Terry & Gyan Riley
Terry & Gyan Riley RH

With the 2020 PDX Jazz Festival in full swing, our indefatigable copy chief Robert Ham has been busy catching some of the 100+ events happening during this annual event and filed this report from the first full weekend of the fest.

Terry Riley & Gyan Riley @ Winningstad Theatre
How often have Terry Riley and his son Gyan shared warm, almost secretive glances at one another throughout their lives? On stage, their visual check-ins were meant as small signals about where their extended guitar and keyboard duets were headed. But the looks they traded—sly smiles, or wide-eyed, surprised grins—had me envisioning them at the breakfast table, delighting in an inside joke or a secret they’re keeping from the rest of the family. Such was the intimate, spiritual nature of their late Friday night concert. Through a series of tunes featuring the elder Riley teasing glassy tones from a synthesizer and percussive syncopation on a grand piano while Gyan kept pace with jazzy flurries of notes, the pair invited us into their vital familial bond. It often felt as if we were peering into their living room jam sessions. With each glance and each floating melody, the Rileys drew us ever closer to their side.

Archie Shepp
Archie Shepp RH

Archie Shepp @ Newmark Theatre
The old lions of jazz are fast vanishing from this mortal coil, and at such a rate that simply being in the same room with them feels like enough. Hearing them perform becomes an afterthought. And any visions of their heyday are often quickly wiped away once they hit their first note. For Archie Shepp, still shuffling onstage at the age of 82, his first run of notes was creaky and slurry. His playing throughout went in and out of focus, with moments of inspiration trading off with sour notes and quick fade outs. He wasn’t helped by a backing band of overly anxious youngsters that didn’t sound like they were paying much attention to each other. (Let’s also not discuss the horrible job that the sound engineer at the Newmark did to further muddy the waters.) When it all came together, as with a Coltrane tune early in the set or when Shepp put his tenor sax aside and sang through a chorus of “Stompin’ At the Savoy” or “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” it felt like flowers blooming anew after a long winter.

Branford Marsalis Quartet @ Newmark Theatre
Saxophonist Branford Marsalis and his airtight quartet treated their Sunday night set as if it were a rehearsal that just happened to be in front of hundreds of strangers. The four men were constantly cracking each other up and played to impress their bandmates rather than anyone nearby. That may sound alienating, but it only amplified the brilliance of the music. You couldn’t not be blown away by watching them put their whole bodies into every song. Pianist Joey Calderazzo looked like he was coming out of his skin with every solo, cocking his shoulders this way and that, and at one point, standing up to punctuate a passage. Marsalis paced the stage between Calderazzo and drummer Justin Faulkner, occasionally twisting his body to direct a single note at one of the men or stiffening his back as he hit one sustained tone. Their combined energy is a power source that rivals the sun.

Salami Rose Joe Louis
Salami Rose Joe Louis RH

Salami Rose Joe Louis @ Jack London Revue
The real heads—those folks that live and die by every note released on Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder Records—knew about this one. They were packed into the basement venue, seeking out space to dance or sitting at a table, head-nodding or staring at Eli Maliwan as he sent digital squawks into the room through his EWI. The mood, again, became one of communal joy, with everyone locking arms around the music of Salami Rose Joe Louis (AKA Lindsay Olsen), a young producer from California who works an unusual middle ground between the tripped out shenanigans of the Space Lady and the wiry ’70s sound of Herbie Hancock. But in that arable land, Olsen builds a fantasy world of sci-fi adventures and sings songs to the clouds, with the more childish qualities edged off through a good-natured dose of psychedelia and much tighter funk grooves.