Join us for PJCE’s annual fundraiser in the style of “Iron Chef”
Secure your spot now at the Historic Alberta House! Dinner and drinks included in ticket price. Our biggest fundraiser of the year is not to be missed!
Three composers will head off in a friendly competition—who can create the most delicious, the most delightful, the most delectable new composition using the secret ingredient esperanza spauldings’ tune, “City of Roses“.
Local jazz mainstays and celebrities will provide colorful critiques and be the ultimate judges of who cook’s up the tastiest tune! Hosted by vocalist, performer, activist, and PJCE Board member extraodinare, Marilyn Keller, the night will feature an evening of new jazz from the PJCE chamber quintet, great food from Willie Mae’s Country & Soul catering, drinks, and more!
Happening in tandem will be our silent auction! See all the available items and place your bids now.
Our 2025 fundraising event is in-person at the Historic Alberta House. Dinner, drinks, and dessert are all included in ticket price. Vegetarian options will be available. Come hungry (and thirsty) to enjoy an evening of great jazz and support our upcoming programs at PJCE!
Tickets are geenral admission for $65 until April 1st. After April 1st, tickets increase to $75. All PJCE sustainers receive 50% one ticket, and 40% off every ticket after that!
Sponsored tickets are avialable. Please contact Meg Morrow at meg@pjce.org to learn more
Can’t make the event? Check out our ongoing silent auction items and bid one of the many great products and experiances. All proceeds form the silent auction support operations for PJCE in our upcoming season.
The Composers tasked with cooking up a new arrangment of “CIty of Roses”
Sherry Alves’ performances are an exploration of the great song writers and story tellers of the past and present. Her clear tone and improvisatory vocal approach create fresh and nuanced musical experiences. Her debut album You Can Have Him was released in 2011 on Teal Creek Records. She is also the featured vocalist on Brazilian composer and pianist, Cassio Vianna’s 2013 record Letters to Grace: A Song Cycle.
Sherry performs regularly in the Portland area, sharing the bandstand with Mel Brown, George Colligan, Christopher Woitach, Keller Coker, Dan Balmer, and many more. As a founding member of the American Metropole Orchestra, she arranged for and performed with the likes of Allen Toussaint, Lizz Wright, Martha Reeves, Jose James, Kurt Elling, Dave Frishberg, and Lynn Anderson. At the University of Northern Colorado, she shared the stage with the New York Voices and Aubrey Logan as a member of the Downbeat Award-winning vocal ensemble Vocal Lab, under the direction of Kerry Marsh. In 2018, she was a backup singer for Sara Bareilles at the Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington, D.C.
Sherry Alves is the Instructor of Jazz Voice at Portland State University where she teaches applied jazz voice, improvisation, jazz pedagogy, jazz vocal ensembles and combos, and special topics in music history. She has served on faculty of Western Oregon University, Metropolitan State University of Denver, and Portland Community College Rock Creek. Ms. Alves is pursuing a Doctor of Arts in Music with a Jazz Studies emphasis from the University of Northern Colorado. Her areas of emphasis include Vocal Jazz Pedagogy and Performance, with a secondary emphasis in Jazz Arranging. She holds a Bachelor of Music and Master of Music from Western Oregon University.
Renée Favand-See is a composer and soprano living in Portland, Oregon. Her works explore the music of words, natural and made environments, emotions and spiritual questions. These investigations yield vocal music of all stripes, Musique Concrète-esque electronic pieces, and lyrically driven instrumental music cultivating relationships that unfold in the spaces between voices.
Current projects include a commission for Trio Triumphatrix and Voices of Ascension for their production Astronautica: Voices of Women in Space being premiered in January 2021. Recent projects include: Solitude for soprano Arwen Myers; Ten full moons for Northwest Art Song; Wie der Katz mit der Maus for fEARnoMUSIC; Growing for Portland Piano International; as well as a recording project of her work Only in falling with Resonance Ensemble. Among her commissions are works for Voices of Ascension, Resonance Ensemble, Five Boroughs Music Festival, Lucy Shelton and Eighth Blackbird, Sequitur, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, American Opera Projects, Wet Ink Ensemble, Outer Voices Festival, and cellist Ha-Yang Kim. Other groups who have performed her music include The Julians; Friends of Rain; Electrogals; Del Sol String Quartet; Peabody Trio; and many singers, including Hai-Ting Chinn, Jesse Blumberg, Blythe Gaissert, Hannah Penn, Anna Haagenson, Alissa Rose, Jennifer Aylmer, Kristin Norderval, and William Ferguson.
Renée has written chamber, orchestral, choral and electronic pieces, as well as music for video and dance, including collaborations with Ten Tiny Dances in Portland, TRIP Dance Theatre in Los Angeles, Group Motion in Philadelphia and video artist Christine Sciulli in New York City. Renée has also ventured into theater, with long-time friend and collaborator, Hai-Ting Chinn, with Science Fair, a staged vocal recital produced by HERE Arts Center in New York City.
Her music has been heard at Resonant Bodies Festival, Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space, Joe’s Pub Public, American Opera Projects at South Oxford Space, Opera Index, Outer Voices, and HERE Arts Center in New York City; Agnes Flanagan Chapel, Lincoln Hall and First Presbyterian in Portland; WGBH Radio Boston and Pickman Concert Hall in Cambridge; The Longy School of Music in Paris; New Music New Haven, Kilbourn Concert Series in Rochester; First and Franklin Street Concert Series in Baltimore; and Settlement Music School in Philadelphia.
Levi Saelua is an award-winning composer and saxophonist, Levi Saelua maintains a full schedule playing with and writing for artists and ensembles in a variety of genres. He has performed in theaters and concert halls all over North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, and he regularly performs with Triism, Tenor Explosion, Joe Mazzaferro, Alex Jenkins, and the Capital Jazz Project. He is currently the director of Colossus West and co-director of the Pacific Standard Jazz Orchestra.
Levi began his musical studies at age 6 with the Sacramento Taiko Dan under the direction of Sensei Tiffany Tamaribuchi. At age 9, he began studying saxophone and, five years later, arranged his first piece for jazz combo while attending Rio Americano High School. Upon graduating from Rio Americano’s internationally distinguished jazz program, Levi furthered his music education at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, studying saxophone with Chien-Kwan Lin, Jose Encarnacion, and Charles Pillow, and jazz composition with Bill Dobbins and Dave Rivello. As a student at Eastman, Levi had the opportunity to work with artists such as Bob Brookmeyer, Maria Schneider, Bill Holman, Ryan Truesdell, Jeff Beal, and many others. Since then, he has written for and/or performed with artists such as Bryan McAllister, Casey Lipka, Jacam Manricks, Alexa Tarantino, Marc Broussard, JoDavi, Solabel, the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, and the Sacramento Philharmonic.
The Band
Jimmie Herrod, voice
John Nastos, soprano sax/flute
Kaden Patton, bass clarinet
Rebecca Olason, French horn
Weston Stuart, piano
Machado Mijiga, percussion
The Judges will all be announced soon!
The Host:
After 35 years as a revered member of the Portland music scene, Marilyn Keller has been inducted into the 2016 Jazz Society of Oregon’s Hall of Fame. Not only has Marilyn excelled in Jazz, Ragtime and Dixieland- she started her career as a Top-40 Band Vocalist. Her style has morphed into a wide range of interpretations including R&B, pop, blues, and Gospel. Marilyn’s vocals have been called mesmerizing, flawless, emotional and ethereal. A lady not to be missed on your tour of the Northwest’s best singers.
A career that has extended to tours in Europe and Australia, her magical vocals have appeared on movie soundtracks, numerous recordings, commercials and documentary narratives. Marilyn’s dedication to education includes working with bands and choirs at Portland State University, Jefferson, Grant, Madison and Rex Putnam High Schools- plus many other schools as well as The American Music Program and the Portland Youth Philharmonic.
