Community-driven Creative Process Launches in 2023
Montavilla Jazz and Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble (PJCE) celebrate a 10-year partnership with a new collaborative project for the 2023 season and the upcoming 10th Annual Montavilla Jazz Festival. Views of an Urban Volcano supports an expansion of the festival with an outdoor concert at the beautiful Mt. Tabor Park Caldera Amphitheater on September 1st, 2023. At this concert Montavilla Jazz and PJCE will present three world premieres by local artists in celebration of ten-years of collaborative programming.
Community Input Events
Montavilla Jazz and Portland Jazz Composers are leading a community-guided creative process as three composers craft new music for a free, public concert at Mt. Tabor Park during the 2023 Montavilla Jazz Festival. The soon-to-be-selected composers will attend a series of community events to build a shared understanding of the role this iconic park has played in Portland’s history. Presented in partnership with Friends of Mt. Tabor Park and the Oregon Historical Society with support from Oregon Cultural Trust and Regional Arts and Culture Council.
March 5 – Panel Discussion on Mt. Tabor Park
The first community input event focuses on critical events in the park’s history from 1896 to the summer of 2020 and their significance to Portland’s Chinese, Black, and Indigenous communities. The composers and YOU will be invited to ask questions of the panel including Hap Pritchard, Board Member, Friends of Mt. Tabor Park; David Harrelson, Cultural Resources Department manager and member, The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde; Darrell Millner, Professor Emeritus of Black Studies at Portland State University; and Dr. Marie Wong, Professor Emerita, Seattle University Institute of Public Service, Asian Studies, and Public Affairs. Join us March 5th at 2 p.m. at Oregon Historical Society for this FREE discussion and light refreshments. Get more information and RSVP here.
March 18 – Community Forum
The second community event in our Views from an Urban Volcano series is an open forum for YOU to discuss the park’s significance to in your life. Is the park your favorite hiking or biking spot? A relaxed living room on top of an extinct volcano? We invite you to share your own stories and hear those of your neighbors as our composers soak up perspective on the park. Join us March 18th, 2023, 4 to 5 pm at Taborspace, Copeland Commons. Get more information and RSVP here.
April 15 – Guided Tour of Mt. Tabor Park
A free event open to all, this guided tour of Mt. Tabor Park led by Friends of Mt Tabor Park begins at the Mt. Tabor Visitors Center, and moves through parts of the park that have been discussed in the prior events and conversations about the project. Please dress for the weather, and bring your questions! Get more information and RSVP here.
March 5th Event Speaker Bios
David Harrelson is the Cultural Resources Department manager for The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde where he is also a tribal member. David is active in his community and currently serves as an Oregon Arts Commissioner. Working for over ten years in the field of Cultural Resources, David has championed the protection of archaeology sites, maintenance of ancestral lifeways, and proliferation of indigenous art forms throughout his Tribes homelands in Western Oregon.
Dr. Darrell Millner graduated in 1975 from the University of Oregon with a doctorate in Education and was then hired by Portland State University to teach Afro-American Literature and History in the Black Studies Department. Dr. Millner served as Department Chair of Black Studies from 1984-1995, and is currently Professor Emeritus and continues to teach as an adjunct faculty member in the department. He serves on numerous local, regional, and national boards and organizations. Dr. Millner is an expert on the history of African-Americans in the western movement with a special focus on the Oregon and California trail experiences, early Oregon and California black history, and the history of the Black Buffalo soldiers in the Indian wars.
Hap Pritchard and his wife moved to the Portland area in 2004 to be close to their two children and their grandchildren. The move coincided with his retirement from a career at the EPA and a final three-year stint at the Danish National Environmental Research Laboratory where he was a senior research fellow.
Dr. Marie Rose Wong is a Professor Emerita with the Institute of Public Service at Seattle University. Wong’s research investigates urban planning and policy, housing, and land use with a focus on Asian American settlements. Her presentations and publications center on Asian American history and urban development that include several articles, a book on Portland, Oregon’s first Chinese communities entitled Sweet Cakes, Long Journey: The Chinatowns of Portland, Oregon (2004, 2012), and the history of Seattle’s Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino settlement entitled Building Tradition: Pan-Asian Seattle and Life in the Residential Hotels (2018). She is currently working on book projects that chronicle the histories of Seattle’s Japanese American community baseball, and Seattle’s Luck Ngi Chinese Music Club.