There’s a lot to look forward to this year.  My ongoing First Wednesday series at Tony Starlight’s will continue, this month (1/11) we’ll be introducing a new trumpeter, Tom Barber, who recently moved to town from NYC.  The series will continue with various guests and ensembles throughout the year.

The Kora Band is back in action, starting with a quartet gig (no trumpet) at Traditions in Olympia next saturday and an appearance of my and Kane’s duo at the Blue Monk series next Sunday.  The full band will be playing shows in Seattle and Portland throughout the year and is working on an April west coast tour and (hopefully) new album!

The Portland Jazz Composers’ Ensemble is also chugging along with our next concert during the PDX Jazz Festival Feb. 23 at Gallery 135 in the Pearl. We’ll have new music by Dan Duval, Reed Wallsmith, Joe Cunningham, and Justin Morrell and special guests Paul Brainard on pedal steel and Mike Horsfall on vibes.  We’ll continue after that with a March octet performance and the full band again in May!

Pete Krebs, guitarist extraordinare, and I are starting a new trio tentatively called the Upright Piano Trio, along with Keith Brush on bass, playing some of the Nat King Cole and Oscar Peterson drummerless trio repertoire, as well as other old forgotten gems and new originals.  We’ll be debuting that band Jan. 19 at the Camellia Lounge and performing throughout the year at various venues while also trying to encourage Portland venues to acquire upright pianos.

The Ocular Concern continues under the radar, we’ll be accompanying Haley Horsfall next Wednesday at the White Eagle Unfiltered Showcase and will continue to present slightly abstruse but hopefully intriguing original music and world folk covers.  Wow, what a sentence!

Tunnel Six will be touring again in June, we’ll be in Alberta, BC, Washington, and Oregon and will be recording a live album during that tour!

OK more to come.  Onward and upward and Happy New Year!

For October I am digging back into the vaults of West Coast Jazz of the 50′s and featuring music written by and associated with the pianist Russ Freeman and drummer Shelly Manne.

We’ll be performing some music from interesting albums Shelly Manne led with duos and trios (one with him and Russ Freeman and another with him, Shorty Rogers, and Jimmy Giuffre (no bass or piano!), some Russ Freeman trio numbers, and some pieces drawn from the repertoire of Shelly Manne and his men, a swingin’ quintet that Manne led throughout the 50′s and 60′s.

We have a great lineup for this one featuring Eric Gruber on bass and Tim DuRoche on drums and David Evans and Paul Mazzio rounding out the horn section.  Hope you can check it out Oct. 5 at Tony’s!

See you all soon!

Welcome to my new and improved site!  I am consolidating some of my web activities all in one place.  My blog, which heretofore has been at http://andrewoliver.wordpress.com will be moved here, which I know is annoying, but it will only happen once!  I have imported all the old posts from that site below.

You can find lots of information in the various pages here, and I will be updating this blog a few times a week, as well as periodically posting new pictures, video, and audio for listening and/or download.  Right now there are 4 brand-new studio tracks from the Kora Band, a gig from this year’s PDX Pop Now! Festival, and a new recording with the High Mountain Quartet up on the Audio page, have a listen!

I’ve updated my blogroll and links section, on the right, so be sure to check out some new friends near and far from that list.  I’ve also joined Twitter in the interim, you can find me at twitter.com/andrewjoliver

Also coming up are blog posts on some of my early jazz heroes as well as some more thoughts on the pros and cons of postmodern musical genre-bending, so stay tuned, and thanks for your patience!