Ken Mastrogiovanni

Idit Shner: Live at the Jazz Station

by Jack Bowers
March 17, 2021

Alto saxophonist Idit Shner is a professor of saxophone and jazz studies at the University of Oregon. On Live at the Jazz Station, she offers her students (and others) a master class in how to translate academic theory into performance art—and she does it live, without a net, at Portland's Jazz Station. The album's opening track, the Jerome Kern standard “Yesterdays," is more exploratory than illustrative, with Shner's alto guardedly encircling its strong melodic line while pianist ...