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Calling all lindy hoppers, balboa-heads, charleston nuts, and shag enthusiasts! Come on out to Portland's longest-running swing dance, bringing you fantastic live jazz music on Norse Hall's magnificent floor. In this extra-special edition of Thursday Swing, we welcome the Adam Lee-Morgan Jazz Orchestra on tour with an ambitious, important project of jazz history preservation!
Mary Lou Williams was a Pittsburgh-raised jazz pianist and composer who would go on to become one of the most influential jazz musicians of all time, writing music for Andy Kirk in Kansas City and later Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, as well as informally instructing jazz greats such as Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. Williams’ harmonic and rhythmic ideas, while chronologically rooted deep in the swing era, were the foundation on which much of the bebop movement was built. Despite this, her own name and work is underrepresented in the Jazz Canon.
Adam Lee-Morgan is a Pittsburgh-Based Jazz Scholar, professor, and bandleader. This project: "Revitalizing the Big Band Works of Mary Lou Williams," aims to ensure that Williams’ work is presented and passed along to new generations of jazz musicians and fans, furthering her legacy as a jazz icon. This Project Reconstructs her big band writings from her handwritten notes supplemented by transcription and musical analysis of her writing style.
Adam Lee-Morgan started down his swing path in the 2nd grade when he started playing clarinet, and his grandmother bought him his very first record, which happened to be a Benny Goodman record. He added on the saxophone two years later and never looked back. Growing up as a jazz musician, the addition of Lindy Hop to his life was a natural one. Adam started dancing in 1997 just a few months before the infamous GAP ad and was dancing five nights a week. In 2001 he moved to Beijing, China where he started the Lindy Hop scene and led a 17 piece big band, the Beijing Big Band. In 2010 he returned to the USA to do a Master’s degree in Music Education at NYU, and a few years later moved back to his home state of California, where he taught high school band and was the bandleader and music director for the LA Swing Barons, focusing on the Kansas City big band style.
He presently is working on his Ph.D. in Jazz Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, teaches band at Chatham University and the Afro American Music Institute in addition to leading the Adam Lee-Morgan Jazz Orchestra.
Thanks to a generous donor, the cover for this event will remain our normal rate.
Cover $15 | All Ages
Foundations lesson included in cover
*Schedule*
6:30 Doors open
6:45 - 7:45 Foundations lesson with Darcie Juarez
8 - 9 The Adam Lee-Morgan Orchestra
9 - 9:30 DJ break
9:30 - 10:30 The Adam Lee-Morgan Orchestra
The downstairs bar and lounge will be open. You may bring your drinks into the ballroom.
If you have accessibility concerns, please contact PLS.
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Event Venue
Norse Hall, 111 NE 11th Ave, Portland, OR 97232-3002, United States
Tickets
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