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On Aug. 4 and 5, jazz lovers from across the nation will gather at the Colwood Golf Center (near Portland International Airport) as the beloved Vanport Jazz Festival gets underway.
“We want people to discover the legacy of jazz music in Oregon, because it really originated with the people who came through Vanport and lived in Vanport,” James Taylor, the festival’s executive producer, tells WW. “It started with Vanport and it ends with Vanport.”
This year’s edition of the festival promises to deliver what its devotees love: food, wine and music from an impressively international lineup of jazz musicians that aspires to bridge generational divides.
“Forty-year-olds, they think of jazz as traditional jazz,” Taylor says. “Jazz has grown tremendously over the last 30 years to incorporate smooth jazz, which is a blend of R&B and traditional jazz.”
With that in mind, the festival is welcoming younger-skewing musicians like saxophonist Mike Phillips and the R&B artist Joe (you can see the full lineup on the festival’s website).
Founded in 2017, the Vanport Jazz Festival was created to honor the legacy of Vanport’s bustling jazz scene, which attracted some of the most famous musicians in American history.
“When the city flooded, a lot of the musicians who grew up in the South created nightclubs in North and Northeast Portland to continue the music,” Taylor says. “A lot of jazz stars back in the early ’50s came through Portland—people like Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald.”
He adds: “But at the time, Portland was somewhat segregated and Blacks weren’t allowed to stay in the hotels in Portland. And so most of those famous people—whether it was Sammy Davis, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Thelonious Monk—they stayed with Black families in the neighborhood.”
The spirit of Vanport lives on not only through the diagrams of the city displayed at the festival, but in the audience.
“Quite a few of our patrons are descendents of Vanport,” Taylor says. “We make it a point to honor some of the few remaining Vanport citizens. We bring them up onstage and pay homage to them.”
While the festival promises a wide array of performances, Taylor stresses the event’s overall commitment to the upbeat vibes that smooth jazz delivers in spades.
“There’s nothing wrong with traditional jazz,” he says. “It’s just a different audience, a different mood…that upbeat style of jazz that has you up on your feet, or just sitting back, grooving to the music while you sip on a glass of chardonnay or pinot noir, enjoying the hot summer day.”
General admission tickets for the festival are currently on sale ($60-$75).