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07/15/2022

Cathedral Park Jazz Festival 2022 begins tonight!

The free Cathedral Park Jazz Festival [CPJF] featuring local jazz, blues, soul, and Latin artists will take place in Cathedral Park under the historic St Johns Bridge in North Portland for the 42nd year of the festival on Friday, July 15, Saturday July 16, and Sunday July 17, 2022. The festival is organized by the Jazz Society of Oregon (JSO).

Cathedral Park Jazz Festival is back! 

 We are told:

Friday, July 15 is dedicated to the Blues, starting at 4:30 pm. The featured performer is guitarist and studio session player Eddie Martinez, who played alongside Tina Turner and Mick Jagger. Friday night ends with Tony Coleman’s “Tribute to the Three Kings: BB, Albert, and Freddie”.  Coleman was BB King’s drummer.

Saturday, July 16 and Sunday, July 17 will feature a mix of jazz, soul, and Latin performers. Kicking off the day on Saturday at 1pm is the newly formed orchestra from Portland’s The 1905 jazz club. Also on Saturday is the dynamic 10-piece Latin band, Pura Vida Orquestra, playing salsa, timba, cumbia, cha-cha-cha, Latin jazz, merengue, bachata and Latin Funk, and led by Costa Rican saxophonist/vocalist Gabriel (“Paquito”) Martinez.

Sunday, July 17, starts with the Portland State University Festival Ensemble. Greaterkind gives the final performance - the premier of “Time Sound; Albina’s Jazz Re-Imagined”, a suite of local jazz, soul, funk, and fusion compositions together with narration by elders from the Albina neighborhood, where most of Portland’s Black residents lived in the 20^th century. “Time Sound” is a production of World Arts Foundation/Albina Music Trust & Brown Branch.

“This is the 42nd consecutive year of the festival, which was started by a group of volunteers seeking to commemorate the construction of spectacular Cathedral Park,” said Rita Rega, creative director of this year’s festival and President of the Jazz Society of Oregon.

COMPLETE PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE

Friday evening, July 15, 2022

• 4:30 pm Lauren Sheehan with Great Auntie Lo – Mixing old blues, early jazz and country, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Sheehan has recorded five CDs. Her trio consists of guitar, upright bass and percussion.
• 6:00 pm Bridge City Soul – Led by Ramsey Embick, thissix-member band plays soul, funk, and R&B with a stirring beat and compelling message.
• 7:30 pm Eddie Martinez – After decades played on recordings by Pattie LaBell, Steve Winwood, Duran Duran, and Mick Jagger, guitarist Martinez adds Soul Vax Horns to his quartet for this performance.
• 9:00 pm Tony Coleman – Drummer for BB King, Bobby Blue Bland, Johnnie Taylor, Etta James, and many others, Coleman and his seven-member band, including guitarist Lloyd Jones,play a Tribute to the Three Kings: BB, Albert, and Freddie.

Saturday afternoon & evening, July 16, 2022

• 1:00 pm The 1905 Orchestra - The 1905 jazz club owner and saxophonist Aaron Barnes has hand-selected some of Portland’s finest jazz musicians for this new 12-piece orchestra.Matt Sazima co-directs.
• 2:30 pm Trio Continuum- Kiran Raphael on piano, Michael  Rodenkirch on drums and  Christian  Ramirez  on bass present music in the style of the great jazz piano trios of the 20th and 21st centuries.
• 4:00 pm Shoehorn’s Hatband - Multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and composer M.C. Shoehorn Conley simultaneously plays saxophone and tap dances.
• 5:30 pm Pura Vida Orquestra– This 10-piece Latin band, led by “Paquito” Martinez, plays salsa, timba, cumbia, cha-cha-cha, Latin jazz, merengue, bachata, and Latin Funk.
• 7:00 pm Brown Calculus – Named one of Portland’s Best New Bands, Brown Alice and Brown Calvin perform experimental/spiritual jazz, or “spacey soul”.
• 8:30 pm Outer Orbit – This funk soul collective with vocalist Arietta Ward andled by Galen Clark, draws on a range of influences from Sly Stone and The Meters to Aretha Franklin and Emily King.

Sunday afternoon & evening July 17, 2022

• 1:00 pm The Portland State University Festival Ensemble– Led by Marshall Peterson, this group of university students from different PSU programs and with a range of majors performs a wide variety of jazz favorites.
• 2:30 pm Mel Brown Trio – One of Portland’s most prominent jazz, funk and soul musicians, Brown was a session player for many Motown Records artists in the late 1960s and early 1970s,including Martha and the Vandellas, Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, and Marvin Gaye. 
• OMN Editor-In-Chief Tom D'Antoni will introduce Mel and friends. It will be his first pubic appearance since his two major surgeries this year.
• 4:00 pm Rebecca Hardiman – After singing with Boston-based vocal jazz group The Ritz and performing at the Montreal Jazz Festival as well as clubs around the US, Hardiman returned to her native Oregon to found a jazz group Euphoria, then went solo in 2013, fast becoming a favorite vocalist with many Portland musicians.
• 5:30 pm Jim Pepper Flying Eagle Band- Led by Gary Ogan (Cherokee), this band celebrates the legacy of the late great Kaw/Creek musician Jim Pepper (1941-1992).
• 7:00 pmGreaterkind in the debut performance of “Time Sound; Albina’s Jazz Reimagined”- a suite of local jazz, soul, funk, and fusion compositions originally conceived in 1981 by Thara Memory for his Creative Jazz Orchestra.

Background - Cathedral Park Jazz Festival

             This year marks the 42nd consecutive year of the Cathedral Park Jazz Festival, managed for the past eight years by the Jazz Society of Oregon. 

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