jazz-beyond-jazz fans (that’s yours truly!) exult in Ornette Coleman, Myra Melford’s Be Bread, the Bad Plus and the overall Portland Jazz Festival<\/p>\n
jazz-beyond-jazz fans (that’s yours truly!) exult in Ornette Coleman, Myra Melford’s Be Bread, the Bad Plus and the overall Portland Jazz Festival<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-70","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1i3CL-18","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":171,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2009\/03\/reasons_to_be_cheerful_wynton.html","url_meta":{"origin":70,"position":0},"title":"Reasons to be cheerful: Wynton books Ornette","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"March 18, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Wynton Marsalis has high regard for the music of Ornette Coleman -- as demonstrated by Jazz at Lincoln Center's just-released 2009-2010 concert schedule, which begins next September 26 with a single performance by Coleman's quartet featuring two bassists and his son Denardo on drums.\u00a0This booking might seem like a point\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":68,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2008\/02\/more_from_portland.html","url_meta":{"origin":70,"position":1},"title":"More from Portland","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"February 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Five unusually sunny days and a sumptuous solo performance by Cecil Taylor before at least 2000 absorbed listeners marked the first weekend of the fourth annual Portland Jazz Festival. Deconstructions by musicians and critics of the words \"swing,\" \"jazz,\" \"sound\" and \"music\" demonstrated this was a high ol' time. What\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":75,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2008\/03\/ornette_at_town_hall_and_in_ja.html","url_meta":{"origin":70,"position":2},"title":"Ornette at Town Hall and in Japan","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"March 25, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Further Ornette sightings: the prophet of life-beyond-conventions returns on Friday to New York's Town Hall, where he's suffered and triumphed throughout his career. Internationally acclaimed as an enquiring multi-instrumentalist, composer and conceptualist, Ornette has a special place in his heart for Town Hall, the historic midtown Manhattan venue where he\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":123,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2008\/09\/bad_news_from_the_northwest_po.html","url_meta":{"origin":70,"position":3},"title":"Bad news from the Northwest: Portland Jazz Fest dies","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"September 8, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The demise of the Portland Jazz Festival was announced today by press release from its membership umbrella organization PDX Jazz, cancelling plans for February 2009 due to the pullout by title sponsor Qwest Communications. Despite concerted attempts by festival producer Bill Royston, no other funder stepped up to support the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":328,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2010\/07\/italy_here_i_come.html","url_meta":{"origin":70,"position":4},"title":"Italy here I come","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"July 21, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The Siena Jazz Workshop has me present my book Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (buy it for your Kindle!) Sunday, July 25 at 10 am (yes, in Siena, Italy).\u00a0Can you suggest unmissable music in Tuscany (or Vetirbo through July 31? In Siena I'll talk and show brief bits\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"siena square.jpeg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/siena%20square.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":227,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2009\/08\/best_review_ever_of_miles_orne.html","url_meta":{"origin":70,"position":5},"title":"best review ever of Miles Ornette Cecil — Jazz Beyond Jazz","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"August 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm humbled by writer-poet-performance artist\u00c2\u00a0Kirpal Gordon's appreciation of and insight into my book on the avant garde through the models of Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, in the just-posted NOLA issue of Big Bridge magazine. He's captured my intent and says I accomplished what I meant to. See\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nComplete disclosure — I am a guest and advisor to the Portland Jazz Festival, also here to promote my book (at the incredible bookstore Powell’s, and also the local Borders tomorrow), so I have enormous self-interest in the Portland Jazz Festival, produced for only five years by PDX Jazz, a non-profit that has established significant local community sponsorship and support. Nevertheless —
\nPulitzer Prize-wining Ornette Coleman delivered an iconic performance with his quintet (OC playing furious fiddle as well as beseeching and blues-drenched alto sax and querolous trumpet; Tony Falanga on upright bass, powerhouse Charnett Moffett and guitaristic Albert McDowell on electric basses; brilliantly quick Denard Coleman playing drums) and received a standing ovation from a nearly sold all-ages crowd at the ornate downtown Portland Theater, a former movie palace, to formally open the festival’s first night. That afternoon Ornette verbalized his thoughts on life, love, death, habit, creativity, originality, sound, music and the whole damn thing in a public interview I conducted for an hour, which was attended by more than 100 attentive attendees — and recorded for eventual broadcast by KMHD.
\nKeyboardist-composer Myra Melford’s quintet Be Bread, with electric guitarist Brandon Ross (taking a more-than-usually forefront role, though electric trumpeter Coung Vu is equally a powerful creative voice to the rich, thick rolling mix, as is extraordinary electric bassist Stomu Takehishi and the colorist drummer\/percussionist Elliot Cavee) — the music rises, it’s nourishing, it’s bread, it rocked at an 11 pm show, which followed a separate ticketed event, the debut performance of the new all-star SFJazz Collective (Joe Lovano, Stefon Harris, Miguel Zenon, Dave Douglas, Robin Eubanks, Renee Rosnes, Matt Pennman, Eric Harland) playing Wayne Shorter repertoire. Charnette Moffett was seen swinging behind Robin Eubanks in the late night free fest jam session, where local saxists gathered from the trendy Pearl District streets. . .
\nThe next afternoon the Bad Plus thrilled a crowd of several hundred at the historic Crystal Ballroom venue, and right now I’m readying to hear Tim Berne, saxophonist-composer-improviser, with pianist Craig Taborn.
\nAll these musicians sat with jazz authors and journalists James Hale, Paul de Barros, Tim DuRoche, Steve Cantor, Lloyd Peterson on two panels discussing “The Shape of Jazz To Come,” and other future-of-music topics — also, Hale publically “conversed” with Berne, de Barros with Melford, Peterson was supposed to do Cecil Taylor but that’s gotten cancelled or maybe postponed ’cause CT didn’t connect as planned, Cantor talked with the entire Bad Plus (Ethan Iverson, Reid Miles, Dave King) — If I didn’t have to rush off (maybe I can still catch a minute of the Spanish Harlem jazz Orchestra) I’d provide details, but more will follow . . .
\n(I should mention that photographer R. Andrew Lepley is working assiduously, I’ve seen jazz journalists Joseph Woodard from Santa Barbara and Laurence Donohue-Greene from AllAboutJazz-New York, local writers Martin Hughley and Luciana Lopez, producer Bill Royston has done an amazing job staging this city-wide event, the staff is great, food is good, I love Oregon pinot noirs. . . it’s been (unusually) sunny, too. I drove through the gorgeous Columbia Gorge and climbed an outcropping, and recommend it all). howardmandel.com<\/a>
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