Cost:
$20 Door (includes a CD)
$18 Advanced (includes a CD)
$15 Student (includes a CD)

Age Policy:
Minors welcome if accompanied by an adult

Date & Time:
Friday, Sept. 21st at 8pm (doors open at 7pm)

Featuring:
George Colligan - piano
Alan Jones - drums
Joe Manis - alto & soprano saxophones
David Evans - tenor saxophone
Jon Lakey - bass
Jeffrey Chilton - trombone
and special guest artists, including Chuck Israels

"Simply a winner in all respects. It's virtuosic trumpet playing first of all, without sacrificing musicality, and the whole album is so well structured without losing the excitement of spontaneity at the same time. This is one I'll be listening to many times over. This CD gets right to the MUSIC from the first phrase of 'Prologue' to the last note of 'Epilogue' and every note in between!"

- Randy Brecker

"It's different - very innovative and creative, great sound, fantastic technique, and control, great compositions! I think that it'll be very well received by music fans."

-  Arturo Sandoval

"An album as inventive as this, and as full to bursting with sparkling performances from Porter and some of Portland’s best, deserves such deep listening and return engagement"

- Robert Ham (music writer: Portland Mercury, The Oregonian, Paste, Village Voice)

Any jazz artist or deep fan of the genre knows that mixing it up is the only way to stay engaged and excited. Trumpeter Charlie Porter knows that all too well. Which is why when he was setting out to write and record his new self-titled album—his first as a bandleader—he wanted to mess with the template in small and large ways.

He knew, for example, that he wanted to play with a lot of different musicians. Living and working in Portland, Oregon, Porter has plenty of options to choose from as the Northwest city has cultivated a thriving jazz community where artists young and seasoned can enjoy a comfortable, if modest existence. As well, he wanted to challenge himself as a writer and player by dabbling in different styles and moods that would fit the various combinations of players he was putting together.

But rather than have it as a scattershot collection of tunes, Porter figured out an arc to the album that would tie all of the pieces together into a nice, tidy package. It starts off with just himself on trumpet. On the next track, he adds a player; on the next, another player. He continues adding folks for a few more songs until he’s playing in a sextet. After that, he reverses the process, subtracting players, track by track, until he closes the album all on his own again. In other words: a kind of musical palindrome.

With the concept in place, Porter was free to follow his muse wherever it might lead him. For “Mel Smiles,” he sticks in a joyous bop vein, sparring gently with the brushed, energetic drums of his duet partner, the legendary Mel Brown. On the quartet piece “New Beginnings,” the music smoothly moves from a swinging waltz to a heated tempo with Porter sashaying through every step. “Skain Train,” the other quartet piece with bass, drums and violin, is hot jazz of the highest order, calling back to jazz’s New Orleans roots. And the appropriately titled “Anthem,” featuring simply trumpet and piano, feels stately and haunting; the kind of song that tangles with the mixed emotions of the past while looking boldly and confidently into the future.

Porter pays direct homage to the past, too, with a take on “Morning Glory,” a classic from the vast catalog of pioneering composer Duke Ellington. Originally released in 1940, the song is a stunner, with swelling horn lines and a slow dance ready rhythm. Porter speeds things up just so, but winnows down the instrumentation to the bare essentials: his subtle, yet soaring trumpet lines, and accompaniment by guitar and bass. Nothing gets lost in the translation. If anything, it just proves how pliable Duke’s writing remains, capable of finding purchase in the hearts of players nearly 80 years after it was introduced.

Connecting one end of this album to the other are the opening and closing tracks, titled, in wonderfully novelistic fashion, “Prologue” and “Epilogue.” The former sets the stage for everything to follow with Porter building a song from melodies from each of the next nine tracks, a kind of musical foreshadowing of what’s to come. The latter is built off a pair of mirrored phrases, or, if you will, another palindrome, boiling down the larger concept of the album into its purest, simplest form. The overall feeling is something like a truncated life cycle, with the excitement of new experiences and ideas giving way to a contemplative nostalgic afterglow.

In 2007, Charlie received a prestigious commissioning grant from Chamber Music American to compose a suite for his newly-formed Septet, which he premiered at Jazz at Lincoln Center to a sold out crowd. Since moving from NYC to Portland, his septet music has set in a box. However, the second half of the show while feature the newly reformed Charlie Porter Septet, exclusively, in a variety of original compositions by Porter. Some old and some brand new..these compositions have never been commercially recorded and some of them will be premieres. This will be a fun sneak peak into a future record possibility as well as serving to kick off a project that Charlie will be writing for and performing with regularly on the Portland music scene.