Medford Jazz Jubilee II & OSF Too

More of the same good music as yesterday. Groups with names like Wally's Warehouse Waifs, Club 7, Queen City Jazz Band, Cornet Chop Suey, High Sierra, see their picture to the right, Midiri Brothers, Blue Street Jazz Band, etc.

Most of these were fairly traditional Dixieland groups, though Club 7 and Midiri Brothers were younger and differently voiced, e.g. Club 7 featured a marvelous clarinet leading the group and a super good guitar player along with the usual rhythm instruments. No trumpet or trombone or sax. As you can see in the High Sierra group to the right I tend to favor the traditional front line of trumpet, trombone and clarinet and behind a tuba rather than a string bass, piano, percussion and banjo.

I liked the QCJB, an outfit from Denver that has been around for 50s with changing personnel obviously, mainly because the trombone player was the best of the lot. The ensemble trombone is different from the solo and neither need to worry about imitating the clarinet in its licks.

Good food at the 4 Daughters Irish Pub and a new place called Elements, a tapas bar, a little unusual for a no-nonsense slightly blue collar town like Medford. As time has gone along, it seems that both Ashland and Medford are getting an increasing number of retirees from Oregon and especially California. These well off people are good for the restaurants and the theatre scene too.

We saw a version of Cervantes masterpiece, Don Quixote, in bits and pieces that were usually funny, but sometimes effectively hid the deeper meaning of what Mr C was getting.

I suppose the playwright/adaptor Octavio Solis could argue that the staging was rambunctious and loud because he was speaking to a jaded and deaf audience, kind of like Flannery O'Connor maybe. Only the genius of the backstage boffins of OSF could bring this off and even then it was sometimes a close call.

Worse yet, it was outdoors in the cool of the evening in the Elizabethan theatre. Never again in October. Maybe in July or August. I must confess I heard the songs of Man of La Mancha going through my head. Armando Duran played a splendid Don Quixote. His horse was good too, especially the one who played the rear part.