Grant became a professor of music at Portland State University and began absorbing the history and culture of the city, the state and the region. His concert at the 2014 Portland Jazz Festival was a performance of his composition The Territory<\/em>, a suite that he premiered last summer and performed recently in New York. In the course of its nine movements, Grant reflects on the region\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s geologic, cultural and human history, including the the ice age Missoula Floods, Chief Joseph\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s surrender, the homeland exile of Japanese-Americans in World War Two, good times in Portland\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s black community, and the rivers that sustain the Pacific Northwest. <\/p>\n![\"Grante,](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Grante-Locke-.jpg\")
<\/a>The nine-member ensemble that performed the work consisted of Portlanders with guest vibraphonist Joe Locke, who flew in from New York to again be featured in the suite (pictured: Grant, left; Locke, right). The emotion of Locke’s improvising balanced his precision in executing Grant’s demand material. His work in tandem with cellist Hamilton Cheifetz in the movement that pays tribute to native Americans, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hymn to the Four Winds,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was rich in harmony and feeling. In \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Chief Joseph\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ![\"Joe](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Joe-Locke-at-PDX-14.jpg\")
<\/a>Lament,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Locke was moving, as were bassist Eric Gruber, drummer Tyson Stubelek and the remarkable alto saxophonist John Nastos, whose solo demonstrated visceral understanding of Eric Dolphy without mimicking or parodying the late saxophonist. For \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Missoula Floods\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Grant may have written for the ensemble what sounded like simultaneous improvisation or it may have been truly improvised. In either case, the closing passages evoked order out of chaos, stunningly appropriate to the subject. <\/p>\n
![\"keller-marilyn\"](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/keller-marilyn.jpg\")
<\/a> Nastos, tenor saxophonist Kirt Peterson, trumpeter Thom Barber and vocalist Marilyn Keller all produced solos marinated in blues feeling. Barber played his only solo of the suite with a plunger mute in the spirit of Bubber Miley. In this piece, the simultaneous emoting by the horns was unquestionably improvised. Ms. Keller capped the movement by quoting Fats Waller—\u00e2\u20ac\u0153One never knows, do one?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Following a sobering movement that commemorated the unprosecuted massacre of 34 Chinese gold miners in Oregon in 1887, Grant\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s suite concluded with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153New Land,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a confirmation of the promise that continues to draw 21st Century setters to the Pacific Northwest. They join Grant, whose choice of place worked out nicely for him and for his listeners.<\/p>\n