You came out in droves to help sell out seven of eight concerts of the 2010 Alaska Airlines/Horizon Air Portland Jazz Festival presented by US Bank. Thank you for showing the world that jazz is very much alive in Portland. Read below for the PDX Jazz story of the festival or visit the Oregonian and [...]
While downtown, take a moment to view the beautiful window displays at the Downtown Macy’s across from Pioneer Square, featuring an interpretation of this year’s festival by talented Macy’s artists. As well, you, a Portland Jazz Festival guest can receive a store discount for limited time.
Here’s the promotion:
From Feb 21 through March 7 bring your [...]
Henry Lowther (trumpet/flugelhorn), Jim Mullen (guitar), Dave Green (bass) and Stu Butterfield (drums) constitute the 'Great Wee Band' featured on this album of standards and modern jazz classics, and the name (coined by Mullen after one of their gigs) neatly sums up their no-frills, unpretentious but consistently musicianly approach. 
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Centred on guitarist/composer Terje Rypdal's small group – completed by trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg, Hammond player Stâle Storløkken, drummer Paolo Vinaccia – but also drawing on the impressive power and subtlety of the Bergen Big Band, Crime Scene was recorded live at Bergen's Natjazz Festival in May 2009. 
Written by Tommy Smith in 1999, with Joe Lovano in mind (and performed by the great US saxophonist, with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, during a weekend of concerts in Scotland in February 2000), Torah is a five-part suite inspired by the Pentateuch, a portion of the Bible that informs the foundation myths of all three major monotheistic world religions. 
Aptly described as a 'power trio that knows its jazz roots and takes flight from there', the Raphaël Imbert Trio (in which the French saxophonist is joined by a NY-based rhythm section: bassist Joe Martin and drummer Gerald Cleaver) is the result of a trip Imbert made to New York in 2003/04 for the purpose of studying 'spiritual influences on living and past jazzmen'. 
The Dave Stapleton Quintet – completed by saxophonist Ben Waghorn, trumpeter Jonny Bruce, bassist Paula Gardiner and drummer Elliot Bennett – have built up quite a following over the past few years, both via their sparkily accessible but considered live performances (a number of these at the Vortex) and their recordings, of which this is the third. 
Kenny Wheeler celebrated his eightieth birthday on 14 January last, and he was a founder member of both the 'old' and the 'new' LJO, so a concentration on his compositions for this, the latest of the orchestra's monthly Vortex sessions (recorded, as is customary, by Dill Katz), was entirely apposite.
Manu Katché will be familiar to jazz-oriented listeners both for his own previous two ECM albums and for his work with Jan Garbarek, but he is celebrated in the wider musical world for his tasteful drumming with the likes of Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman, Joni Mitchell and Sting.
Admirers of the progressive rock band Moraine (their MoonJune CD manifest deNsity is reviewed elsewhere on the site) will already be familiar both with the guitarist most prominently featured in the Seattle-based band Iron Kim Style, Dennis Rea, and with the group's drummer, Jay Jaskot. 
Asked in 2005 to contribute to a celebration of Charlie Parker's life at Copenhagen's Jazz House, Django Bates came up with the arrangements of what he terms 'compositions I most associated with Parker' that are included on this album. Bates has infused said pieces with all his own most celebrated characteristics, chief among them musical wit, extraordinary imagination and impish irreverence...
Howard Riley has been making solo piano albums since 1972, and – as he points out on the sleeve of The Monk & Ellington Sessions – these two great American composers have always inspired him in this endeavour courtesy of their 'affirmation of the freedom of individual thought'. 
Pianist Stefano Battaglia is something of an old hand at the percussion–piano freely improvising duo, having collaborated in the early 1990s with Tony Oxley and Pierre Favre, and with his current partner, fellow Italian Michele Rabbia, on an earlier ECM release, Re: Pasolini. On these eleven pieces, which range from deft interpretations of prearranged material (the musical prayer 'Antifona Libera', the wisps of melody that inform the title-track) through Maghrebi-influenced improvisations ('Cantar del Alma', 'Sundance in Balkh')...