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Gordon Lee: How Can It Be?
by Jack Bowers
Oregon-based pianist Gordon Lee leads a trim quartet through its paces on his seventh album, How Can It Be?, written for the most part during the Covid pandemic and recorded shortly afterward, in October 2022. Before recording, Lee had worked often with tenor saxophonist Renato Caranto and bassist Dennis Caiazza. Drummer Gary Hobbs, “imported" from Washington state to replace the late Carlton Jackson, to whom the album is dedicated, proves a splendid complement to the group.
read moreGordon Lee: How Can It Be?
by Dan McClenaghan
For a couple of years the Covid virus did its damnedest to shut the music down, especially the experience of live shows. During that downtime, pianist, composer & bandleader Gordon Lee put his idled hands to work practicing and composing new music. At his wife's urging, he also began a series of front porch concerts, casual shows for his neighbors and anybody else who happened to wander by. These quartet sessions were the impetus for Lee's How Can It Be? ...
read morePortland Jazz Composers Ensemble: From Maxville to Vanport
by Jack Bowers
From Maxville to Vanport is music with a purpose, saluting the courage and resilience of black Americans who helped build those cities in the '20s and '40s in the face of unrelenting prejudice and hostility and in so doing helped make the state of Oregon what it is today. The music is by Ezra Weiss, the lyrics by poet S. Renee Mitchell, the performance by the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble featuring vocalist Marilyn Keller. As a part of the score ...
read moreKerry Politzer: Below the Surface
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Kerry Politzer's relocation to Portland, Oregon seems to have given her music a boost. Always a fine mainstream artist, whether working the trio or quartet modes on Blue in Blue (Piloo Records, 2010) or Labyrinth (Palisonic Records, 2005), now her first “Portland disc," Below the Surface, finds her in a common quintet setting--trumpet/saxophone and rhythm section--making uncommonly modern sounds. Politzer has crafted a sound that goes much more into the groove than her previous outings did. The ...
read moreThe Ocular Concern: Sister Cities
by Glenn Astarita
Sister Cities is entrancingly concocted by this Portland, OR. band led by keyboardist Andrew Oliver and guitarist Dan Duval. The primary focal point is the five-part “Sister Cities Suite," abetted by a three-piece strings section, where the musicians frame the inspiring factors of a globalized 21st century, somehow affiliated with, or corresponding to the names of Portland's sister cities on a worldwide basis. Regardless, the album hovers very close to masterpiece-like proportions. There is no filler material as the program ...
read moreKin Trio: Breathe
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
The Kin Trio--saxophonist Sunjae Lee, bassist Andre St. James, drummer Tim DuRoche--call what they do “minimalist bebop." An apparent oxymoron, given that bebop has such maximalist tendencies (exhibit A is trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie's dizzying “Bebop"). They don't mean to be taken so literally, of course. The Kin-men have ably absorbed the sparer offshoots of the bebop impulse--like alto saxophonist Paul Desmond and baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, swinging in an understated way in a similarly piano-less setting on ...
read moreKerry Politzer: You Took Me
by Virginia A. Schaefer
Following her three releases as a jazz pianist who composes much of her material, Kerry Politzer steps out as a singer-songwriter with You Took Me In. As well as performing all the vocals, she plays piano with the band, which consists entirely of jazz musicians. Although the turn from jazz piano to pop-oriented song may seem surprising, Politzer has actually been active as a singer-songwriter for several years, and has received awards in songwriting competitions. On the ...
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