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!

Kane Mathis in Brikama, Gambia with Malamini Jobarteh, his kora teacher of 15 years!

Kane Mathis has been off in Europe and Africa for much of the fall and so the Kora Band has been on somewhat of a hiatus, but we’re back for a gig this Saturday night in Seattle at a great house concert series in the Burien neighborhood.  If you’re in the area and would like to check it out you can email Lance at llh@lanceandlaurie.net for full info.  These fine people open up their house (which was specially constructed to also serve as a great place for live music) a few times a month for an ongoing series of concerts and we’re excited to be part of it!

We’re also gearing up for a nice year of activity in 2012 with some January concerts in Olympia and Portland (sans Chad unfortunately, who will be off galavanting around Europe again!), and then in Feb. and March in Seattle as we get ready for another west coast tour in April, and possibly another album in the works later in the year.

Time to write some new music!

We have four new compositions for you from Charley Gray, director of Jazz Studies at PSU and an illustrious large ensemble composer, our co-director Gus Slayton, Portland guitarist and composerKyle Williams, and NYC-based Portland native (and former PJCE member) Eric Allen, who will be presenting his own unique take on some Christmas music for us.

Tickets are $12 in advance and $15 day of show.  $10 for students  They’re now on salehere. Save a few bucks and get them in advance!

We’ll be featuring essays by each composer on the PJCE Blog in advance of the event to give you a taste of what they’re up to.  So far Eric and Kyle’s essays are up.  Have a look!

Thanks for your support and we hope to see you Dec. 10 to support some great new, local music.

Herbie Nichols has been coming to prominence of late with the Herbie Nichols Project, run by the jazz composers collective in NYC in the 90′s, as well as with Roswell Rudd’s publication of many of Herbie’s unrecorded compositions.  We’ll be tackling some of them in a relaxed evening at Tony’s, part of my first Wednesday series.  These are really great tunes that deserve to be heard more often, hope to see you there.

This month we have my good friend trumpeter Chad McCullough down from Seattle with one of his own groups.  Chad and I have been playing together in the Kora Band and Tunnel Six for over 2 years and I’m excited to present this great quartet he has put together with some freinds from Belgium, Bram Weijters on piano and Piet Verbist on bass.  They released an album “Imaginary Sketches” that came out last year along with a big tour in Europe.  NowBram and Piet have come over state-side to do some recording and touring including a stop off here on the 2nd.  Their quartet will be rounded out by Portland drummer Jason Palmer.  Great original music and a nice international collaboration.  Here’s a video from last year in Belgium

My trio The Ocular Concern will be playing an opening set.  Featuring Dan Duval on guitar and Stephen Pancerev on drums alongside me on electric piano, we’ve been crafting a unique sound that is both innovative and subtle for a few years, and you probably recall our recent exploits accompanying the 1963 Japanese monster-movie “Gamera vs. Barugon” this summer with a new score I wrote for FILMUSIK.  We’ll play some music from that as well as some new tunes and covers from various places around the world.  Here’s a very dark but nice video from the Crow Bar last summer for a taste.

Details:

Wednesday, November 2, 2011. 7:30 PM
Andrew Oliver Presents…

1st set - The Ocular Concern
(Andrew Oliver, electric piano; Dan Duval, guitar; Stephen Pancerev, drums)

2nd set - Chad McCullough / Bram Weijters Quartet
(Chad McCullough, trumpet (Seattle); Bram Weijters, piano (Antwerp, Belgium); Piet Verbist, bass (Antwerp); Jason Palmer, drums (Portland))
Tony Starlight’s Supper Club and Lounge
3728 NE Sandy Blvd.
Portland, OR
$8

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!

At long last the Portland Jazz Composers’ Ensemble returns with a fundraising concert on September 24.  After a year of organizational restructuring including incorporating as a nonprofit and finally receiving 501 (c) 3 status from the IRS, the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble is back with a season of concerts we’re kicking off with a fundraiser on September 24 at Gallery 135 in the Park Blocks.  The event will feature an octet made up of members of the full ensemble and five new compositions by Andrew Oliver, Gus Slayton, Dan Duval, Kevin Van Geem, and Bill Athens.  PSU Jazz Studies professor Darrell Grant will be speaking, and there will be local food and beverages as well.  We hope you can join us for this special event to kick off a new chapter in our organization and help further the local jazz scene in Portland!

Tickets and full info here.

Essays by the composers are being posted every couple of days at the PJCE blog leading up to the performance.

Bridgetown returns to Duff’s Garage this Saturday for a night of swing.  It’s always a pleasure to play in this converted garage, it has a great down-home vibe that fits the music very well and the dance floor generally ensures a healthy population of swing dancers, who always bring the energy in a serious way!

Kevin Van Geem will be joining us on drums for this one as Scott will be out of town.  I am very excited about this as I sort of dread drumming in public, and am also excited and a bit nervous to try to fill Scott’s shoes in the stride department, but I think it will be a fun time and as raucous as always.  Hope we can pack it out!

FILMUSIK: Gamera vs. Barugon from Galen Huckins on Vimeo.

Here’s the FILMUSIK writeup with all the details.  Pick up your tickets here, this will be a great show for sure!!

—

FILMUSIK joins forces with composer Andrew Oliver to create a new soundtrack for the 1960’s rubber-suit kaiju monster-piece Gamera vs. Barugon. Live voice actors dub the film into english with the original 1966 script and The live ensemble performs the score live at the Hollywood Theatre.

Filmusik: Gamera vs. Barugon
August 26th, 27th
8pm – Hollywood Theatre
Tickets $12/10 Students/seniors

More info at WWW.FILMUSIK.COM
PICK UP TICKETS FOR THE SHOW

Everyone’s favorite incompetent-but-persistent Hero Turtle returns to the Hollywood Theatre in the epic Japanese monster mash Gamera vs. Barugon. After a scientific expedition gone awry, a vicious beast is wreaking havoc on Japan. With its whip-crack tongue, razor-sharp horns and deadly Binaca breath, Barugon is all your childhood nightmares rolled into one badass dinorhino.

Vanquishing Barugon is a tall order, even for a Hero Turtle like Gamera. Luckily, Filmusik has his back. A crew of voice actors, musicians and foley artists provide a live soundtrack to the film, adding new life to every roar and playing up the camp in every straight-from-the-script line of dialogue. Filmusik’s original score, composed by Andrew Oliver and performed in the pit by the Ocular Concern, is guaranteed to get Gamera – and you – all pumped up for the big showdown. Don’t miss the chance to add your cheers and jeers to the soundscape in this dazzling reimagining of a classic film. Gamera can’t do it without you!

ABOUT FILMUSIK: Based out of Portland, Oregon. Filmusik is a collaborative performance group of musicians, composers and actors creating a unique movie experience by performing a new soundtrack for classic films live in the pit.

Whether it’s a vocal chorus wailing away to a spaghetti western gunfight, voice actors dubbing the cartoon characters of Gulliver’s Travels or sound effects (foley) artists smashing crates together for a Japanese monster invasion, seeing professional performers creating sound for the movies live makes for an unforgettable experience.

ANDREW OLIVER is a pianist and composer from Portland, Oregon. He lived in New Orleans from 2002 until 2005, where he studied jazz at Loyola University and performed as both a bandleader and sideman. After evacuating from Hurricane Katrina in the summer of 2005, he returned to Portland.  He has performed throughout the Northwest and Europe with various musicians and groups, and in 2007, as pianist for Devin Phillips and New Orleans Straight Ahead, he was was selected to tour West Africa as a cultural ambassador for the U.S. under the State Department and Jazz at Lincoln Center’s “Rhythm Road: American Music Abroad” program.  He co-directs the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble, a 14-piece group performing and commissioning new music by jazz composers in the region, as well as directing the Kora Band, a Seattle-based ensemble fusing jazz and west African musical elements which has recently won “2010 NW Jazz Album of the Year” from Earshot Jazz for their album “Cascades.”  He is also the recipient of a 2011 ASCAP Young Jazz Composers Award and a 2011 Oregon Arts Commission Fellowship.

GAMERA vs. BARUGON. After a treacherous expedition to retrieve a giant opal, disaster strikes as the opal reveals itself to be an egg which spawns Barugon, demon dog from Hell! Armed with a deadly tongue and cold beams, Barugon wreaks havoc on Japan. Gamera comes to save the day