Festival review | Revived PDX Jazz fest full of life on opening weekend

Festival Review |

PORTLAND, Ore. — Bill Royston would be the first to admit it was serendipity, but the fact that the Portland Jazz Festival is celebrating the legacy of Blue Note Records this season is particularly felicitous. Founded 70 years ago, Blue Note faded away in the late 1970s, only to be revived in 1984 for a brilliant second act as jazz's indispensable label. Not a bad role model for an event that faced extinction last year.

Its hiatus was much briefer, but the Portland Jazz Festival has emerged from a brush with oblivion looking savvier than ever. A triumph of Royston's curatorial discretion, Portland's thematic focus sets it apart from the vast majority of other festivals. Offering a broad array of artists whose careers have been well tended by the label, "Somethin' Else: Blue Note Records at 70" runs through Sunday at various venues around Portland's downtown Pioneer Square.

While the festival's opening weekend concentrated on artists who have defined Blue Note's latter incarnation, the highlight was Sunday afternoon's affectionate pairing of a legendary old lion with plenty of roar — pianist McCoy Tyner — and tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, a capaciously inventive, muscular improviser who's been a label mainstay for almost two decades. The pianist's ringing left-hand chords clearly inspired Lovano, who soloed with particular tenderness and eloquence on Tyner's ballad "Search for Peace," while concentrating his big, buzzing tone for a rip-roaring jaunt through John Coltrane's "Moment's Notice."

Don Byron opened the double bill at the stately Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall with a concise, irrepressibly playful set by his Ivey-Divey Trio with pianist Ed Simon and drummer Eric Harland.

The festival's opening run kicked off on Friday night at the Schnitzer with a bountiful double bill featuring Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba's stellar Avatar quintet and New Orleans trumpeter Terence Blanchard's ambitious homage to his hometown. Possessing one of the most evocative and instantly recognizable sounds in jazz, Blanchard presented the orchestral premiere of "A Tale of God's Will (Requiem for Katrina)," featuring music drawn from his score for Spike Lee's documentary "When the Levees Broke."

Backed by his commanding young quintet and the Portland Jazz Festival Orchestra, he seemed to have marshaled all his skills as a film composer in creating a cinematic, spiritually charged lament for New Orleans. The closing piece, "Funeral Dirge," captured all the pain, outrage and sorrow of the storm's immediate aftermath, when bodies littered the streets that Blanchard played on as a child.

On Saturday afternoon, the Portland Art Museum Ballroom, a passable but hardly ideal venue, hosted another rewarding double bill that paired pianist Jacky Terrasson and Lovano (a ubiquitous presence throughout the weekend). Terrasson's excitable trio concept has proved remarkably durable since he released his thrilling 1994 debut, and his latest combo, featuring the resourceful drummer Jaz Sawyer and reactive bassist Ben Williams, brought rhythmic panache to the pianist's radical reworking of standards, for instance turning "Caravan" into a roller coaster of contrasting dynamics. What Lovano's Us5 quintet lacked in dynamic range it more than made up for with a riveting drum set tandem of Gerry Hemingway and Francisco Mela.

Vocalist Dianne Reeves provided another highlight with a Valentine's Day concert at the Schnitzer backed by her trio and the Oregon Symphony Orchestra. A supremely generous performer with a sumptuous voice, Reeves concentrated on music from her Grammy-winning 2002 tribute to Sarah Vaughan, "The Calling," culminating with a swooning rendition of "Misty" dedicated to Bruce Lundvall, the man responsible for reviving Blue Note and signing her to the label.

The festival looks just as promising this weekend (though organizers just announced the cancellation of the concert featuring recent Grammy winner Cassandra Wilson with pianist Jason Moran). Saturday afternoon's double bill offers two very different stars from Blue Note's storied past. Altoist Lou Donaldson — who helped usher in the hard-bop era in the mid-'50s through his work with Art Blakey and then laid the foundation for acid jazz with his popular 1967 session "Alligator Boogaloo" — plays his bop 'n' blues with a quartet.

Vibraphonist/composer Bobby Hutcherson represents the label's glory years of the mid-1960s, when Blue Note documented a brilliant new generation of players investigating new forms and improvisational strategies.

The festival closes on Sunday with an afternoon double feature of guitar master Pat Martino's trio with soprano saxophonist Jane Bunnett and the Spirits of Havana, and an evening finale featuring the commanding vocalist Kurt Elling's tribute to Coltrane and suave crooner Johnny Hartman, accompanied by tenor sax great Ernie Watts and the Vox Humana String Quartet.

Andrew Gilbert: jazzscribe@aol.com