Ali Ippolito is back this week, TODAY (Saturday, Nov. 14) at 5 pm with Sweet Williams Ghost, the kind of luxurious music that lives in the dreamy recesses beneath the floorboards of roots-rich Americana. It features Ali with Dean Gorman (guitar, vocals) and Ben Cartwright (dobro, lap steel, guitar). And it’s damn fine. You’ll rarely have a chance to hear this kind of thing, this up-close and FOR FREE.  Pull up a chair, get an Armory cocktail and simmer in the sounds. 

LIVE MUSIC EVERY SATURDAY!

PCS & Music Millennium, the place where people and music still matter, invite you to  SOUNDS. LIKE. PORTLAND—our new early evening showcase of the best in local music, every Saturday from 5-7 pm.

November’s artist-in-residence is vibrantly talented Ali Ippolito.

Ali Ippolito (of Heroes and Villians, Nick Jaina fame) writes music with a haunting poetry and quiet authority that simultaneously tugs, pulls, coaxes, vexes, and inspires.

A mezmerizing singer, Ippolito accompanies herself on piano, accordion, and the curious banjolele, giving us fading, sepia-tinged sonic postcards of love and loss. This is music that, to paraphrase the poet Mina Loy, “infects us with unendurable ease/touching nerve-terminals.” And that’s a good thing, folks

Those of you with dreams (or fond memories) of traveling to London to see world-class theatre will soon be able to have that experience right here at home.Third Rail Repertory Theatre is participating in NT Live, a series of live-captured, high-definition broadcasts of performances from London’s National Theatre. NT Live is similar to the Metropolitan Opera’s award-winning series The Met: Live in HD. Third Rail’s participation in NT Live marks the first time these screenings will be available in Portland.

On Saturday, October 24th at 2pm and 7pm, at the World Trade Center Theatre, Third Rail be showing high-definition live-captured presentations of William Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, directed by Marianne Elliot.

Tickets for these screenings are $20. Don’t miss out on this rare chance to be part of a truly global theatrical experience. For reservations go right here or call 503-235-1101.

Recently I was talking to Terry Currier, the sage force and owner of Music Millennium, a 40-year-old icon of indie-biz that’s quite literally a “place where people and music still matter. After talking a bit we realized that the arts and the independent music and book fields share similar struggles—competing with online entertainment, building and retaining audience and the need to foster a larger sense of community to ensure a durable future.

I threw out the idea that while public spaces for creativity (theaters, clubs, art galleries) are vital we actually probably have a symbiotic relationship with “third-spaces” and creative free spaces like the indie-record store, bookstore, library, etc.—we both nurture wonder, conversation and the development of artists. I know that for myself, hanging out in the local record store, listening to the wise-acre behind the counter who knew every nook and cranny of jazz history was every bit as valuable as the teachers I studied with or the gigs I played in clubs.

So in an effort to support locally grown talent, locally grown business and give you all some good music to listen to in the process, Music Millennium joins forces with PCS to present SOUNDS. LIKE. PORTLAND—an early evening showcase of the best in local music, every Saturday from 5-7 pm in the Lobby of the Gerding Theater. Free—and all ages.

For October, in conjunction with our production of Ragtime, we feature blues/ragtime guitar master Mary Flower, jazz-blues-gospel pianist extraordinaire Janice Scroggins + special guests

Harry Houdini in Portland in 1915 suspended from Oregonian building at SW 6th & Alder (Nelson Photo Archive)

In the “melting pot” of the new America depicted in Ragtime, all things seemed possible: planes, cars, sky-scraping, gravity-defying towers fueled by power and wealth. Like Ragtime-New York, the Portland of that era experienced similar visions of open-ended possibility coupled with mounting tension between progress, tradition and rapid cultural change. As writer Daniel Arizona notes, Ragtime deftly captured, “the class struggles and human foibles that underpin moments of innovation and crisis.”

Many accounts of “the Progressive Era” have centered on the concerns of people like Ragtime’s Mother, Father, Younger Brother —and Portland was rife with similar stories and families with names like Corbett, Failing, Elliott, Ladd, and so on. An account of Portland of the same era could easily have issued a similarly startlingly remark as the opening chorus number: “There were no Negroes. There were no immigrants.” But in Portland, as in New Rochelle, that was all changing.

Unidentified woman on bearskin rug, photographed in the “Evelyn Nesbit-style” (Nelson Photo Archive)

Portland in many respects was poised to be a mid-sized Ragtime Metropolis. As jazz historian Bob Dietsche irreverently remarked: “Portland had what it takes to be a jazz city. . .First of all, you had to have a railroad. And a considerable black community, a totally corrupt city hall, illegal gambling and booze, and someone to look after the whole thing.”

Portland grew from 161,000 to 270,000 residents between 1905 and 1910, making it the third fastest growing city in the nation. This also meant that the overwhelmingly homogeneous picture of Portland had to contend with waves of European immigrants (Jews, Slavs, Italians), the fast money that railroads and shipping brought, a growing African-American population, the 1905 Lewis & Clark Expo, labor strife and women’s suffrage, and a widening gulf between the upper and lower classes, among other things.

Mr. E. D. Cannady, one of the founders of Portland's African American newspaper, The Advocate. Cannady worked checking hats and coats at the Portland Hotel. (Nelson Photo Archive)

During the first years of the 20th century, most African Americans in Portland (around 1900, that was about 1,000 people, mainly living near Union Station) were employed with the railroads, as domestics, or by large employers like the Portland Hotel and the Golden West Hotel (which was the only hostelry that catered to African Americans).   Most African Americans lived and worked in downtown, until after the construction of the Broadway Bridge (1913) when much of the African American community moved into the Albina neighborhood. Writing in the Oregonian, Erin Hoover Barnett notes that, “as steamships and railroads flourished, African Americans gained better-paying jobs as Pullman porters, barbers and hotel cooks and waiters, giving rise to a middle class.”

Historian Joseph Schafer, remarked in 1918, “although the populations of Northwestern cities are less complex than are those of Eastern and Middle Western cities, nevertheless one finds everywhere the deep social rift between the ‘masses’ and the ‘classes’ which constitutes the special problem of American democracy.”

PCS’s production of Ragtime offers us an opportunity to take a keen look back at the physical and socio-cultural forces and aspirations that shaped our city (and in many respects continue to influence how we imagine progress and change), as well mine some of the historic connections between Ragtime-era New York and Portland.

JOIN US FOR IDEAS IN PLAY
Portland Center Stage’s IDEAS in PLAY series asks: What do shared stories tell us about who we are and what we believe? Come explore theater, culture and community interconnectedness. Let stories come to life in unexpected ways through conversation-driven programs that ask—what’s the big idea?

History Pub: “The Other Portland: Ethnic Groups & Workers in
Portland’s North End during the 19th and 20th Centuries”
Monday, September 28, 7 pm
McMenamins’ Kennedy School (5736 NE 33rd Avenue)
“There were always two stories of Portland. One was the story of a proper white- and rain-washed town peopled by enterprising New Englanders like Captain John Couch. The other story is closer to reality. In 1890, one third of Portlanders were foreign-born. It was a little United Nations: German brewers, Irish maids and laborers, French prostitutes, Chinese railroad and restaurant workers, Japanese hotel and laundry keepers, African American barbers, porters and waiters; Scandinavians loggers and fishermen, Jewish wholesale merchants, Greek grocers, Filipino cannery workers and Roma fortune tellers.” This month’s History Pub tells the story of that “Other Portland:” Jacqueline Peterson Loomis, Ph.D. of the Old Town History Project shares her insight about multi-ethnic history in Portland’s North End during the 19th and 20th Centuries. Beer & History meet every last Monday at Kennedy School.

Copresented by McMenamins, Oregon Historical Society & Holy Names Heritage Center, in conjunction with Ragtime. History Pub is supported by a grant from Oregon Humanities. FREE; bring canned goods to donate to Oregon Food Bank | All ages welcome

North Portland: from Ragtime to Our Time
Tuesday, September 29, 6 pm
North Portland Library (512 N Killingsworth St)
Lively program looking at race, class, culture and progress in North Portland during the era of Ragtime (1900-1917) and contemporary parallels and patterns—from the Portland Realty Board’s “red-lining” to the development of the Albina Community Plan—with Cathy Galbraith, Bosco-Milligan Architectural Heritage Foundation; Carl Talton, Portland Family of Funds; Jo Ann Bowman of Oregon Action. Panel discussion moderated by Judith Mowry, Office of Neighborhood Involvement. Cosponsored with Coalition for a Livable Future and Multnomah County Library.

Formative Stages: Theater and the Life of the Mind (with Scott Murray MD)
Sunday, October 4, following the 2 pm Matinee of Ragtime
Main Stage, Gerding Theater at the Armory (128 NW Eleventh)
Now in its third season, the Oregon Psychoanalytic Center-cosponsored series delves into issues of power, justice, family, betrayal and bigotry in the award-winning musical. Free with theater admission.

Redirect! Law & Order in the Theater (with Judy Snyder)
Sunday, October 18, following the 2 pm Matinee of Ragtime
Main Stage, Gerding Theater at the Armory (128 NW Eleventh)
A new partnership between Multnomah Bar Association and PCS invites attorneys to roll up their sleeves and take part in lively post-show conversation around themes of law, liberty, justice and freedom in Ragtime. Free with theater admission.

Architecture, Power & Justice in Ragtime-era Portland
Sunday, October 25, 2 pm
Central Library (801 S.W. 10th in downtown Portland)
Discussion moderated by Portland Monthly editor Randy Gragg, featuring historians Jan Dilg and Chet Orloff, and Philip Niles, author of Beauty of the City: A.E. Doyle, Portland’s Architect. Cosponsored by AIA Center for Architecture, in conjunction with the Portland Architecture and Design Festival. FREE

PCS’s Community Programs made possible in part by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, James F. & Marion L. Miller Foundation

For the last two weeks the Armory has been full of Teen musical theater performers honing their craft under the wise tutelage of resident professionals/educators, Chrisse Roccaro, Amy Palomino and Michelle Kopper.

They are giving a Recital on Friday, August 7th at 3:00 pm on the main stage. Please bring family and friends and anyone else you think might enjoy seeing what these performers have been working. Some highlights will be numbers from Hairspray, West Side Story, Working and Crazy For You.