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.

Medford Jazz Jubilee I & OSF Too

For the last twenty-one years the city of Medford has put together a musical gathering, usually emphasizing traditional jazz, during the 2nd weekend in October. We have only gone to two of these, last year and because that was so much fun, we decided to go again this year.

There were several good big bands, including a group of talented high school kids called the Oregon Coast Lab Band, some very traditional Dixieland groups, and other more modern groups including some younger guys and singers, and a zydeco group. All very entertaining. Another thing that was emphasized this year was the dancing. Wow, that was impressive. See the picture from the Mail Tribune above left.

After listening most of the afternoon to the music in Medford we went back to Ashland to see Clifford Odets' Paradise Lost. As usual everything about this was high quality. Us old folks probably enjoyed it especially because we heard our grandparents talk the way many of the stereotypes did in this 1930s Great Depression era. It was full of the common bromides of the day. Not sure if any of these apply now to the Great Recession we seem now to be in. The title comes, I suspect, from Milton epic poem of the same name, having to do with the Fall of man, perhaps captured in this Blake image of Satan observing the caresses of Adam and Eve.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival I

That is a fairly new building at the airport in Medford above, at least I didn't remember it from the trip in the Spring. The whole airport looks new.

Because Billings is far away from the centers of population in this country we need to get up at
4 am in order to let the TSA do their thing to allow you to catch a 6 am flight to Seattle, and then change planes to catch another to Medford OR, arriving about mid-day on Wednesday.

We picked up some nice wine and cheese snacks from The Market of Choice. Oh yes, because of the Jazz Jubilee in Medford and the fact that I forgot to reserve a car we wind up with a fancy SUV from Hertz, but they did give me a 10% discount because I was old. We fall into bed early at The Plaza, our favorite hotel in Ashland.