Beyond Category

Montavilla Jazz Festival 2019 was a few months ago, but hearing the voices of these artists brings back vivid memories of all the music we heard that weekend. Like we’ve come to expect, the music was incredibly diverse and the atmosphere was warm and inviting. You’ll hear why that is as you listen to the artists talking about their work and about the festival itself. Before 2019 comes to a close, please make a donation to Montavilla Jazz Festival and to Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble to keep this music community strong!

On Saturday May 18th PJCE honors the late saxophonist and composer Jim Pepper in a concert at the Old Church. We’ll play music by Jim Pepper, Gordon Lee, and Glay Giberson, as well as music by our guest, hip hop artist and traditional singer and dancer 2 8 Tha Native, arranged by Farnell Newton and Stephanie Kitson.

Jim Pepper, who identified with the Kaw and Creek tribes, was a Native American jazz innovator who is best known for a song that reached the Billboard charts, Witchi Tai To. Pepper’s was an incredibly distinctive voice on the tenor saxophone, and had fruitful collaborations with many other A-list jazz players, often on the avant-garde side of the spectrum—Don Cherry, Paul Motian, Charlie Haden and Mal Waldron, among others. He also worked extensively with Portland’s own Gordon Lee, who talked with me about how he met Jim Pepper, and the “supernatural” effect that this man—who Lee jokingly called “the older brother I never wanted”—had on his life.

Tickets for the May 18th concert are on sale now at pjce.org. Get $5 off your purchase with the code “beyond” at checkout.

Also you can learn more about Jim Pepper and our program honoring him at Oregon Historical Society on May 10th at noon. Jazz writer Rick Mitchell gives an introduction on Pepper’s role in jazz’s larger story, Gordon Lee will talk about Jim Pepper and perform with 2 8 Tha Native, who will also talk about his own work in hip hop and that of other native artists in Portland today.

I talked with composer Ezra Weiss as two big projects of his go out into the world. First the release the studio recording of From Maxville to Vanport, featuring his music, and lyrics by S. Renee Mitchell sung by Marilyn Keller; and second, a concert taking place this Saturday, December 8th, 2018 at the Alberta Abbey featuring Ezra’s latest composition, We Limit Not the Truth of God.

The two pieces have a lot in common. They’re both concert-length jazz suites that tell stories about who we were as human beings in general and Oregonians in particular, and both say something about how the future can be better than the past. We talked about what it means to make music with a more socially-engaged perspective, and what the difference is between art and propaganda.

This is the second installment of a two-part series recapping the 2018 Montavilla Jazz Festival. This time I talk with Neil Mattson, MJF Executive Director, about how the festival went in terms of ticket sales, budgets, and attendance, you know, the stuff you can measure. And then we get into the intangible measures of the project’s success—the gut feelings he has about whether or not it’s worth it to keep on doing what everyone thought was a fool’s errand five years ago. Fortunately for all of us, I think Neil is ready to be foolish for at least one year more.

If you were at the 2018 Montavilla Jazz Festival on August 19th or 20th in Portland, OR, then you felt the excitement. But if you weren’t, I hope this episode will give you a taste of the music and the people that made the event special. Interviews with Shao Way Wu, saxophonist Idit Shner, KBOO radio personality Daniel Flessas, and the Saturday headliner saxophonist Nicole Glover in this episode.

Trio Untold, with James Miley on piano and keyboards, Mike Nord on guitar and electronics, and Ryan Biesack on drums, is the thirty-third release on PJCE Records. It drops Friday September 14th. Stream and buy it at pjce.bandcamp.com.

Ryan Meagher’s new album of “collective spontaneous composition” is called Evil Twin, and its the 32nd release on PJCE Records. You can hear the band perform live at the 2018 Montavilla Jazz Festival, on August 18th at 4:10 pm. Learn more and get your tickets at montavillajazzfest.com. The album drops August 17th. Stream and buy the album at pjce.bandcamp.com.

The Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble gives two world premiere performances of James Miley’s newest work “Watershed Suite.” This six-movement piece is inspired by distinctive bodies of water in the Oregon landscape, from the Tamolitch Pool to Oaks Bottom, capturing the spirit of each through music. James Miley joins PJCE Executive Director Douglas Detrick for a conversation about the piece taped at Sellwood Riverside Park, on the banks of the Willamette River.

Learn more at pjce.org/watershed.

[Doug] Welcome to Beyond Category. I’m Douglas Detrick.

The Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble gives two world premiere performances of James Miley’s newest work “Watershed Suite.” This six-movement piece is inspired by distinctive bodies of water in the Oregon landscape, from the Tamolitch Pool to Oaks Bottom, capturing the spirit of each through music. Head to pjce.org/watershed to learn more about this new piece and the performances in August, 2018.

And stay tuned for the release of Trio Untold, with James Miley on piano and keyboards, Mike Nord guitar and electronics, and Ryan Biesack on drums. It’s the thirty-third release on PJCE Records, and it drops this September.

Here’s the episode.

[ambient tape: “I hear water”] ?

[James] This is James Miley, I’m a composer/pianist.

[Doug] Meeting near a waterway seemed appropriate.

We are down along the Willamette River, this is Sellwood Riverfront Park. We’re looking at the Sellwood Bridge, listening to waves from a really noisy boat that just went by a little while ago.

I’m doing two projects with PJCE this summer. First is a trio recording that’s going to be out in September with Mike Nord and Ryan Biesack, and that’s called Trio Untold. It’s all freely improvised music in the moment. And the second is a new piece for the ensemble and that’s called the Watershed Suite.

Each section is inspired by a waterway here in Oregon. And I’m using watershed, the term, fairly loosely. I settled on it mostly because of the connection to the idea of a drainage basin, a large area that a river gives identity to. And, the concept of shedding, as musicians.

[Doug] This is a bit of a musician’s joke. If you hear a musician say they need to “shed” a particular piece of music, that means they need to practice it. Shed is short for woodshed, which is where a musician would go, as the story goes, to practice away from an audience.

[James] I wanted to write a piece about the Tamolitch Pool, the Blue Pool, down near Eugene up off the McKenzie River. Which is an extraordinary place. If you haven’t gone, you need to check it out. It’s a spot where the river goes under ground then bubbles up in this intensely deep blue color that doesn’t seem real at all. I wasn’t prepared when I saw it. I thought “oh it’ll be some water, and it’s blue, and it will be pretty” but it’s really really wild. It’s, I don’t know, thiry-ish feet deep, and you can see all the way down to the bottom, just a really deep, kind of intelligent kind of blue.

I had all these sketches, all these ideas, and I just couldn’t come up with the thing that was working for me to elicit some sense of that place and how it makes me feel. In the process of doing this, we were editing the trio disc and all of this improvise music that we just kind of made up in the moment, and there’s a piece on there that  really speaks to this place. So I went back into that and used that material to write a new large ensemble piece.

Static is not the right word. It feels very serene. All the way through it feels like it’s got this flat sheen, there’s a feeling that you’re looking at something very deep but it never burbles to the surface. Which made me think of that pool, where you stand and you look at it and if you jumped in you wouldn’t be able to swim to the bottom of it. It looks closer than it is, but nothing is quite what it seems.

The water is the connecting point but each one has a specific kind of sensibility to it. What I’ve always loved about Oaks Bottom is that you can get lost in there in a way after this crazy day in a big city. You can find yourself on a path in the middle of these wetlands, staring at a great blue heron, and then realize I’m sitting in the middle of this amazing place and I’m ten minutes from home. So, it’s the most urban of the settings, yet it has these qualities that it can transport you to a different place.

[Doug] Finding inspiration in bodies of water is fitting for James Miley’s music. He crafts melodies with an amazing rhythmic lightness. The music dynamic and dazzling on the surface, but there’s always movement and depth underpinning it.

He holds a doctorate in music from the University of Oregon, and currently is Assistant Professor of Music at Willamette University in Salem. He was born in California, but his studies and creative pursuits have taken him to Nevada, Virginia, Michigan, Arizona, Texas and abroad to Hong Kong and Kathmandu. He’s a master of composing for jazz ensemble, and that comes from a huge range of experience, including professional jazz bands, classical ensembles, and years spent teaching jazz in colleges and high schools all over the country.

So it means something when he says about Portland and the Montavilla Jazz Festival that...

[James] There’s more talent here per capita than any other place that I’ve lived. Even in Los Angeles, there are amazing musicians but there’s also ten million people and you drive two and a half hours between gigs. I think an opportunity to showcase what we have here and connect with the community on a grass roots level is fantastic.

[Doug] If you’re in Eugene, come hear the ensemble play “Watershed Suite” at Roaring Rapids on Thursday, August 16th at 7 pm, free admission! If you’re in Portland, we play Saturday, August 18th at 5:30 at the Montavilla Jazz Festival. Go to pjce.org/watershed to get reserved or VIP stageside tickets. General Admission tickets are available at the door only, but your reserved seating ticket gets you General Admission access to see the whole festival. Learn more about rest of the festival lineup at montavillajazzfest.com.

Have you heard the ensemble play a few times? Have you listened to some recordings on PJCE Records? Maybe you’re a subscriber to this podcast? If you enjoy this music and media, and you want to see us make more of it in the future, I encourage you to become a PJCE Sustainer. You can make a tax-deductible donation of as little as $60/year, or $5 per month, and get access to discounts on concert tickets and PJCE Records releases, and invitations to Sustainers-only events.

We’re offering a $10 discount for Montavilla Jazz Festival reserved seating tickets, and you’ll be invited to a special reception with James Miley in September, available only to PJCE Sustainers. You’re going to have a million questions running through your mind after you hear his incredible music. Come to the reception and you can ask him all of them. Head on over to pjce.org/sustain to become a PJCE Sustainer and we’ll send you all the details.

This has been Beyond Category, I’m Douglas Detrick, Executive Director and Podcaster-in-Chief of the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble. Thanks for listening.

The 31st release on PJCE Records is “Escape Route,” by Other Barry, a bionic power trio led by George Colligan on keyboards, with Micah Hummel on drums and Enzo Irace on guitar.

Transcript:

[Doug] PJCE Records artists Other Barry, a trio led by George Colligan, play at 2:50 pm, Saturday August 18th at the 2018 Montavilla Jazz Festival in Northeast Portland. Tickets available at montavillajazzfest.com, and you buy or stream the album at pjce.bandcamp.com. Here’s the episode.

Welcome to Beyond Category, I’m Douglas Detrick. The 31st release on PJCE Records is “Escape Route,” by Other Barry, a bionic power trio led by George Colligan on keyboards, with Micah Hummel on drums and Enzo Irace on guitar. The music is adrenaline-drenched, electronica-infused, jazz music that doesn’t mind being a bit complicated, even nerdy in its complexity. Picture Superman in beast mode, alternating between a dapper Clark Kent sipping a latte while he scrolls through his Instagram feed, and maybe that gives you an idea.

[Music: Thing 3]

The energy of the album starts at ten, and goes to eleven more than a few times, but not without entering some ethereal, fragile spaces.

[Music: Pad]

[George Colligan] I’m George Colligan and I played keyboards on the record.

[Micah Hummel] I’m Micah Hummel and I played drums.

[Doug] George Colligan, the veteran of this trio by at least a few decades, picked two of his students who share an interest in this aesthetic approach, and who were ready for a challenge. There’s a long tradition of a more experienced bandleader hiring young players. The iconic drummer Art Blakey came to mind for George.

[George] Art Blakey always wanted quality musicians, but at a certain point he went for young musicians, just like Betty Carter would go for young musicians. There’s different reasons for that...you can pay them less. But also to have the mentor/mentee relationship.

[Doug] That kind of relationship was important to Micah Hummel.

[Micah] George is basically why I moved here. Musically he’s just very inspiring, and open minded, willing to let me contribute to the conversation on the band stand.

[Doug] There are different reasons for an established older musician to work with younger players. It could include real opportunities for the youngsters to give input, or it could just be about having someone to obey commands. Allowing for an equal exchange of ideas was critical to the formation of this band and this album.

[Music Thing 5]

[George] I want it to be open to interpretation. I don’t like to overthink it or overexplain it. And this ties into the teaching part of it. I would say that I’m teaching by giving an opportunity to these young musicians to find the interpretation by themselves, you know what I mean, rather than by saying this is exactly what you should do.

[George] Here’s the thing generally about this project, is that there is a set component, but I always like to find that balance between written and spontaneity. Even though some of it is more quote unquote groove based, there’s still that spirit of interaction.

[Micah] One of my favorite drummers is Lewis Cole from Knower, and obviously Mark Guiliana and Nate Wood. What I love about them is that they can emulate machines in such a natural way. And I love that, but it can also be very restricting. I feel like this project and this group allows me to do the best of both worlds. Almost exactly like George was saying about pre-planning and spontaneity. I can have an idea of what I want to do, but there’s a lot of flexibility and I don’t have to be tied down.

[Doug] The last tune on the album, Revenge, is a rhythmic tour de force. Micah thought it showed the precision they achieved as a group. He thought...

[Micah] ...it would fall apart if everybody wasn’t on the same page and if there wasn’t that precise element about it.

[Doug] The last tune on the album, Revenge, is a rhythmic tour de force. Micah thought it showed the precision they achieved as a group. He thought...

[Micah] ...it would fall apart if everybody wasn’t on the same page and if there wasn’t that precise element about it.

[Doug] Finding musicians who can perform well in that environment can be a challenge no matter how experienced they are. George Colligan had more to say about Micah Hummel and Enzo Irace. Both young players have great technique, but there’s more to it than that.

[George] It’s about how to play with some maturity, how to develop a sense of taste, how to not play sometimes, when to leave stuff out. And I think Enzo has a lot of that instinctually. When I watch him play I get the same feeling as I do from older guys, they have a thoughtfulness about what they play, it’s not just a million notes.

[Music: Intro to Thing 5]

[George] I think Micah really brought this balance that we were talking about before. A project like this won’t work if it’s all about precision, and it also won’t work it it’s totally organic, so there has to be that balance. Micah has his own grooves. I’m hearing other drummers in town imitate them, so that’s a good sign for Micah, that he’s already become a local icon for certain types of grooves. There was a young guy at PSU and I was like ‘that’s some Micah Hummel stuff you’re playing.’

[Doug] The mentorship between George and Micah has been fruitful, but it almost didn’t happen.

[George] When somebody really good auditions, you remember that. He had a really great audition and we were like ‘we need to get this guy here.’ It was a finance issue and he didn’t end up coming. Then a few years went by and ran into this trumpet player named Noah Simpson, at the Reno Jazz Festival, and Noah was like “I’m from Arizona,” and I said “there was this drummer who auditioned for us a few years ago. What was his name?” and Noah said “Micah Hummel?” and I said “yeah, what happened to him?” And he said “he’s just chillin’, he didn’t end up going to college.” And I was like “get him on the phone.”

[Doug] The record comes out July 20th, 2018. Buy or stream the music at pjce.bandcamp.com. And you can hear this superhuman band play live at the Montavilla Jazz Festival, 2:50 pm, Saturday August 18th. Tickets are available at Montavillajazzfest.com where you can by a full-festival GA pass. You can buy a reserved seat for each set, which comes with festival pass. This festival is a gem of the Portland arts scene, and it’s the best opportunity for a Portland jazz fan to hear what Portland artists do when they have complete artistic freedom. It’s a special experience, and I want you all to be there.

The Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble performs at 5:30. We’ll be playing Watershed Suite, a new multi-movement piece by the acclaimed composer James Miley. Finally, if you love what we do at PJCE and you want to get even closer, become a PJCE Sustainer. You’ll get a discount code for reserved seats at Montavilla Jazz Festival for our set, free tickets and discounts for other PJCE concerts, and exclusive invitations to hang with PJCE artists and more. Become a Sustainer at pjce.org.

Portland Center Stage is presenting “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill,” from May 26 to July 1 at The Armory in Portland’s Pearl District. Use the discount code “PJCE” for $10 off your ticket to any performance of this incredible production.

And, don't miss a special concert featuring Portland-based singer-songwriter Jimmy Herrod with a sextet of PJCE musicians. We’ll be playing a new song by Jimmie, and songs written or made famous by Billie Holiday arranged by Kerry Politzer, Clay Giberson, and Alex Koehler. It’ll be a bit like a live version of this podcast with musical performances, questions and answers with the artists, and more information about one of jazz’s most iconic masters using some of Billie Holiday’s own words from archival audio. Join us to get a deeper experience of “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill” and a deeper appreciation of an American original.

The concert is Sunday, June 24th at Portland Center Stage. There’s a reception at 6 pm in the atrium, and the concert starts at 7 pm in the Ellen Bye Studio. “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill” does not perform that night. More information at pjce.org.

And don’t forget to use the code PJCE for $10 off your tickets.