Event

2022 Biamp PDX Jazz Festival
Gary Bartz - presented by PDX Jazz
Sat February 19, 2022
( Doors: 10:00 pm ) SHOW: 11:00 pm PST
Jack London Revue
529 SW 4th Ave., Portland, OR
Ages 21 and Up
$45.00
Important Safety Notice: In accordance with the Multnomah County mask mandate, all Jack London customers and staff, regardless of vaccination status, will be required to wear masks when not eating or drinking. As a further measure, no customers will be admitted without proof of vaccination against COVID-19 or proof of negative test taken within 48 hours of admission. Stay safe, Portland!

A native of Baltimore, Gary Bartz ventured to New York City to attend the Juilliard School in 1958. At the time, performers such as Thelonius Monk, Ornette Coleman, and Miles Davis were playing at Birdland and the city’s other premiere clubs every night, and Bartz regularly snuck in to see them.

In the 1960s, Bartz joined the Max Roach/Abbey Lincoln Group and the Charles Mingus Jazz Workshop, quickly earning a reputation as the greatest alto saxophonist since Cannonball Adderley. In 1965, after meeting the group at his parents’ nightclub, Bartz joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and recorded Soulfinger, his recording debut. Around the same time, he began working with McCoy Tyner, and their relationship deepened the influence of John Coltrane on Bartz.

In 1970, Bartz received a call from Miles Davis, who asked Bartz to perform with his band at the historic Isle of Wight Festival. In the same year, Bartz also formed his own group, Ntu Troop, after the Bantu word for “unity.” Ntu blended soul, funk, African folk music, hard bop, and avant-garde jazz on such albums asI’ve Known Rivers and Other Bodies, based on the poetry of Langston Hughes, as well as Music is My SanctuaryLove AffairAnother Earth, and Home.

Overall, Bartz has recorded more than 40 solo albums and over 200 as a guest artist. More recently, he released Coltrane Rules: Tao of a Music WarriorLive at the Jazz Standard Volume 1 and Volume 2, and several others, on his own label, OYO, which is named for the Nigerian tribe and the acronym “Own Your Own.” He was also spotlighted in the “Blindfold Test” section of DownBeat magazine in January 2008.

Bartz brought his historically busy touring and recording schedule into the new millennium very recently, re-establishing his deep jazz credentials even as another generation of DJs and hip-hop producers discovered the untold riches contained in his back catalog. He remains spry, fit and energetic at age 80 and his new collaboration with Jazz Is Dead’s Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad on their series of albums with legends, is the glorious proof. This is what Gary Bartz brings to this Jazz Is Dead collaboration on JID006, and as can be expected, his questing spirit fits the Jazz Is Dead style like a glove and has produced an album that’s a cutting-edge addition to his immense canon as he effortlessly interfaces with the next generation.

 

 
Gary Bartz