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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 6, 2011)
music BY BRETT CAMPBELL Open tro In House Tours Restaruant & night club in the histroic Vets building DRINKING GOURD ELEMENTARY SCHOOL LIVE MUSIC (Blues, Rock, R&B & Swing) Ì Grades K-5 K-3 Ì Classes of 15 10 students students Ì Peace WĞĂĐĞĞĚƵĐĂƟ ŽŶ education FULL BAR • VIDEO POKER EVERY TUESDAY: dgschool.org 689-5255 Open Mic with James Cisler EVERY THURSDAY: Mac’s Midtown Blues Jam $3 • 9pm Erik Friedlander Emotional Intersections Oboes of love and a whole lot more E rik Friedlander got his start on New York’s fertile downtown new music scene nearly two decades ago by playing cello in avant-jazz legend John Zorn’s celebrated Masada, and also earned a rep as a top studio vet on releases by the Mountain Goats, Courtney Love, Laurie Anderson, Dar Williams and more, even playing in Broadway shows and leading the fi ne group Topaz. His 14 CD releases cover similarly wide territory. Still, for me, Friedlander’s solo work (including a gorgeous performance in Portland a couple summers back accompanied by images created on family vacations by his father, the great photographer Lee Friedlander, and an intense 2005 Shedd concert of improvised responses to a mad French surrealist poet’s texts) remains his most vital. On Saturday, Jan. 8, Friedlander returns to the Shedd with his latest unaccompanied show: music by Zorn, much of it inspired by his Jewish roots, including klezmer, but also employing propulsive jazz rhythms, classical and postclassical infl uences and more. Friedlander’s mastery of bowing, plucking and chording techniques, and the music’s wide emotional range, from ruminative to melancholy to passionate, should make this performance much richer than the usual solo showcase. Friedlander represents the kind of creative intersection of jazz and classical musicians that’s enriching American music today, and Eugene seems to be a font of these healthy hybrids, with some excellent, boundary-busting young musicians emerging from the UO music school in recent years and sticking around for a while to fi nd their voices before heading off for greater opportunities. A new hothouse to nurture such nascent efforts is aborning this year. According to founder Paul Bodin, the January-May Broadway Avenue House Concert Series will afford UO students, faculty, alums and other Eugene and touring musicians the opportunity to present, demonstrate and discuss their music with local music lovers. The series’ debut concert on Jan. 15 at 911 W. Broadway features UO trumpet professor and Beta Collide founder Brian McWhorter , UO sax prof Steve Owen , Cherry Poppin’ Daddies guitarist Bill Marsh and percussionist Jason Palmer . Speaking of rising youngish Eugene jazz talent, if his explosive 2009 release Evidence is any indication, the excellent saxophonist/composer Joe Manis will soon be better known for his high-powered, updated take on the glorious Rollins/Trane tradition than for his sideman slots in the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies and Thomas Mapfumo’s band. The jazz trio that’ll play at the Granary on Jan. 15 — all UO grads — replaces the standard piano or bass with guitar played by Portland’s Justin Morrell; Corvallis’s Ryan Biesack drums. The next excellent touring jazz show of the year alights at Luckey’s on Jan. 14, when Seattle’s avant-punk-jazz Reptet bring their raucous, high-energy improvisation back to town. Boasting a bustling lineup of trumpets, vocals, saxes, banjo, bass, percussion, tuba, trombone and clarinets, the virtuosic multi-instrumentalists specialize in blowing up the standard staid jazz vibe and rocking the house. The Oregon Mozart Players ’ nearly sold out Jan. 8 concert at the Hult Center’s Soreng Theater features the famous chamber orchestra arrangement of Samuel Barber’s perennial Adagio, George Gershwin’s lovely little “Lullaby” and the suite from Aaron Copland’s opera, The Tender Land, which isn’t performed as much as it should be because the libretto doesn’t match the brilliance of Copland’s music, so this is a chance to hear some relatively rarely played music by America’s greatest composer. The sumptuous melodicism of Virginia composer Walter Ross’s newish Concerto for Oboe d’Amore and String Orchestra sounds a little old fashioned, or postmodern, and stars a very old instrument: the “oboe of love” (which sounds like a disastrous pickup line from the spoof on porn fl icks Peter Sellers should have made), that mellower, huskier voiced old great-aunt of the modern instrument that purred through so many lilting works by J.S. Bach and other 18th century composers, and was sporadically revived by Ravel, Debussy and others. Congrats to the Mozart Players for helping keep American music a living tradition. If you want to hear other ancient sounds and instruments, check out the UO’s Collegium Musicum concert, featuring music by the great Renaissance composers Josquin and Palestrina and early Baroque masters Monteverdi and Frescobaldi, at 5 pm Jan. 13 in the campus’s cozy Collier House. Finally, you can hear one of the region’s best world music bands and support a good cause — the Iraqi Student Project, which educates students who want to rebuild the country our taxpayer dollars devastated — by catching local Middle Eastern ensemble Ala Nar at Cozmic Pizza on Jan. 15. ew WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • BLOGS.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM 2809 Shirley Eugene JANUARY FRIDAY JAN 7 TH JC Rico & Happy Back Bone $5 • 9:00 WED, 19 O & U FEB. O P E JAN. N H S E 9 W e DROP d . , D e BY c . 1 6-8PM 5, 6-8PM TH SATURDAY JAN 8 Etouffe feat. Kelly Thibodeaux $5 • 9:00 FRIDAY JAN 14 TH John Swan & Revelators $5 • 9:00 SATURDAY JAN 15 TH The Cheeseburgers $4 • 9:00 FRIDAY JAN 21 ST Rooster’s Blues Awards with the Broh-Taylor Band SATURDAY JAN 22 ND Robbie Laws $5 • 9:00 FRIDAY JAN 28 TH Peter Giri Alliance Party Band $4 • 9:00 COMPILATION CD SATURDAY JAN 29 TH Bill Shreve & the BOE $4 • 9:00 NOW ON ITUNES & CD BABY http://itun.es/iF39w5 | cdbaby.com/cd/eugeneweekly 1626 Willamette, Eugene • 344-8600 DAWES & JONNY CORNDAWG WEDNESDAY JANUARY 26 JOHN HENRY’S 77 WEST BROADWAY · EUGENE, OR · 6:30PM DOORS · 21 AND OVER TICKETS AT TICKETMASTER LOCATIONS · CHARGE BY PHONE 1-800-745-3000 THE SILENT COMEDY & LIAM GERNER TUESDAY FEBRUARY 15 WOW HALL 291 WEST 8TH AVE · EUGENE, OR · 7:00PM DOORS · ALL AGES TICKETS AT TICKETMASTER LOCATIONS · CHARGE BY PHONE 1-800-745-3000 WEDNESDAY FEB 16 WOW HALL 291 WEST 8TH AVE · EUGENE, OR · 7:00PM DOORS · ALL AGES TICKETS AT TICKETMASTER LOCATIONS · CHARGE BY PHONE 1-800-745-3000 TUESDAY APRIL 12 MCDONALD THEATRE 1010 WILLIAMETTE ST · EUGENE, OR · 6:30PM DOORS · ALL AGES TICKETS AT SAFEWAY/TICKETSWEST CHARGE BY PHONE 1-800-992-TIXX On Sale NEXT WEEK WWW.SQUAREPEGCONCERTS.COM EUGENE WEEKLY JANUARY 6, 2011 21
