Salon
des Refuses
Medicine
Hat Gallery, 1834 NE Alberta St., 778-7700. 9:30 pm Wednesday,
Sept. 13. $3.
B-3
Organ Trio
Reverb
Records,
3623
SE Hawthorne Blvd., 736-9110. 8 pm Monday, Sept. 18 and
25. $4; under 12 free
w/
Bruce Carter
Portland
State University, Smith Center, 1825 SW Broadway, 725-3011.
6 pm Wednesday,
Sept. 20.
Magnets!
with Kim Clarke and Ronnie Burrage
Portland
State University, Smith Center, 1825 SW Broadway, 725-3011.
Wednesday, Oct. 11. Free.
Plus a
full concert TBA, Saturday, Oct. 14.
Some artists feel a certain itch, an unslakeable hunger
for perpetual change, an internal nag that nudges them toward
the new with the persistent electric tickle of a cattle
prod.
Such is the plight of Rob Scheps, the 35-year-old sax slinger
and scene maker who has added a unique national focus to
Portland's jazz scene since his arrival in town three summers
ago. "I have to be a man of action," says Scheps, a towering
tenor and soprano reed man, in his typical mile-a-minute
hipster/impresario flurry. "If there's an artist of stature
close by, I'd be crazy not to try and play with him."
Born in Eugene, Scheps grew up in Long Island, as what
might be called a late-blooming prodigy. He earned a considerable
reputation by 16 and schooled at the New England Conservatory.
His pilgrimages to jazz's twin meccas of Boston and New
York started a stupendous musical binge. From jazz gurus
like Gil Evans, George Russell and Gunther Schuller to avant-gardists
like Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton and Julius Hemphill to
shtick-happy classical clown PDQ Bach and crooner Mel Torme,
Scheps played with everyone.
Today, the saxophonist peppers his bop speak with hyperbole
and soundbite bits that could easily grace any music-industry
tabloid buzz bin. Of course, if Scheps were musically tongue-tied,
those words would be wasted. Luckily, the guy walks his
talk. His playing can be spacious and feathery, as in his
work with diva Nancy King and bass colossus Glen Moore.
He can also stand up to the heaviest rhythm gale, like those
conjured by longtime friend and partner Alan Jones in the
Neidlinger and Rudd shows, with a brawny tone and muscular
delivery. Even when his playing nudges the edge of the avant-jazz,
there's a brittle clarity to his lines and a logic to his
harmonic probing.
Maybe his most refreshing trait is his equal passion for
jazz and funk, which drives no elitist division between
the two. This rare enthusiasm comes to the forefront in
his latest act of derring-do, a Medicine Hat Gallery gathering
dubbed Salon des Refuses, modeled after boho klatsches on
Paris'
Left Bank.
"We're going against the grain with this and taking all
the freaks to the east side," says Scheps with mock disparagement.
The self-proclaimed "hip little madhouse" acts as an open
forum for the whirlwind of his ever-changing moods. Four
to eight players, culled from a revolving roster of jazz,
funk and rock musicians, show for the bi-weekly gig. A two-bass
sparring team of acoustician Glen Moore and electric man
Dan Schollard (whom Scheps terms "by far the best funk bass
player around") provide the pulse. Whirling dervish Alan
Jones is a regular in the drum chair.
Musically, Scheps says the goal is to combine the free
jazz pastiche of Coltrane's "Ascension" with the throb and
drone of '70s funk. "This band is much more open to chance
than my other bands," Scheps says of the marriage of structure
and freedom he calls "a kaleidoscope of sound with nightly
texture
adjustment."
In the Salon's first Wednesday night hearing, Scheps' new
piece--appropriately titled "Fuck Protocol"--had the band's
thrashing harmonic chorus battling a trio of interpretive
painters doing a Jackson Pollock take on their impressions
of the music. It was an interdisciplinary trick that would've
had fingers snapping at North Beach's Beat-happy dive Spec's
back in the '50s. Future plans include like-minded jousts
with local poets.
Such a backward glance to tradition should serve the forward-looking
musician well as he puts the Salon on hiatus for October
in order to tackle his next "happening," a West Coast tour
with Magnets!, the funk outfit he co-fronts with Defunkt
bassist Kim Clarke. Before that, look for the jazz half
of his personality to show itself. On Sept. 23--John Coltrane's
birthday--Scheps will be somewhere in our fair city, blowing
shards of sound in an all-Trane revue.
"As far as I'm concerned," says the Trane disciple, "it's
a national holiday." The venue is still TBA, but says the
sax man, "I'll make
it happen."
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