrumentation and compositions for mambo, cha-cha and pachanga dancing Palmieri introduced in 1961, blew the lid off the joint as I’ve heard no other band do since it opened in 2004, establishing Latin music’s clavé rhythm for all time at the core of what Marsalis likes to call “the house that swing built.”Â
A visitation with Don Cherry’s spirit
Attempts to revisit the music of an extraordinary improviser work all too infrequently, if “work” means evoking something close to the living presence of the player him-or-herself. This is true even when the tribute-payers are the tributee’s collaborators, bearing the best intentions.

Don Cherry and Colin Walcott – photo ©Lona Foote
Civil Rights-Jazz document, 1963
Prior to tomorrow’s inauguration, the New York Times (and I suspect many other publications) has focused in many columns, book reviews and reports on Barack Obama’s election as a turning point in the U.S.’s movement towards full civil rights for all people. The entertainment section makes the case for movies having led the way to our first not-completely- “white”-identified President.
Armstrong to Ellington to Obama
Cutting Contest, online
Six emerging jazz acts, playing in their hometowns from Fresno to Brisbane, Australia competed publicly via video clips to win a Coltrane boxed set and $1000 cash prizes — that was the First World Internet “Cutting Contest”, results announced January 31 online (of course).  Pretty good gimmick — er, marketing idea — to use the web, expose new talent, enlist the audience in interactivity, among other things the endeavor of TruthInMusic.com (among its motto’s:  “This is John Coltrane’s world . . . we just live in it”)  seems to be about.Â
Parameters of jazz now
The Winterjazzfest held at three venues in Greenwich Village last Saturday, a smorgasbord of almost two dozen acts offered up to attendees of the Association of Performing Arts Centers conference, gave a hint of some sounds to be heard around the U.S. in the months to come. What I witnessed was diverse, engaging, virtuosic but not didactic. The musicians seem to know they’ve got to be audience-friendly, or go without. So they’ve tailored their acts for clarity, balancing familiarity and novelty but not dumbing down.Â
Manhattan music surge for APAP
Hope we still hope we can believe in
We — I — need a deep-winter burst of positivity. The Presidential election was two months ago, and nothing has changed! Except the pres-elect is getting heat for all he hasn’t done (bring peace to Israel-Gaza, fix the economy, justify appointments) while the sitting lame duck gets a virtual pass for what he’s ignoring (Israel-Gaza), what he’s flubbed (US economy, world affairs, environment — need more examples?) and what he’s doing now (opening wilderness to development, putting appointees in protected jobs, spinning his legacy).
South Asian-American jazz from New York
Rudresh Mahanthappa — an extraordinary American jazzman of South Asian descent — has a critical fave with Kinsmen, his album featuring his own alto sax coupled with that of Indian Carnatic master musician Kadri Golpanath, supported by Karachi-born but L.A.-bred former surfer/electric guitarist Rez Abassi, violin, bass, traps, mridingam from East and West. They all talk and play in my NPR production on last night’s “All Things Considered.”
Celebrating Freddie Hubbard, the intrepid fox
Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard died last night around 2 a.m. in Sherman Oaks Hospital (Los Angeles) of complications following a heart attack he had suffered on the night before Thanksgiving (November 26), not November 30 as previously reported. He was 70 years old.
late gift ideas
You can’t buy ’em music, ’cause you don’t know what they’re missing – so try other music and beyond formats (books, videos, music toys) as stocking stuffers for the out-leaning —