Conversations with musicians are valuable sidebars to performances at the Portland Jazz Festival. They allow audiences to hear artists talk about what they do. At the Art Bar, drummer and radio host Carlton Jackson rounded up four prominent drummers and asked them:

“When every element is in perfect alignment—compatible musicians, the right room, good sound—how do you approach the music?”

Here’s some of what they said.

Jack DeJohnette: “I go into an alternate space, and once I touch a cymbal or other component of the instrument, I’m off.”

Lewis Nash: “I feel a wave of gratitude to be a part of it.”

Chris Brown: “It allows me to get back to being like a baby—that sense of wonderment, discovery.”

Joey Baron: “Clock time stops. I’m right there, right then. I never know if it’s clicking until the music starts. I enjoy surprise. I want to be a part of the surprise.”

(Above, l to r, Baron, DeJohnette, Nash, Brown)

Ms. Barber’s fans seem to admire whatever she does. The Thursday night audience at Portland’s Winningstad Theater indulged the pianist and singer’s every eccentricity. They chuckled as she spent the first two or three minutes of her set adjusting or removing her shoes. She pointed upward with a demand that someone, presumably the sound engineer, “Fix this thing.” Unhappy with something about the beginning of her first piece, she yelled a four-letter oath that materialized twice more in the course of the concert. Several people in the crowd laughed in amusement.

Following extended keyboard noodling, the bassist and drummer came aboard and the piece developed into Thelonious Monk’s “Rhythm-a-Ning.” Sipping occasionally from a cup, frequently removing and replacing her glasses, Ms. Barber soloed with sketchy melodies undergirded by rich chords that continued in support of Patrick Mulcahy’s powerful bass solo. Mulcahy was also impressive in variations on Kenny Dorham’s, “Blue Bossa.” Barber decorated the piece with a wordless vocal whose volume became alarming every time she leaned into the microphone.

Guitarist John Kregor joined Mulcahy and drummer John Deitemyer in the rhythm section for “The Storyteller” from the recent Barber album Smash. Kregor’s solos during the evening varied from conventional swing to spacey. On some, he used electronic loop effects. He was never less than interesting. Deitemyer opened “Bashful” with a tightly articulated drum statement that Barber followed with a solo composed of intricate phrases and no apparent continuity in the melodic line. She again loudly uttered the obscenity, fully amplified. The interweaving of guitar and piano was a highlight of the piece. As she did occasionally throughout the concert, Barber added wordless vocal interjections as percussion effects.

Aside from the Monk opener, the sole standard in the set was “I Thought About You,” taken slowly. She sang the seldom-used verse and then the chorus with only Mulcahy’s bass as accompaniment. It was affecting, marred a bit only by Ms. Barber’s alteration of the Johnny Mercer lyric. He wrote,

I peaked through the crack and looked at the track,
The one going back to you and what did I do?

I thought about you.

She sang, “cracks,” “tracks” and “ones.” I quibble, but messing with Johnny Mercer is not allowed.

More than one reviewer has written that Ms. Barber’s lyrics qualify as poetry. You be the judge. Here’s part of her lyric for “Scream,” also from the new CD:

“Scream / when Sunday / finally comes / and God / isn’t there . . . . the soldier / has his gun / and the war / isn’t where / we thought it would be.”

“Scream” had further intriguing guitar by Kregor, with lots of echo. The piece ended with Ms. Barber singing a long, loud note, holding it for more than a minute in a prodigy of breath control.

Following a standing ovation, the band returned for an encore whose title was not announced. It opened with a bass solo, then went into a quirky piano-guitar unison line and a fleet piano solo. Ms. Barber leaped to her feet and reached inside the piano to pull on the strings, creating several explosions of sound. Kregor employed distortion that enhanced the rhythmic qualities of his solo. The sidemen went silent and Ms. Barber closed unaccompanied on piano, with a bluesy passage among the abstractions, and faded to a quiet ending.

She got another standing ovation. Someone in the crowd shouted, “Portland loves you.”

Later at the Winningstad, alto and soprano saxophonist Kenny Garrett launched his quintet into a blitz of energy and volume that rarely subsided in a two-hour concert. With pianist Vernell Brown, bassist Corcoran Holt, drummer McClenty Hunter and the remarkable percussionist Rudy Bird, Garrett segued from one piece to the next without announcing titles. From the opening number, which seemed to have brief intimations of “Flamingo,” the set approached pure rhythm and pure sound. For enjoyment, it may have required that the listener accept it as a mystical or spiritual experience rather than one based in conventional jazz values. Garrett’s adoration of John Coltrane is unquestionable, but he has moved well beyond the Coltrane apprenticeship of his early career into a realm of his own making. Twenty-three years ago, Garrett made an album called African Exchange Student. His attachment to the roots music of Africa has grown ever more powerful.

In several instances, the efforts of the five musicians melded together; they might have been one percussion instrument, so powerful—or overpowering—was the mass of rhythmic sound they produced. At times, surges of rhythm moved the crowd to frenzied cheering. When Garrett and Hunter or Holt faced one another in simultaneous improvisation their duets were passages of relative calm, eyes in the storm of sound.

In the opening sequence Bird (pictured) played conga drums. Later, he moved through his corner of the stage from one percussion instrument to another; wind chimes, tambourine, a variety of hand-held bells, rattles and shakers. Sometimes, he strapped a wireless microphone to his head and continued drumming or playing a shaker as he sang melodies in unison with Garrett’s saxophone. Brown soloed on piano with chords so pungent that they stood out even in the swirl and urgency of percussive sound. After a solo in which Garrett made the horn sound as if it were crying, Holt applied his bow to the bass and the two faced off in a mournful duet. Then Garrett went to the edge of the stage, seemed for the first time to notice the audience and appeared to be speaking into a stand mike. His lips were moving, but no words could be heard. That bit of stagecraft may have had a point known only to Garrett.

The final piece, or the final segment of the one piece, was comparatively slow, even elegiac. Again Bird sang or hummed in unison with Garrett’s saxophone. Using gliding slurs, Garrett briefly evoked the lyricism of Johnny Hodges. It was an unexpected turn in a concert otherwise mainly devoted to intensity.

In a Portland Jazz Festival conversation this morning, host Devin Philips asked his fellow saxophonist Kenny Garrett to watch a video of himself and comment on it. The performance was 16 years ago at the Montreux, Switzerland, festival. Pianist Kenny Kirkland, bassist Nat Reeves and drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts were the rhythm section. Garrett and the audience of festival-goers and Portland State University music students watched as he played several dozen choruses of John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps.” Phillips led into the screening by telling Garrett that after he saw the video the first time, “I wanted to crush my horn.”

When his 1997 self had faded to black, Garrett turned back to the packed hall and said, I think I’d better practice more. I was trying to rise above myself. Hopefully, I’ll get there.”

His 2013 quartet will play tonight in a PDX concert that has been sold out for days.

When Scott Hamilton came to prominence in the 1970s he was a jazz wunderkind unlike any other saxophonist of his generation. He was twenty-two years old when he arrived in New York from Providence, Rhode Island in 1976. Most of his saxophone contemporaries wanted to be John Coltrane, blazing trails through the post-bebop era. Hamilton wanted to be Johnny Hodges, Ben Webster, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn. He was dedicated to unadulterated swing and harmonies not altered by complex chord substitutions. His untutored natural musicianship established him in the music before he reached the age of 30. Carl Jefferson, the founder of Concord Records, became enamored of Hamilton and recorded him frequently, to the point, I recall, that a prominent record producer exclaimed, “Good Lord, how many Scott Hamilton records does the world need?” The last time I checked, Hamilton’s album count as leader or co-leader was 102.

The world may not need Scott Hamilton records, but the evidence says it wants them. They keep selling, and he keeps filling concert halls and clubs. Last night at the Portland Jazz Festival, he filled Jimmy Mak’s, one of the primary listening spots in a city whose number of jazz clubs seems to belie speculation that the music’s audience is declining. He plays by ear—distinguishing him from the mass of musicians his age who tend to be rigorously schooled in harmony—and he plays with passion and humor. Hamilton is a quoter. In the course of “Cherokee,” for instance, he included, among other references, snatches of “Raincheck,” “Tangerine” and “March of the Siamese Children.” Hamilton appeared with pianist Dave Frishberg, bassist Dave Captein and drummer Gary Hobbs.

In the set I heard, Hamilton got off to a happy start with Hodges’ “Squatty Roo,” then floated into “In a Sentimental Mood,” his roomy, slightly grainy tone putting a bit of an edge on the Duke Ellington melody. In his solo, Frishberg was a pointillist, fragmenting the chords while building a lyrical solo. Through the eight tunes of the set, Frishberg’s work emphasized the wisdom of simplicity. Sometimes he seasoned the simplicity with note-bending and explosive little left hand surprises. Captein’s power as a bassist does not preclude precision and rapid articulation. Throughout the evening, he demonstrated his flexiility, notably in double stops in his solo on Ellington’s “Love You Madly.” Hamilton toasted Captein by quoting from “Cocktails for Two.” Hobbs solidified the reputation he developed when he was with Stan Kenton. He displayed plenty of power last night, but his most riveting moments were relatively quiet ones when he used brushes in exchanges with Hamilton and Frishberg.

Hamilton threw Frishberg a curve by calling the rarely performed Ellington ballad “Tonight I Shall Sleep With a Smile on My Face,” whose chord structure is unconventional and demanding. It turned out that Frishberg had never played the song. Hamilton went to the side of the stage and found a lead sheet. Frishberg studied the chords intently as he played the tune for the first time. The piece closed with Hamilton sustained and ethereal on a high note. Frishberg sighed deeply, shook his head and slumped in relief. Hamilton grinned with satisfaction at the success of the performance and the prolonged applause. Then he instructed the rhythm section, “B-flat,” set a riff, and the quartet played out on the harmonies of “I Got Rhythm.” They earned a standing ovation that lasted for a minute or two after they left the stand.

Further thoughts on the evening:

The softness and reflection of a Hamilton-Frishberg duet on “I Surrender Dear” was disturbed more than once by audience applause. Sometime, appreciation is more appropriately shown by silence.

Now and then a Portland MAX light rail train glided by just beyond the club’s big windows facing 10th Avenue. The passengers gazed in as we looked out at them. A woman on the train waved.

It’s good to be back in Portland.

Blogger and trumpeter Bruno Leicht (pictured) posts a video-laden retrospective of the imperishable Sonny Rollins creation “Airegin” in three manifestations involving the composer, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Stan Getz, Chet Baker and great rhythm sections. What a tune.

Recommended. To see it, go here.

The Portland Jazz Festival, a ten-day extravaganza that fills the city’s theaters, clubs and restaurants with music, has been underway since last Friday. Tomorrow, the Rifftides staff will wend our way down US 97, turn right on I-84 and head west to Portland through the Columbia River Gorge—spectacular at any time of year—to catch the last half of the festival. Go here for a complete list of the musicians we have missed in the first days and others we will try to fit into a packed listening schedule. The first performance I plan to tell you about will be by tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton at Jimmy Mak’s, one of Portland’s principal jazz clubs. Hamilton’s co-conspirators will be local citizens with national reputations; pianist Dave Frishberg, bassist Dave Captein and drummer GaryHobbs.

Later in the week: Matt Wilson’s Arts and Crafts, Kenny Garrett, Steve Kuhn, George Cables, Patricia Barber, Jack DeJohnette, Greta Matassa, Steven Bernstein’s Sex Mob, Nancy King, Terri Lyne Carrington, Esperanza Spalding and Geri Allen. Those are some of the major events, most of them in downtown Portland theaters. The challenge will be to also at least sample appearances by a few dozen of the Pacific Northwest’s fine resident artists; David Friesen, for instance, Randy Porter, Mel Brown, George Colligan and——well, hit the “Go Here” link in the above paragraph and see what the festival’s artistic director, Don Lucoff, and Portland’s club owners have put together.

Sleep may not be an option.

At 92, Yusef Lateef continues to earn universal admiration not only for his artistry as a saxophonist, flutist, oboist and composer, but also for the warmth of his personality and eagerness to share his musical knowledge, which is wide and deep. Thanks to Rifftides reader Harris Meyer for alerting me—and you— to a recent installment of the radio program American Routes. Lateef told host Nick Spitzer about his career, his music and his philosophy. In his early development as a professional, like scores of other musicians Lateef came under the wing of one of the great teachers in jazz, Dizzy Gillespie. He talked with Spitzer about what he learned from Gillespie, Sonny Stitt and Cannonball Adderley, how he became a leader, and his faith’s influence on his music.

The interview is at the end of a two-hour broadcast of American Routes. The show on New Orleans station WWNO also contains performances by Robert Randolph, Lena Horne, Clifton Chenier and Aaron Neville, among others. It’s a gumbo. To hear the entire program, go here. To listen only to the Lateef segment, click on “Listen To Hour 2” and advance the Routes Radio slider to :38:56. The recording that ends the hour comes from Lateef’s 1961 album Eastern Sounds.

Then come back and watch a grainy kinescope from Japan featuring Lateef on oboe in 1963. His accompanists are the Adderley rhythm section: pianist Joe Zawinul, bassist Sam Jones and drummer Louis Hayes. Cannonball and Nat were off to the side, listening. The sound quality would send Rudy Van Gelder into shock, and the kinescope dies during Jones’s solo, but Lateef makes the clip worth seeing and hearing.

The John McNeil part of the post immediately below brought to mind an omnibus Rifftides piece from three years ago in which McNeil and his bandstand associates played an important part. The entry had to do with a splendid popular song from the 1940s and its transformation into a jazz vehicle. The staff found video that was unavailable in 2010, compensating in part for the copyright removal of another performance.

Skipping along through 65 years of the history of a superior popular song gives us an idea of its evolution as a subject for jazz improvisation. Indeed, two of our examples provide an idea how jazz improvisation itself has evolved. The song is “Aren’t You Glad You’re You?” by Johnny Burke (words) and Jimmy Van Heusen (music). As Father O’Malley, Bing Crosby introduced it in the 1945 film The Bells of St. Mary’s.

Crosby had a substantial hit recording of it the same year. Among the singers who did covers (did they call them covers in those days?) were Frank Sinatra, Doris Day and Julius LaRosa. Later, Bob McGrath and Big Bird sang it…often… on Sesame Street. Their version is afield from our discussion, but if you’re interested, you can hear it by clicking here.

“Aren’t You Glad You’re You” is a perfect marriage of optimism and sunshine in the lyrics, melody and harmony. It has a couple of chord changes that are unexpected enough to spice it up for blowing, and it’s fun to sing or play. LaRosa’s record enjoyed a good deal of air play in the early 1950s and works nicely for our purpose. He takes mild liberties with the lyrics, employs interesting phrasing and radiates the song’s happy outlook.

Sorry about that, but I can’t be sorry about copyright holders protecting their interests. LaRosa’s version of the song, worth seeking out, is on this CD compilation. Read Amazon’s fine print and you’ll see that some new copies are selling for less than used ones.

There may have been jazz versions of “Aren’t You Glad You’re You” before 1952, but the first one I know of was on Gerry Mulligan’s initial quartet album for Pacific Jazz. Mulligan had gone from insider favorite to general popularity with his pianoless quartet co-starring Chet Baker. In the early 1950s it was not illegal for jazz to have general popularity. Mulligan, baritone saxophone; Baker, trumpet; Chico Hamilton, drums; Carson Smith, bass. YouTube, for reasons best known to its contributor, gives Chet the credit and the cover shot.

Cut in a sequence of pages flying off a calendar and, whaddaya know, it’s November, 2009, and the John McNeil-Bill McHenry Quartet is on the stand at the Cornelia Street Café in New York. Joe Martin is the bassist, Jochem Rueckert the drummer. It may seem that after the melody chorus, our intrepid modernists leave Mr. Burke’s chord scheme behind but, as I keep telling you, listen to the bass player. If McNeil seems amused by McHenry’s initial solo flurry, it’s for good reason.

McNeil and McHenry did not include “Aren’t You Glad You’re You?” in Rediscovery, their CD excursion into the bebop and west coast past. Perhaps it will show up on the sequel. Perhaps there will be a sequel.

Have a good weekend. Aren’t you glad you’re you?