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New
Music for a New Year Jazz pianist Dan Tepfer graduated from the Paris Conservatoire in classical piano performance and is pursuing a master's degree in jazz piano performance at the renowned New England Conservatory. Tepfer, who has family here, has studied with such masters as Fred Hersch and Kenny Werner, and played with contemporary stars including Chris Potter and Christian McBride. He's been winning plaudits and prizes around Europe, and on Friday, Jan. 14, his trio plays at the Shedd.
Tepfer is a fan of one of the late, great Steve Lacy, and his originals and covers combine Lacy's exploratory esthetic and a lyricism that will make this show also appeal to fans of Hersch or Brad Mehldau. This is a chance to catch one of tomorrow's jazz stars in an ideal setting. Since its beginnings, through the heyday of New York's 52nd Street, to today's downtown scene, jazz has always thrived in arenas that permit cross fertilization. The more ideas and influences the better, from after-hours jams to cutting contests. This year, the UO and LCC have combined their jazz workshops into the new Oregon Jazz Festival, which debuts at both campuses on Jan. 21-22. The different scales of the two main venues (the UO's Beall Hall and the LCC's Performance Hall) permit more appropriate settings for various combos, and the two schools offer more space for the various workshops involving high school and college jazzers, all of which are free and open to the public. The two evening concerts at LCC feature saxophonist Dave Pietro (who's worked with everyone from Ray Charles to Harry Connick to Maynard Ferguson to his decade-long stint as lead alto man in the Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra) and trumpeter Scott Wendholt (Kenny Garrett, Cyrus Chestnutt, Maria Schneider and many more). The UO also offers two superior classical music concerts. On Thursday, Jan. 13, violinist Kathryn Lucktenberg plays an impressive all-20th century music program at Beall Hall, featuring works by her fellow UO faculty member Victor Steinhardt; today's leading composer, John Adams; the gritty grandmaster of American music, Charles Ives; and the Czech composer Irwin Schulhoff, who died in a Nazi concentration camp and whose influences include a diverse range such as Bartok and jazz. On Thursday, Jan. 20, the UO's Chamber Music Series brings the acclaimed Phil-harmonia Quartett Berlin to play another 20th century masterpiece, Shostakovich's 11th string quartet, along with Brahms's second quartet and one of Mozart's sparkling quartets from that amazing set dedicated to his friend Joseph Haydn. This one, his 16th, looks forward to Beethoven or even Wagner. You can hear a brand new string quartet by a fine Oregon composer on Wednesday, Jan. 12, at Portland's Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center when Jack Gabel celebrates his birthday with flutist Tessa Brinckman, members of the avant garde ensemble fEARnoMUSIC and Portland's hottest young string quartet, Highstrung, in an evening of chamber and electro-acoustic works choreographed, costumed and lighted by Agnieszka Laska and also featuring her dance company. Another Portland show highly recommended to new music fans happens on Jan. 20 and 21 at the Old Church (11th at Clay), when Third Angle New Music Ensemble plays works by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer George Crumb (subject of a marvelous tribute at the UO last summer) and his son, UO faculty member David Crumb. The show will feature dad's Four Nocturnes for violin and piano, and his newest work, Unto the Hills, an ambitious setting of Appalachian folk songs for soprano, piano, and four percussionists. The group will also play David's moving September Elegy (inspired by the al Qaeda attacks and also heard here last year) for violin and piano, and the world premiere of his "Improvisations on an English Folk Tune." The Oregon Mozart Players kick off the winter classical music season Jan. 8 (at Soreng Theater) and 9 (at Beall Hall) with two of the most stirring and popular works in classical music: Mozart's magnificently moody, intensely dramatic penultimate symphony, number 40, and Hummel's brilliant, motoric Trumpet Concerto, featuring acclaimed soloist Robert Sullivan. He also stars, along with cor anglais (Frech horn) virtuosa Cheryl Wefler and string orchestra, in the sublimely atmospheric incidental music Aaron Copland wrote for Irwin Shaw's play Quiet City. Finally, let me correct an omission from my last column of recommended recordings. Probably because I didn't (and don't) have room to say everything I'd like to about it, I left out my very favorite recording of the year—maybe of the last few decades. Although the music is almost four decades old, the new, finally complete recording of Brian Wilson's gloriously rich Smile succeeded in living up to the impossibly high expectations its original prototypes inspired in musical observers from Leonard Bernstein to Paul McCartney, and I can't stop listening to it. When historians look back on 20th century music, they'll cite Smile, and Wilson's other masterpiece, Pet Sounds, as examples of just how high popular music's ambitions could reach. It should put Wilson in the pantheon along with Gershwin, Schubert, and other composers who triumphantly combined the ambition of art with the power of pop. Whether you did or didn't get the music you wanted for the holidays, I recommend this immortal beauty's good vibrations.
Eugene's
Hardest Working DJ Hip hop is a Monday through Saturday affair for Kenneth C. Morris III, aka DJ Tekneek. Once 9 pm rolls around, it's time to pack up his record box, his turntable, his mixer, whatever miscellaneous cords he may need throughout the night, and head for the club. Those are his tools, and DJing is his job. This is what "puts food on the table."
This tall, stocky, soft-spoken, 32-year-old performs five nights a week at four different dance floors: Taylor's, Joe's Bar and Grill, John Henry's and Club Tsunami. Over the years, he's held weekly residencies at more than 10 different local nightclubs. But in a college town where students, the staple customers of bars and clubs, leave every three months, succeeding as a club DJ depends as much on the music you can pull out of your crate of records as it does the time of the year. In his five years as a DJ, Tekneek has watched clubs and weekly dance nights come and go. "I've been at nights that died out completely," he says. But through it all, he's managed to make a living from it and is recognized as Eugene's most prolific DJ. That has meant not being too picky about where he plays. He used to spin exclusively at one club. But if attendance was down, so was income. "I had to make the decision that I wasn't going to give up any gig," he says. The role of the club DJ is to entertain. To get people
dancing, the DJ must select and mix other musicians' music. Tekneek
spins a popular style of rap known as urban hip hop. Songs that you
may hear on MTV or KDUK, from rappers such as 50 Cent to Jay-Z, help
define this style and frequently permeate his four- to five-hour sets.
It's what his crowd wants. Although his mix of music is well known,
the type of hip hop that Tekneek promotes remains underrepresented in
"KDUK only plays about 25 different hip hop songs," Tekneek explains. "I get the same requests for those 25 hip hop songs over and over again." Like all genres of music, thousands of great hip hop songs are out there; they're just not getting major airplay. Urban hip hop encompasses a diverse group of artists, from De La Soul to Slum Village. The genre's name alludes to its popularity in primarily urban markets. In Eugene, many of these rappers are undiscovered. It takes about 120 songs to fill four or five hours with music, and it's the music outside the local mainstream Tekneek seeks out for his sets. Urban hip hop culture is an underground scene in Eugene. Ironically the indie hip hop genre, made famous by visiting national acts such as the Living Legends and Anticon, gets more hype in town than the popular, national sound of urban hip hop. Phat Trax hosted by DJ L2G (Friday night on KWVA, 88.1 FM), is Eugene's only live urban hip hop DJ mix show. Tekneek says shows like Phat Trax are common in his native New Jersey. "Campus radio has the only live hip hop mix show around," he says. Tekneek's DJ company, Hardwood Entertainment, uses a stable of five professional DJs who share gigs around town. Through constantly promoting himself and his company, Tekneek has carved his own niche in Eugene. He uses his East Coast roots to learn about new music and new artists, then introduces them to his local following. With five gigs a week, saturating the market is something he strives to avoid by keeping each of his nights unique and appealing. "You can't let the nights overlap," Tekneek says. "Format is what maintains the individual nights." Finding a unique formula that works is a big reason "Reggae vs. Hip Hop," a showcase of reggae, dancehall and hip hop at John Henry's every Wednesday night, is such a huge success. DJ Kal El and Tekneek started the night years ago at the old John Henry's location. It was so popular fans followed it to the new club. Despite the fact that Jamaican music is a popular style in major cities, John Henry's is the only place in Eugene you'll find a reggae groove. Crowds of reggae lovers pack the club at the beginning of the night, and don't leave until the final cut is played. Tekneek calls Reggae vs. Hip Hop night the closest thing to a Brooklyn, Queens, or Manhattan style club night. "It's important to get underrepresented music to people's ears," he explains. "There's always a song out there that's everything you wanted to hear buy you didn't know you wanted to hear it."
BLACK FOREST CAFE PARADISO CLUB TSUNAMI COFFEE GROVE COOPERATIVE COZMIC PIZZA@THE STRANDH COUNTRY SIDE RESTAURANT DA HOUZE DIABLO'S DOWNTOWN LOUNGE EMBERS SUPPER CLUB EUGENE WINE CELLARS GOOD TIMES JO FEDERIGO'S JOE'S BAR & GRILLE JOGGER'S BAR & GRILL
JOHN HENRY'S THE JUNGLE THE KEG
LAVELLE'S WINE BAR & BISTRO LATTITUDE 10 LUCKEY'S CLUB CIGAR
LUNA MAC'S AT THE VET'S MONROE STREET CAFE THE O BAR OVERTIME TAVERN PEABODY'S PERUGINO PRIME TIME SPORTS BAR QUACKER'S RAMADA INN SAM BOND'S GARAGE SAMURAI DUCK SAM'S PLACE STACY'S COVERED BRIDGE SWEETWATER'S TAP 'N' KEG TAYLOR'S BAR AND GRILL WETLANDS
WOW HALL
CORVALLIS BOMBS AWAY CAFE
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