Cosmic Grooves from Portland's Eccentric Orbit
The current episode of the Right Brain Music Podcast explores a slice of the creative music scene in Portland, Oregon.
For those who don’t know, Portland is a city near the Pacific coast of the US, not to be confused with its namesake on the East coast. By population, it’s the 25th largest urban area in the country. But on the quirkiness scale, Portland is number one. The city is known for amazing street food, spectacular gardens, an obsession with outdoor recreation and a TV series that spoofed its post-90s hipster culture. It’s recently gained fame as a center of racial justice protests – though it is actually among the whitest cities in the country.
An enigma wrapped in a paradox, Portland also generates a lot of great music, which brings us back to our topic at hand. The episode features two special guests and some of the stupendous sounds coming from the local scene. Listen to the episode here.
Our first guest is Meg Morrow, a musician and radio personality who runs a unique organization called Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble. PJCE promotes jazz in a variety of ways, including its in-house record label for local musicians.
Meg Morrow, James Powers and the JP3 album cover.
Our second guest is James Powers, trombonist, multi-instrumentalist, and leader of the trio JP3, one of the prized PJCE recording artists. His new album defies easy categorization, and nicely combines fierce energy with subtle complexity.
Here’s a playlist for this episode:
JP3 - "Damnation of Memory," from Damnation of Memory
The Aaron Space Cosmic Orchestra - "Where We're At" from Night 0n Earth
The Ocular Concern - "... attention au depart" from The Lost Album
Trio Untold - "Metamorphosis/Homecoming" from Trio Untold
JP3 - "Symbiology"
JP3 - "Victoria Woodhull"
George Colligan - "Fight Voter Suppression and the New Jim Crow" from Fredson the Jeffy
The Ocular Concern - "Smoke Point"
Find all of these and more at the PJCE Bandcamp page.
Learn more about PJCE at their website.
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