The 2009 Alaska Airlines & Horizon Air Portland Jazz Festival celebrates the 70th anniversary of Blue Note Records, the most prestigious American jazz recording company, along with the 25th anniversary of the label's re-launch under legendary music executive and current Blue Note CEO Bruce Lundvall. Each of the headline concerts within the festival schedule will feature current Blue Note artists or heritage artists who have passed through Blue Note at some point in their fabled careers.
Cannonball Adderley's Somethin' Else, featuring Miles Davis and Art Blakey as sidemen, remains one of the most treasured classic Blue Note recordings. The 1959 release is a primary example of the Blue Note sound blending hard bop jazz improvisation with soul and early rhythm & blues. Long before Motown, soul, and rap, it was Blue Note that crystallized the sounds of Black America.
Founded in 1939 by passionate visionaries Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, Blue Note Records holds a seminal position within the evolution of American music. From the early recordings of Sidney Bechet and Meade Lux Lewis to Miles Davis' landmark The Birth of the Cool, Blue Note has set the standard for jazz tradition. While photographer Wolff had an eye for jazz with hundreds of groundbreaking album covers, it was Lion's keen ear that developed and recorded the great masters including Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Clifford Brown, Horace Silver and countless others. As an early champion of post-war jazz, it was Lion who first recorded the most influential modern jazz ensemble, Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, which forged the trademark Blue Note sound along with stalwarts Lou Donaldson, Bobby Hutcherson, and McCoy Tyner.
Over the past twenty years, John Scofield, Jane Bunnett, Pat Martino, Eliane Elias and Don Byron are among those who have found both their sound and their audience via Blue Note. Today, these same traditions continue with Joe Lovano, Terence Blanchard, Jacky Terrasson, and Gonzalo Rubalcaba along with young emerging artists Lionel Loueke, Jason Moran, and Aaron Parks. In recent years Blue Note stretched to produce jam band improvisations of Medeski, Martin & Wood and other new music experiments. Curiously, Lion eschewed the recording of jazz vocalists, but when Lundvall assumed direction he signed Dianne Reeves, Cassandra Wilson, Patricia Barber, and others.
With Wolff's death and Lion's failing health, Blue Note was sold to Liberty Records and eventually to EMI/Capitol. After a few years of indifferent leadership and a misunderstanding over how to promote jazz, Blue Note's artistic impact and sales were waning. In order to preserve the fierce independence and vitality of Blue Note, Lundvall, former President of Columbia Records, assumed direction in 1984, and teamed with music producer and archivist Michael Cuscuna, creator of Mosaic Records, to successfully re-launch Blue Note as the premiere recording company of America's classic music.
Blue Note's most recent history includes such diverse projects as re-mastering the remarkable discovery of acetate tapes from the 1957 Thelonious Monk & John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall along with non-jazz projects by pop vocalist Norah Jones, hip hop sounds of Us3, and adventurous singer-songwriters Amos Lee and Priscilla Ahn.
The history of Blue Note, however, is synonymous with the legacy of jazz. It is those traditions that are the foundation of Portland Jazz Festival's Somethin' Else: Blue Note Records @ 70 featuring performances by Terence Blanchard's Requiem for Katrina with full orchestra, McCoy Tyner & Joe Lovano Quartet along with Lovano's new Us5, and Don Byron's Ivey-Divey tribute to Lester Young. Insightful conversations featuring Bruce Lundvall and Michael Cuscuna will be presented along with panel discussions with prominent jazz writers and journalists, artists, and other Blue Note representatives. There will also be screenings of archival Blue Note films by Lena Horne, Michel Petrucciani, Bobby McFerrin, and the famed One Night with Blue Note, celebrating Lundvall's 1984 re-launch concert with rare moments by Cecil Taylor, Stanley Turrentine, Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, and many more.