By Brett Campbell
The word is out: Jazz is dead. Why, it says so in “La La Land,” one of this year’s Best Picture Oscar nominees. Legendary jazz critic Nat Hentoff died last month, shortly after Portland’s finest jazz club, Jimmy Mak’s, closed its doors for the last time and owner Jimmy Makarounis died. Jazz record sales are tiny compared to hip-hop’s and rock’s, and it’s been decades since the genre occupied the center of popular culture. So long jazz, been good to know ya.
Not so fast. Jazz music and musicians are insinuating themselves into pop music (Kendrick Lamar) and movies (“La La Land,” “Miles Ahead”), and reports of Portland jazz’s demise may be greatly exaggerated. The music still resounds in Portland cafes and clubs, and the BiAmp PDX Jazz Festival, which begins Thursday, Feb. 16, offers one of its strongest lineups ever (see our recommendations).
Rather than a crisis, what Portland jazz is going through now is actually “a hiccup,” says veteran drummer Mel Brown, a Jimmy Mak’s mainstay who’s leading several bands at this year’s festival. He worries that jazz mostly happens in restaurants with no stages rather than dedicated venues like Jimmy Mak’s. But having grown up in Portland playing jazz in Northeast Portland’s legendary Jumptown scene as a teenager, he’s seen these cycles before.
“We had a lot of clubs here, then rock came and everything went away,” he recalls of the days before he went off to study with legendary drummer Philly Joe Jones and tour nationally before returning to Portland in the mid-1970s. “Now it’s trying to come back. We’ve got enough people pushing, but it takes time to really get the whole thing together.”
Jimmy Mak’s closing “does not reflect on the state of jazz in Portland,” says festival director Don Lucoff. He noted that the club closed not because it was faltering financially but because its building was sold and its owner fell ill with terminal cancer before he could complete plans to move the club to a new location. “Jimmy’s numbers, (local jazz radio station) KMHD’s numbers were up, our sales are up. It’s nothing to do with people not being interested in the music.”
“It’s a wakeup call,” Brown says about Jimmy Mak’s closing, “but we’ll get it back.”
The festival shifted its Jimmy Mak’s performances to other venues, and the club’s former managers are working to put together a new incarnation that jazz lovers hope will open before the year’s out.
“These things go in cycles,” says alto saxophone master Steve Wilson, who plays with some of jazz’s biggest stars, like Chick Corea and Maria Schneider, and visits Portland often.
“Clubs open and close, they come and go. I’ve seen this happen just about everywhere, including New York. I don’t think the closing of one or two clubs is a barometer of things in general. In the history of the music and the business, there’s always some proprietor who steps up to the plate and opens some club or nonprofit organization to replace them.”
Meanwhile, Portland jazz is springing up in new places. Lucoff, Brown and others cite new or imminent clubs like The 1905, Club Rialto (in the old Jack London bar) and Solae’s Lounge on Northeast Alberta Street, where Alberta Abbey also welcomes jazz. PDX Jazz regularly stages shows at Southeast Portland’s newish Revolution Hall. Even McMenamins’ Mission Theater, which jettisoned jazz in favor of films a few years ago, is back in the jazz orbit. The venerable Mt. Hood Jazz Festival may be gone, but the Montavilla Jazz Festival recently arrived to fill the summer jazz slot along with the Cathedral Park Jazz Festival, which continues in its 37th year.
Moreover, the city boasts a solid corps of top-notch jazz artists. “When I moved here from New York, I was worried I’d be the biggest fish in a small pond,” recalls jazz guitarist Ryan Meagher. “I’m so glad I was wrong. The talent pool of musicians here is almost comically deep.”
Wilson, who teaches at City College of New York and The Juilliard School and numbers several Portlanders among his top students, says Portland’s jazz future looks strong. “The foundation is there. Portland State has a very good program with (pianists and composers) George Colligan and Darrell Grant and teachers like Thara Memory and Alan Jones. I know there’s some great musicians there. Portland seems to be very conducive to creative music and creative activity.”
“For a city its size, there is no city in America that has as vibrant a jazz scene as Portland,” says Lucoff, who splits time among Denver, Philadelphia, Portland, New York and Los Angeles. “We have a three-legged stool: an active jazz festival, presenting organization, the top-rated jazz radio station. We had the national club here, and I firmly believe we’re going to have a new Jimmy Mak’s within 12 months.”
Jimmy Mak’s closing is “more symbolic of the current state of affairs than actually representational,” says Meagher, who helps lead Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble and Montavilla Jazz Fest, edits Jazz Society of Oregon’s JazzScene monthly magazine and is jazz director at Metropolitan Youth Symphony.
“Jimmy Mak’s wasn’t where the scene was thriving,” as it primarily booked weekly performances by house bands like Brown’s and the occasional touring band. “We had to find our own places to play anyway because Jimmy’s wasn’t available.” Those included the Creative Music Guild’s series at the Northeast Portland record store-bar Turn Turn Turn! and other venues like downtown Portland’s The Old Church.
Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble, which is a community partner of the festival, will book five or six shows this year featuring 21st-century music, rather than the venerable artists and mid-20th century standards typically heard at Jimmy Mak’s. “We’re all about jazz composition,” Meagher says. “We want to get younger generations involved.”
“We’re not retreating,” declares Lucoff. “We’re in a transition time. It’s really just a matter of logistics.”
Brown credits the jazz festival with stoking interest in jazz by bringing national and local performers. “Thanks to Don Lucoff, Portland is getting exposed to top people we don’t have locally,” Brown says. “It’s like a smorgasbord: People are getting a chance to see something and look into it and then they want to go see more of it. “
–Brett Campbell, for The Oregonian/OregonLive
***
PDX Jazz Festival
When: Feb. 16-25
Where: Various locations, including Newmark and Winningstad theatres, 1111 S.W. Broadway; The 1905, 830 N. Shaver St.; Classic Pianos, 3003 S.E. Milwaukie Ave.; Revolution Hall, 1300 S.E. Stark St.; Fremont Theater, 2393 N.E. Fremont St.; Al’s Den, 303 S.W. 12th Ave.; The Old Church, 1422 S.W. 11th Ave.; and more.
Tickets: Tickets start at $20 for individual concerts (no festival passes); pdxjazz.com or 503-228-5299
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
