North Portland Jazz Club The 1905 Reopens Friday

The Christopher Brown Quartet plays The 1905′s first concert, nearly six months after the club’s abrupt closure.

Stageview at the 1905, photo courtesy of Chris Pfeifer.
By Andrew Jankowski

The 1905, a central hub for Portland’s local and touring jazz musicians, will reopen on Friday April 19. The Christopher Brown Quartet, an award-winning jazz group, will christen the club’s revived stage.

Musical acts, including trumpeter Farnell Newton, the Mel Brown B-3 Organ Group, and saxophonist Hailey Niswanger, will round out The 1905′s first week back in business since abruptly closing last November after announcing financial issues, followed by allegations of unpaid wages.

Chris Pfeifer, who has taken over as The 1905′s operator with a new team, told WW that the venue′s first four shows sold out in under 90 minutes, but guests can still hear concerts from the club’s patio, which will serve its full pizza menu under new chef Jon Wiley.

“The outpouring from the moment that we announced that we were going to take over operations and crack everything open has just been amazing,” Pfeifer says.

The 1905 will scale back from hosting shows seven days a week to five, reserving Mondays and Tuesdays for special events or last-minute show openings for touring musicians. Pfeiffer hopes by June to serve weekly Sunday Sauce chef’s pasta specials.

The 1905 initially opened in October 2016 on North Mississippi Avenue, nearly across the street from Mississippi Studios. The 1905 soon inherited the mantle as Portland’s go-to home for jazz when downtown club Jimmy Mak’s closed that New Year’s Eve and namesake founder Jimmy Makarounis died in 2017.

Pfeifer notes The 1905′s opening is helping him work out the kinks of his other long-smoldering projects, like the music club 400 and the restaurant Corbett & McCleay, in the building that once held the restaurant Greek Cuisina. Pfeifer says the new owners completed a year’s worth of renovations in January and that the ongoing design work could see the spaces open as soon as next year.

“We had two [groups of] people that we had to convince: one were the musicians, which we did, and second was the patrons, and they came out in force, so I think we did our job now,” Pfeifer says.

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