Podcasts about montavilla jazz festival

Sorry that there hasn't been a new episode of Coffeshop Conversations at Artichoke Music for a few weeks. I've been looking at the four walls of a hospital room and then recovery at home, but most of that is behind me and here we go again, just in time for this year's Montavilla Jazz Festival. With me is guitarist, composer, teacher and PJCE Records honcho Ryan Meagher, no stranger to this podcast. He'll be performing at the festival but he's much more than that these days. The festival runs from Friday, August 30 to Sunday, September 1. This is what our conversation sounded like.

Ryan Meagher is in the Artichoke Café with me today. He is a very busy man. Besides his career as guitarist and composer, he is also the Artistic Director of the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble where he also runs their PJCE label. He also programs the Montavilla Jazz Festival, does a lot of teaching and I will run out of intro time if I continued to list what else he does. He's here to talk about his latest project, a combination of his music and Tina Granzo's art called AftEarth. It was written and recorded during the Covid lockdown. It's one of the most unusual, compelling documents of that time. And something you should hear. Let's talk with Ryan Meagher.

Just a few more weeks until we're back in the Artichoke Music Café. The podcast which goes up on August 19 with Reggie Houston, fresh from New Orleans will mark our return home to Artichoke. The 19th also marks the start of the three day Montavilla Jazz Festival, and as we always do, joining me electronically to talk about the full lineup is one of its curators, specifically Program Director, guitarist/composer Ryan Meagher. Ryan and I are also big baseball fans but we'll save that until I shut off the recorder. Montavilla exists on its own but is greatly influenced in subjects and aims of the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble. Therefore, here's the non-baseball part of my conversation with Ryan Meagher.

Composer/guitarist Ryan Meagher is in the Artichoke Café with me today at yet another turning point in the long sad saga of trying to make and listen to music during the pandemic. He's one of the folks who plan and execute the Montavilla Jazz Festival around this time every year. OMN is happy to be a sponsor. It's the festival home for what we used to call “avant-garde” music. I don't know if anyone has settled on a new name for it but you know what I mean. This year it's Friday, August 20 to 22nd. Ryan will tell us about it, but since we do these a week or so in advance and since covid protocols have changed, please check with their website to find out if there are any changes. https://montavillajazz.org/ Meanwhile, I delayed turning on the recorder until we had talked baseball for a while, which we always do.

It's lovely to be joined in the Artichoke Café today by singer, guitarist, composer and all-around great person, Mary Flower. She'll be a part of a celebration here at Artichoke they're calling Summerfest, Thursday through Sunday, August 26th through 29th with a full lineup of not only your Artichoke favorites but some folks you'd never expect like Coffeeshop Conversations favorites Darkswoon. Mary has a new tune, written during the pandemic which she will perform for us at the end of our conversation. We'll also find out how she's handling emerging again. Next week Ryan Meagher will be in the Café and tell us about how he and his compatriots have put together an exciting 2021 version of the Montavilla Jazz Festival. But now let's turn our attention to Mary Flower.

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!

We're back in the café at Artichoke Music which you can find at 2007 SE Powell Boulevard, for another OMN Coffeeshop Conversation. We’ve got two more video episodes coming up. We’re shooting them soon. But today, Ezra Weiss is here, he’s a Jazz pianist and composer who’s latest album. “We Limit Not the Truth of God” apparently blew everyone away when his big band performed it live at the Montavilla Jazz Festival. It’s an attempt to deal with the babies in cages life we lead every day, as many musicians are trying to deal with these days. But it didn’t start out that way. Let’s meet Ezra Weiss

Ryan Meagher, is a Portland, Oregon based Jazz musician, and organizer of the Montavilla Jazz Festival. I chatted with Ryan about how he got turned on to jazz, how is creativity has informed his teaching styles, and his role in organizing the Montavilla Jazz festival and other community involvement. To keep with Ryan Meagher, the Montavilla Jazz Festival, and the Dan Cable Presents Podcast, please check out the links below. Track Listing: Ryan Meagher - "First Place" Charlie Porter - "New Beginnings" Website: www.ryanmeagher.com www.montavillajazzfest.com www.charlieportermusic.com www.dancablepresents.com Instagram: @ryanmeaghermusic @hotlipsporter @montavillajazzfest @dancablepresents

Neil Mattson is an organize of the Montavilla Jazz Festival and owner of Montavilla Guitar Stuido. I chatted with Neil about his musical upbringing, how he got into jazz, opening his music studio, and we also discussed his role in organizing the Montavilla Jazz Festival. This year's festival is August 17th and 18th. To keep up with Neil, the festival, and Dan Cable Presents, please check out the links below. Track Listing: Mel Brown - "Spooky" Kerry Politzer - "If You Knew" Website: https://montavillajazzfest.com/ https://montavillaguitarstudio.com www.dancablepresents.com Instagram: @montavillajazzfest @mgsguitar @neilmattson @dancablepresents

We're back at the Café in Artichoke Music, 2007 SE Powell Boulevard for another OMN Coffeeshop Conversation…and they actually give us coffee, too. We’ve got some exciting stuff planned for you over the next few months, but it’s still very hush hush sweet Charlotte. With me today is Ryan Meagher, for those of you reading this, it’s pronounced “Marr.” You know him as a guitarist and composer and also as Artistic Director of the Montavilla Jazz Festival, coming up on Saturday and Sunday, August 17 and 18 at Portland Metro Arts. It’s a special festival. No other like it. It’s a part of Portland Jazz Composers ensemble and that means new music, some of which is composed expressly for the festival. Ryan is going to tell us about all of the performers. Really.

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.

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. Episode Transcript [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.

Back at World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th & Glisan in the world famous Cupping Room after a week in the OMN booth at the Waterfront Blues Festival. I’ve got composer/guitarist Ryan Meagher in here with me, continuing something that I find fascinating, that’s when we bring in the curator of one of Portland’s music festivals and have them talk about the performers they’ve booked into the festival. The Montavilla Jazz Festival returns this year on Saturday and Sunday August 18 and 19. It’s the most adventurous of all the festivals. Ryan will also be performing. We’ll hear at tune from his latest album Evil Twin at the end of our conversation. The festival is, if not a part of, at least very closely aligned with the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble organization which is very active in bringing a special kind of Jazz to us on a regular basis. Ryan’s been in the coffeshop before, and he’s always welcome.

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.

This episode is a collection of interviews I did at the 2017 Montavilla Jazz Festival in Portland, Oregon, mostly August 20th. I talked to artists, festival leadership, and a few other members of the jazz community who helped make the event happen. And from what I heard, both in terms of the music and what people had to say about the festival, the Montavilla Jazz Festival is most definitely here to stay, and it has become an indispensable part of Portland’s jazz scene.

Jasnam Daya Singh, a pianist and composer originally from Brazil, has composed a new piece for the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble called “Ektah: The Unity Project.” When Jasnam begins a new piece of music, he begins not with a melody in mind, but with a word. This helps to give the piece a purpose, and help him focus his attention on that purpose. In this case, the word was "unity." We had a conversation about the new piece, and about how inspiration, respect, and gratitude combine with hard work in the process of writing music. The Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble performs Jasnam Daya Singh’s “Ektah: The Unity Project” with the composer on piano 7 pm, August 16th at Roaring Rapids in Eugene, OR, and 4:20 pm August 19th at the Montavilla Jazz Festival in Portland, OR. All the details are available at our website: pjce.org.

The 4th annual Montavilla Jazz Festival is August 19th and 20th, 2017. Get all the information at montavillajazzfest.com. This year’s festival features headliner Essiet Essiet with Sylvia Cuenca, the Rich Halley Five with Vinny Golia, the Blue Cranes, the David Friesen Quartet, and us, the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble playing new music by Jasnam Daya Singh. I had my headphones and my microphone out at last year’s festival, talking to pretty much everyone: artists, volunteers, listeners, and sponsors. These are some of my favorite interviews from last year, to get you excited for what’s coming up this year. Don’t miss this festival, it’s the jazz event of the summer.

August 9, 2016 Welcome back to World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th and Glisan for another OMN Coffeeshop Conversation. Today composer/pianist/drummer George Colligan is here. He’s headlining the Third Annual Montavilla Jazz Festival the weekend of August 20 and 21…that’s a Saturday and Sunday. OMN is a media sponsor once again. George blew into town…well he moved here, but it felt like that…a few years ago and suddenly you couldn’t go to anyplace featuring Jazz and not see him. He tours internationally with Jack DeJohnette among others. He teaches and maintains an extremely busy schedule here and everywhere. He has two vastly different programs at the Montavilla Jazz Festival, ending the show both nights.

January 22, 2016 In the coffeeshop with me today is guitarist, composer…and a lot more…Ryan Meagher. The coffeeshop, as usual is World Cup Coffee and Tea at Northwest 18th and Glisan in Portland. Ryan has just gotten back from New York and I’ll be asking about what he did there. He’s working on a new album, he’s one of the leaders of the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble as well as its label PJCE Records, he’s one of the founders of the Montavilla Jazz Festival and he recently was named Editor of the Jazz Society of Oregon’s JazzScene Magazine. Although, over the years, our conversations always turn to baseball (he’s a Giants fan), I’m going to try to keep this one on music. I don’t think I’ll be completely successful but I’ll try. He’s been in Portland just a few years, but he has truly made his mark since he arrived and it’s safe to say he’s a major player these days.

George Colligan has composed a suite of new music for the PJCE. It's called "Fathers and Sons" and it's about family—George's answer to the question "how does one person go into another person?" Hear the new piece at the Montavilla Jazz Festival, Aug 20th in Portland, OR.

What kind of crazy does it take to launch a new jazz festival? Beyond Category host and producer Douglas Detrick interviewed the Montavilla Jazz Festival's Programming Director Ryan Meagher before the festival, and then interviewed musicians, staff, volunteers, and sponsors during the festival to produce this recap of this unique festival.

Darrell Grant, a skilled and accomplished composer, is premiering a new band at the Montavilla Jazz Festival that's playing his arrangements of pop tunes from the likes of Adele, Pharrell Williams, and Lorde. Why? "The idea is to create a vibration, wherein there is the opportunity for people to realize themselves."