Jazz at Centrum

Listen to MP3's of Jazz Audition Tunes

2010-02-08T16:02:38-08:00

We hope you’re spending quality time in your practice room—or as John Clayton likes to remind us, your “performance room!”—preparing your audition for Jazz Port Townsend this summer.

This year Jazz Night School has compiled a very helpful collection of MP3’s you can listen to as part of your preparation (many thanks to The Jazz Night School for doing this!). There are multiple versions of many of the tunes, many of which are the original or “definitive” recordings.

Even if you already know these tunes, it’s worth listening to them again. Good luck in making your audition recording!

A Letter from John Clayton

2010-01-11T09:52:57-08:00

Dear Jazz Family:

I’m excited about our Jazz Port Townsend 2010 workshop in July. I want to make sure you know that registration is now open and I hope you’re planning on joining us. It would be awesome if you could be there. We’ve put together a great faculty, with a combination of old and new friends. You can check out the link here to get started, and see the list of faculty here.

As always, we ask you to submit an audition recording. Please move on this now so that you are in time to meet to meet the April 16 deadline. This is especially important for pianists, since we always fill up on that instrument early. Please review our audition information, and start practicing (“performing,” right?!) now.

I also want to make sure you know about two other workshops at Centrum this spring. There will be a Latin Jazz Intensive workshop (paired with a Salsa Dance Intensive) March 18-21 with Oscar and Paulo Stagnaro, and a Choro Intensive April 22-25 with Mike Marshall and Choro Famoso. Both are excellent ways to expand your musicianship and learn from amazing faculty, and make great music yourself.

Also coming up October 28-31 will be our second Big Band Intensive. The 2009 workshop was an instant hit. We’re planning to have two full bands this time.

So, my friends, you have lots of opportunities to build on your musicianship. I hope you’ll take advantage of as many of these as you can. Program Manager Gregg Miller (gregg@centrum.org) will be glad to answer any questions you may have. I hope to see you in July at Jazz Port Townsend, or at one of the other workshops.

Your fan,
John

2010 Jazz Port Townsend Goes Live

2009-11-19T10:24:56-08:00

Time to get your jazz on!

Registration is now live for the 2010 Jazz Port Townsend workshop week. Artistic Director John Clayton has invited an outstanding group of jazz artists to serve as your mentors July 25 - August 1, 2010.

In addition to returning faculty luminaries such as Benny Green, Terell Stafford, George Cables, Wycliffe Gordon and Jeff Clayton, there are several new faculty this year we're very excited about.

These include the Heath Brothers Quartet (Jimmy and Tootie Heath, Jeb Patton and David Wong), Butch Miles (drums), Byron Stripling (trumpet), Ben Wolfe (bass), Christine Jensen (alto), Rene Marie (vocal), and Ellen Rowe (piano/composition).

In all, more than 30 outstanding faculty will be on hand for a week of wall-to-wall jazz.

Jazz Port Townsend is combo-based, so we'll need an audition recording to place you in a group of similar players. Learn more about what you need to register, and then sign-up online.

We look forward to seeing you in Port Townsend

Registration for 2010 Jazz Port Townsend Workshop Coming Soon

2009-11-16T10:45:40-08:00

Just a quick note to let you know that we will begin accepting registrations for the 2010 Jazz Port Townsend workshop in the next few days. We will be publishing new faculty information, and giving you all of the registration information you will need to join John Clayton and the rest of "the family" here at Fort Worden in July 2010.

Stay tuned...

Geoffrey Keezer to Play at Wheeler Theater

2009-10-20T10:41:48-07:00

Get ready for jazz with multinational ingredients as jazz piano legend Geoffrey Keezer takes the stage for a 7:30 pm solo performance on Saturday, October 31, at Fort Worden State Park’s Joseph F. Wheeler Theater!

Tickets are $20 dollars; youth 18 and under can attend for free with advance registration. Tickets are available online here, as well as by calling Brown Paper Tickets at 1-800-838-3006. Tickets are also available at the box-office door beginning at 6:30 pm.

Keezer's latest musical adventure, Áurea, is a multinational Afro-Peruvian jazz recording project featuring some of today’s hottest players from New York City and Lima, Peru.

“What makes Afro-Peruvian music so intriguing to me is the unique combination of cultures found in Peru,” Keezer said. “In Peru, you've got descendants of Amerindians, Spanish, African, even Chinese and Japanese influences. Peru's cultural crossover with Africa predates America's, and many more of the African elements are retained in the music than in jazz.”

Keezer is known as one of the world’s finest jazz pianists. In 1989, at the age of 18, after completing his first year at the Berklee College of Music, he replaced Benny Green as the pianist for Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. He then replaced Green again as a member of the Ray Brown Trio.

“Geoffrey possesses a refreshingly open-eared sensibility in the modern manner,” noted Time magazine. “He has more than enough virtuosity and sheer musical wit and intelligence to weave all of his apparently disparate strands of influence into an original and compelling whole.”

His interest in Afro-Peruvian music is quite recent, dating back to a big-band performance at a jazz festival in Peru in 2004 and sharing the stage with a group of Peruvian musicians. Previously, he recalled, “I had only heard the music of the Andes, you know, the guys with pan flutes and drums that play on street corners in major cities. But I was totally unaware of Afro-Peruvian music, the music of coastal Peru. "

“The wow factor, in full force at the start of his show, had morphed into an I-can’t-friggin-believe-what-I’m hearing phenomenon,” said All About Jazz’s Jason West after a recent Seattle performance. “By the end of the night, a normally subdued Seattle jazz audience found itself hooting and hollering as if the Seahawks had won the Super Bowl."

Keezer’s professional career has spanned many projects and genres. In 1992, Geoffrey performed Gershwin's "Rhapsody In Blue" with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra under the direction of John Mauceri.
In addition to his eleven solo releases and constant touring, Geoffrey has also had compositions commissioned by the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, Saint Joseph Ballet, Mainly Mozart Festival in San Diego, Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, the Zeltsman Marimba Festival, and was a recipient of Chamber Music America’s 2007 New Works grant. He has also played bass in a rock band.

Keezer continues to work in partnership with world class musicians from all genres. His 1998 release, Turn Up The Quiet, featured Grammy winning vocalist Diana Krall along with Joshua Redman and Christian McBride. His two releases in 2003, Falling Up and Sublime: Honoring the Music of Hank Jones, were both collaborative efforts. Sublime is an ambitious set of piano duets with Kenny Barron, Chick Corea, Benny Green and Mulgrew Miller. Falling Up features several pieces where Geoffrey worked in tandem with Hawaiian slack-key guitarist Keola Beamer.

His 2005 release, Wildcrafted, captures the fire and raw energy of Keezer’s trio live in concert at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis.

Big Band Workshop Recap

2009-10-02T10:43:04-07:00

Our 2009 Big Band workshop in September was a big success! John Clayton, together with Jay Thomas and Bill Ramsay, led 18 musicians in 3 days of intensive rehearsals and discussions. The repertoire featured a number of John's compositions and arrangements, seasoned with a couple of classics from the Count Basie library.

As Basie alumni, John and Bill felt right at home, and Jay was the rock of the sax section in the first tenor chair. The weekend was capped by a sold-out concert in the Wheeler Theater, which ended with the audience leaping to its feet and shouting for more.

We'll definitely do another big band workshop in 2010, only next time with two bands! The dates will be announced soon.

Don't forget - we're hosting an amazing Jazz Improvisation workshop in a few weeks with the great Geoffrey Keezer. We have a few spaces left in this intensive workshop - sign up today - we promise you'll have a great time, and learn a lot.

John Clayton Leads Big-Band Concert September 19

2009-09-17T09:28:53-07:00

John Clayton will direct an eighteen-piece ensemble featuring soloists Jay Thomas and Bill Ramsay at 7:30 pm on Saturday, September 19, at the Joseph F. Wheeler Theater in Fort Worden State Park. Centrum’s Workshop Band will play the classic jazz tunes of Count Basie and contemporary jazz compositions by John Clayton himself.

Ticket Information. Tickets are $10 dollars; youth 18 and under can attend for free with advance registration. Tickets are available online or by calling Brown Paper Tickets at 1-800-838-3006. Tickets are also available at the box-office door beginning at 7 pm.

"Using the model that has been established by the classic, historic big bands, the Workshop Big Band will be comprised of soloists whose voices are honed to collectively produce a unique sound,” said Clayton. Count Basie and others were all bands comprised of musicians who could improvise. This successful formula will be explored in our show."

In addition to the two soloists, the Workshop Big Band will feature members of Centrum’s big band workshop, brought to a fever pitch by intense playing the weekend of September 17-20. The public performance culminates the jazz workshop.

John Clayton is a world-renowned bassist, composer, and educator in both the jazz and classical fields. In addition to his role with Centrum, he is the Artistic Director of the Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival at the University of Idaho and is 2009 artist in residence for the Detroit International Jazz Festival. His the founder of the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra (with saxophonist brother Jeff and drummer Jeff Hamilton), which features his original compositions and a received a Grammy nomination for their debut recording. In addition to the Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra and the Clayton Brother Quarter, John has written and arranged music for Diana Krall, DeeDee Bridgewater, Natalie Cole, George Benson, Regina Cater, John Pizzareli and many others. In 2008, he received his first Grammy Award—after seven nominations—for his arrangement of "I'm Gonna' Live 'til I Die" on Queen Latifah's Verve recording. He is a past president of the International Society of Bassists.

Saxophonist Bill Ramsay is among Seattle’s most sought-after musicians, leading his own bands and recording with groups up and down the West Coast. He spent two years as a member of the Count Basie Orchestra, and is a veteran of many of the nation’s outstanding big bands, including those of Thad Jones/Mel Lewis, Grover Mitchell, Cab Calloway, Gene Harris, and Quincy Jones, in addition to performing with the Benny Goodman Octet. He was inducted into the Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame in 1997.

Jay Thomas is a versatile multi-instrumentalist (trumpet, flugelhorn, alto, tenor, soprano and flutes), who can be heard on over sixty LPs and CDs. Earshot Magazine selected Thomas as Musician of the Year for 1996 and 1998, and he was named a “top ten player” in the “Brass on Fire” search conducted by JAZZIZ. Accidentally Yours, with the Geoffrey Keezer Trio, is his ninth CD as leader. Thomas’s two latest CDs with Becca Duran are: If You Could See Me Now and Song For Rita. Thomas has worked with such artists as Jessica Williams, George Cables, Charles McPherson, Bill Mays, Ralph Penland, Diane Schuur, and Slim Gaillard.

Tickets are $10 dollars; youth 18 and under can attend for free with advance registration. Tickets are available online or by calling Brown Paper Tickets at 1-800-838-3006. Tickets are also available at the box-office door beginning at 7 pm.

Big Band Intensive Update

2009-08-21T08:26:58-07:00

As August rolls to a close, we wanted to let you know where things stand with Centrum's Jazz Big Band Intensive with John Clayton, Jay Thomas, and Bill Ramsay, which is going to be taking over Fort Worden September 17-20.

If you play trombone, trumpet, or guitar, we want you to register asap - all other slots in the big band are taken.

We've also uploaded recordings of the tunes you'll be playing at the intensive, in this case, performed by the esteemed Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. Visit the Big Band page and scroll down to the "What Will We Play?" section.

2009 JPT Photos Now Online

2009-08-19T12:04:31-07:00

If you attended the 2009 Jazz Port Townsend workshop, then you probably know Jim Levitt. The man was everywhere. Jim is a photographer who has helped us each of the past two years to document the experience. We're grateful to have someone of Jim's skill and passion working with us. Even though he has a day job, he took the week off to spend it with all of you. Thank you Jim.

We have begun placing some of Jim's photos on our Flickr site. We have created a photoset from the 2009 workshop--and we'll be adding more soon. Don't forget, you can post on Flickr too...just be sure to tag them "jazzporttownsend09." We'll post a slideshow soon. And as always, we want to see your photos, hear your tunes, and learn more at our jazz community site: http://centrumjazz.ning.com

Jazz Port Townsend Podcast: Benny Green Tribute to Oscar Peterson

2009-08-14T14:55:16-07:00

One of the major highlights of 2009 Jazz Port Townsend was The Tribute to Oscar Peterson played by the Benny Green Trio. This exciting performance brought the capacity audience to its feet.

This special concert will air Jazz Northwest, 88.5 KPLU and kplu.org on Sunday August 16 at 1 PM PDT.

This concert was one of seven Jazz Port Townsend concerts recorded by Jim Wilke exclusively for Jazz Northwest on KPLU. The program airs Sundays at 1 PM on 88.5 KPLU and is streamed to the internet at kplu.org. A podcast of the program will be available after the airdate at kplu.org.

Jazz Port Townsend Concert Podcast at KPLU 88.5FM

2009-07-31T11:17:38-07:00

(Dan Balmer, Bruce Forman and Graham Dechter tune up for a concert at Jazz Port Townsend 2009 - Jim Wilke photo)

The "22 Strings plus Skins" concert from 2009 Jazz Port Townsend will be featured on Jazz Northwest, 88.5 KPLU this Sunday afternoon, August 2, 2009, at 1 PM PDT.

Three guitarists, Bruce Forman, Dan Balmer and Graham Dechter are joined by Chuck Deardorf on bass and Greg Williamson on drums in a survey of jazz guitar styles from Charlie Christian to Wes Montgomery.

Thank You for a Great Festival

2009-07-29T08:48:43-07:00

We'd like to take a moment to thank all of the passionate workshop participants, as well as the avid jazz fans who helped transform Port Townsend into a mecca for jazz during 2009 Jazz Port Townsend. Between the artists, the music, the weather, and the town - it was quite a party.

Hugo Kugiya and the The Seattle Times ran a series of reviews during the festival:

Did you attend the workshop, or attend a jazz show? Please share your photos and videos with us. A great place to do that is on our Jazz Community Site. Join the site today (it's free), and connect with your fellow jazzoids. We've already got some videos from the week online, with more to come.

If you use Flickr and or YouTube, simply tag your photos and videos with "jazzporttownsend09" and we'll showcase them here.