Tomorrow, the Rifftides staff plus one will hit the road to Oregon. The first stop is Portland, where we’ll hear Dave Frishberg and Rebecca Kilgore at the restaurant called Touché. In this album, they concentrated on Frank Loesser. Advance word is that at the Touché, they will tackle some of Irving Berlin’s more obscure songs.
Then, we head southwest to Newport, a coastal town of about 10,000 whose main occupations are in tourism, fishing and wood products. It is the home of the other Newport jazz festival, the small, intimate one. Among the musicians at Newport Jazz 2011 will be the Jeff Hamilton Trio, Terell Stafford, Holly Hofmann, Mike Wofford, Monty Alexander, Hassan Shakur, Anat Cohen, Howard Alden and Kristin Korb. To see the full list and schedule, go here. I look forward to again hearing the PDX Jazz Quintet, aka PDXV, and my first exposure to the Weber Iago/David Valdez Chamber Jazz Project. I’ve been asked to say a few words now and then in the course of the weekend. Schedule permitting, I hope to work in a bit of blogging.