Eddie Bond makes the unheard sounds of the bridges of Portland audible in his new composition for the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble's Oregonophony concerts April 13th at Willamette University in Salem, and April 15th at the Fremont Theatre in Portland.

Beyond Category - Episode 20 - Eddie Bond

Andrew Oliver, co-founder of the PJCE, lives in London now, but back in 2008 he and a group of ambitious graduates of Portland State University staged the first concert in the group's history. Oliver didn't know what he was getting himself into, but we're glad he did. &nbsp; [Andrew] I was stupid enough to make a 501(c)3 without having any idea of what I was getting into… [Doug] Welcome to Beyond Category, from the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble. I’m Douglas Detrick. This season, we’re celebrating a big milestone: the PJCE is turning ten. Our first concert, in January of 2008, was a grand experiment. Co-founders Andrew Oliver and Gus Slayton wanted to produce a concert of new music for their own large jazz ensemble. They were passionate about the project, but they had no idea if anyone else would care. Fortunately for all of us, it turned people did care, a lot of them. The energy from that night powered the organization through its tenuous early days, and it’s still feeding us today. [music] Before the organization incorporated as a 501c3, the PJCE was just a group of friends, mostly recent graduates and members of the big band at Portland State University. They ended the school year with a disappointment that pushed them to take action. I talked with Andrew Oliver, co-founder of the PJCE, from Portland while he recorded his answers in London. [Andrew] It had to do with this big band festival in Notre Dame. We didn’t get marked that highly, because we didn’t play like a traditional big band. It was interactive big band playing...improvising, the rhythm section was really active, and the judges were like “well that was very traditional, the rhythm section didn’t support the horns very well” and blah blah blah. And Charley was kind of offended because that was his total aesthetic and he’d been working us all year to achieve that sound. [Doug] He’s talking about Charley Gray, the director of the PSU big band. [Andrew] There was a bit of momentum after that. We got back, and it was me and gus, and Kevin Van Geem and Kyle Williams, and we said we have this stuff to play, so why don’t we get together at the Union sometime, since that was the only big room we had access to, and play this stuff, you know. So, that happened on Canada Day… I remember it was on Canada Day because that’s the password of all the… [Doug] I’m going to jump in here and confirm that yes, all of the passwords for the organization’s online accounts were canadaday with some number after it—canadaday1, canadaday2008 with a capital C… And yes, we’ve changed all of our passwords since then. [Andrew] So, first of July, ok. That happened in July, the next month after graduation. [Douglas] The idea turned into a rehearsal. [Andrew] We just played the tunes for fun, and that was basically it. We didn’t have any other ideas. But by the autumn we had that idea that we’d do this concert. So I think we had very many rehearsals, and then I got excited as usual, and I thought “let’s do this concert!” [Andrew] The first concert was my band and the PJCE. We had a mix of pieces, by Gus, and me, and Eric Allen, and stuff that we had written for the PSU big band that we repurposed. And then we had some other pieces. Matt Wiers wrote a piece, and John Nastos wrote a piece. [Andrew] KMHD was very loose in those days. So you could just go in and talk. I think it was Lynn’s show, and we didn’t have any time restrictions so we just kind of went and hung out for the whole show. We were just chatting about it for an hour, between all the songs. It was unbelievable. So many people came! People came from the Oregon Coast because they heard us on there, I remember. There was some sort of incredible momentum. We had no expectations, but the place was totally packed. It just seemed at the time that all of these people showed up out of the woodwork. Whether or not the music lived up to it at the time I have no idea. I don’t think...

Andrew Oliver

Edna Vazquez joins the PJCE’s 12-piece jazz ensemble February 15th at the Old Church in Portland, February 16 at Mt Hood Community College in Gresham, and February 17th at the Columbia Center for the Arts in Hood River. If you get your ticket before they all sell out, you’ll hear the incredible passion she brings to every performance. Her energy is unforgettable, and even if you don’t speak Spanish, you’ll understand every word.

Edna Vazquez

The Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble’s Grasshoppers Young Composers Program is now in its third year with six new students. Hear new music by these young artists  March 25th, 2018 at The 1905 from 7 to 8 pm. An open composer’s jam session follows, and there’s no cover charge. Grasshoppers 2018 was sponsored by Vino Veritas wine bar in the Montavilla neighborhood, and the Lynne Detrick Memorial Fund.

Grasshoppers 2018

Portland Center Stage is presenting “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill,” from May 26 to July 1 at The Armory in Portland’s Pearl District. Use the discount code “PJCE” for $10 off your ticket to any performance of this incredible production. And, don't miss a special concert featuring Portland-based singer-songwriter Jimmy Herrod with a sextet of PJCE musicians. We’ll be playing a new song by Jimmie, and songs written or made famous by Billie Holiday arranged by Kerry Politzer, Clay Giberson, and Alex Koehler. It’ll be a bit like a live version of this podcast with musical performances, questions and answers with the artists, and more information about one of jazz’s most iconic masters using some of Billie Holiday’s own words from archival audio. Join us to get a deeper experience of “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill” and a deeper appreciation of an American original. The concert is Sunday, June 24th at Portland Center Stage. There’s a reception at 6 pm in the atrium, and the concert starts at 7 pm in the Ellen Bye Studio. “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill” does not perform that night. More information at pjce.org. And don’t forget to use the code PJCE for $10 off your tickets.

Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill

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 &nbsp;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...

James Miley's "Watershed Suite"

Beyond Category tells the stories behind the music of the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble, its record label PJCE Records, and members from all corners of the Portland Jazz Scene.

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