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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 16, 2007)
BY BRETT CAMPBELL Jazz, Present and Future Tense Veteran pianist Joanne Brackeen and younger players jazz up the summer E marv ellis marv e SPAWNED IN THE GREAT NORTH WEST, COMES A NEW FRESH HIP HOP SOUND, PERHAPS EVEN A NEW GENRE OF MUSIC MARV ELLIS AND HIS IMAGINARY FRIENDS . BUILT FOR THE FUTURE, THE MUSIC IS DRIVEN BY IT'S UNIQUE SOUNDS, SMOOTH LYRICS, AND WORLD BRIDGING CHARACTER. A POSITIVE CONSCIOUS EMCEE, MARV ELLIS HAS PROGRESSED THROUGH TIME TO BECOME A SEASONED POWERFUL PERFORMER. FROM RAPPING AND SINGING ALL ORIGINAL SELF-WRITTEN MUSIC, TO EXHIBITING INCREDIBLE CROWD CONTROL, HIS SKILLS HAVE BROADENED TO A NEW LEVEL OF ENTERTAINMENT. COMING OFF THE RELEASE HIS SEVENTH ALBUM, THIS TIME HIS SECOND SOLO RELEASE "UNDERWATER NOT UNDERGROUND," HE HAS TAKEN A PERSONAL OATH TO MAKE HIS MUSIC HUMAN, TIMELESS, AND AUTHENTIC, WHILE MAINTAINING HIS INTEGRITY AS AN ARTIST. MARV ELLIS AND HIS IMAGINARY FRIENDS PERFORM FRIDAY AUGUST 17 TH . CHECK EUGENE WEEKLY’S NIGHTLIFE PAGE AND HTTP://WWW.MYSPACE.COM/MARVELLIS FOR DETAILS. WWW.PABSTBLUERIBBON.COM © 2007 Pabst Brewing Company 32 AUGUST 16, 2007 ven if the name isn’t immediate- ly familiar, you can usually tell a great jazz artist by the compa- ny she keeps. So you know that anyone who’s been chosen to perform or record with legends like Joe Henderson, Stan Getz, Art Blakey and many other jazz lumi- naries has got the chops, improvisational skill and sense of style to make the finest musi- cians want to play with her. Since gaining attention as the only woman to play in Blakey’s exalted musical spawning ground, the Jazz Messengers, Joanne Brackeen has recorded more than two dozen albums as a leader, winning acclaim for her distinctive, bustling, often eruptive style on both standards and her own supple originals, which have been covered by jazzers from Getz to Branford Marsalis. The 69-year-old California native has played every major jazz fest, garnered NEA awards and performed with most of the leading jazzers of the last few generations while teaching at Boston’s prestigious Berklee School and raising a family. Never reluctant to explore new styles over her long career, Brackeen’s recent turn toward lyricism hasn’t sacrificed her trademark urgency — she does- n’t sound like a grandma — nor has her unquestioned virtuosity come at the expense of swing. Brackeen’s Aug. 17 solo concert at United Lutheran Church (22nd & Washington) is a late summer surprise and one of Eugene’s major jazz events of the year. Even with such stars flashing through, Eugene’s homegrown jazz scene is certainly worth exploring, and downtown’s Jazz Station is a great place to start. On Aug. 21- 22, Eugene’s Douglas Detrick Quintet opens for the young Brooklyn jazz collective In the Avenues . The DDQ (composer Detrick on trumpet; Hashem Assadullahi, alto and tenor saxophones; Justin Morell, guitar; Josh Hakanson, drums; Josh Tower, bass) plays straightahead, engaging contem- porary originals with obvious echoes of Wayne Shorter and other modernist masters. On the 21st at 6 pm, the group will also lead a free pre-show clinic for high school and middle school students at the Jazz Station. In the Avenues’ members met at the New School in Manhattan; the quartet (sax, drums, guitar, bass) favors probing, mid-tempo rhythmically adventurous originals. Such strong young bands show that jazz’s future is in secure hands. One source of jazz’s recent vitality is the rock/funk influence apparent in jazz-jam bands like Medeski, Martin & Wood. Another new Eugene band, Basin and Range , who play a free show at Cozmic Pizza on Aug. 16 along with the Freetones , partakes of that danceable style. With Phil Allen’s backbeat- heavy trap set, Xander Kahn’s sparkling key- boards, Mark Macomber’s raucous alto sax, Joanne Brackeen Allan McKinley’s funkish bass and, most unusually, Linh Renken’s violin, the band cre- ates an upbeat sound as appealing to rockers as jazz listeners. Another young Eugenean returns home from her studies at the Berklee school. Locals will remember Lisa Forkish from the acclaimed UO women’s a capella group Divisi, the Oregon Bach Festival’s Youth Choral Academy and musical theater produc- tions. You can hear how her piano and song- writing studies are going at her show at Cozmic Pizza on Aug. 23. Finally, on Aug. 19, Cozmic Pizza hosts one of the more inter- esting fusion groups to come to town of late: Corvallis’s Ordinance adds contemporary world beat influences, including didgeridoo and djembe drum, to the fiddle, bagpipes and guitars of Galician Celtic music. And since I’ve got a little room left over ... in a letter to the editor last week, John E. Heintz correctly questioned my last column’s characterization of the Shedd as Eugene’s “most important” music institution. I didn't mean to slight the admirable UO music school, which hosts the most diverse and, yes, important array of concerts in Oregon; it's cer- tainly dominated this column's coverage over the years, and more power to ’em. What I'm really trying to do is noodge the city's other music organizations to aspire to the kind of innovative and thoughtful programming that the Shedd and Oregon Festival of American Music have demonstrated over the years. Not that any institution here is perfect; all of them, including the Shedd, should be devoting more resources to the commissioning and perform- ance of contemporary works by American and particularly Oregonian and Northwest com- posers, for example. But the people who run the Shedd really care about American music, history and education, and their dedication inspires the programming. They don't conde- scend to audiences; they're not afraid to break the mold or take chances. Certainly the Shedd enjoys many advantages, like ownership of its venue, but in an era in which conservative pro- gramming decisions are increasingly made on the basis of lowest common denominators, focus groups and timidity, the idiosyncratic passion that fuels the Shedd's shows has pro- duced a tremendous and unique contribution to American music that Eugene and Oregon can be proud of. The city's other arts institu- tions can benefit from its example. ew
