David Ornette Cherry with COMIN' AND GOIN' to Honor Jim Pepper at Artists Rep

Organic Nation Listening Club returns to Artists Rep with Jazz and World Music composer David Ornette Cherry's new show COMIN' AND GOIN', a special evening of music performance that integrates music with storytelling about Portland's late, great, Native American musician Jim Pepper on Tuesday, October 17 at 7:30pm.

Cherry and his host of Portland musicians will take the audience into a deep listening space of images and emotional landscapes. Throughout the evening, the musicians on stage will share stories about their interactions with Pepper, who spent a large part of his life in Portland. Humor, warmth and political awareness from these multi-cultural origins are integrated into an uplifting evening of jazz performance.

This is the third Organic Nation Listening Club series at Artist Rep. Cherry received a Regional Arts and Culture Council grant to produce this show about the Portland music legend, Jim Pepper, featuring the music and tales of some of Portland's finest musical talents.

This year's Organic Nation Listening Club COMIN' AND GOIN' show will include this host of influential Portland musicians led by David Ornette Cherry:

· Renato Caranto (reeds/storytelling) out front with his smoldering tenor saxophone, is the man with more soul in his little finger than most of us have in our whole bodies.

· David Ornette Cherry (keys/spirit flute/melodica/dousn' gounni/storytelling) son of jazz great Don Cherry, he is a composer and improviser with an eclectic background.

· Chet Clark (storytelling) born in 1939, he is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation who is widely known for his involvement with Native American contemporary music and activism.

· Carlton Jackson (drums/soundscape/storytelling) whose drumming is "intensely musical."

· John Mazzocco (bass/storytelling) who has played music since dinosaurs ruled the world.

· LaRhonda Steele (vocals/storytelling) whose journey has brought her to Portland and beyond culminating into an powerful legacy of musical experiences.

· Norman Sylvester (guitar/vocals/storytelling) whose mission, as one of the area's elder Bluesmen, is to share the history of American Music, and how culture has influenced its journey. With the belief that "music heals the soul," he uses his talent to do just that whenever he can.

ABOUT JIM PEPPER
Jim Pepper (1941-1992) was a Kaw-Muscogee Native American jazz saxophonist, composer and singer from Salem, Oregon. He came to prominence in the late 1960s as a member of The Free Spirits, an early jazz-rock fusion group who first recorded his best-known song, "Witchi Tai-To." Pepper went on to a lengthy career in jazz, recording almost a dozen albums as a bandleader and appearing as sideman with the likes of drummer Paul Motian and pianist MAl Waldron, often incorporating elements of Native American music into his style. In his own projects, Pepper recorded with Don Cherry, Naná Vasconcelos, Collin Walcott, Kenny Werner, John Scofield, Ed Schuller, Hamid Drake, and many others. His CD Comin' and Goin' (1984) is the definitive statement of Pepper's unique "American Indian jazz." He died of lymphoma, aged 50. The Jim Pepper Native Arts Festival is held annually in Portland's Parkrose area.

ABOUT DAVID ORNETTE CHERRY
David Ornette Cherry grew up in Watts, California. This Watts young man later won the 2003 ASCAP- Chamber Music America Award for adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music. He writes, arranges and improvises music from sunrise to sunset. The pulses and melodies that arise from his jazz, classical, African, world music background, and from playing with some of the great jazz artists of our times, speak about our human experiences through the language of sound. He listens with an open heart and fresh mind to his collaborators and the world around him in a way that makes his compositions not only music, but a way of life, a positive form of energy, and a way to connect. He also trains young musicians in world music, theory, and piano. David was born the same year Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry recorded their first album, SOMETHIN ELSE. The ambient music streaming through his childhood was generated by the early collaborations of his dad, Don Cherry, with Coleman and the musicians who visited his parents' Mariposa Avenue home in Los Angeles. However, it was a wood-chopping accident one summer in Sweden that sealed David's musical fate as he was confined to music study and later performing with his Dad at the age of 16 years old. For more, visit www.davidornettecherry.com.

ABOUT ARTISTS REPERTORY THEATRE

Artists Repertory Theatre's mission is to produce intimate, provocative theatre and provide a home for artists and audiences of varied backgrounds to take creative risks. Artists Rep is Portland's premiere mid-size regional theatre company and is led by Artistic Director Dámaso Rodríguez and Managing Director Sarah Horton. Founded in 1982, Artists Repertory Theatre is the longest-running professional theatre company in Portland. Artists Rep became the 72nd member of the League of Resident Theatres (LORT) in 2016 and is an Associate Member of the National New Play Network (NNPN).

Artists Rep's 2017/18 season of play selections for the company's 35th anniversary season can be found here.

Artists Rep offers the second year of their groundbreaking Frontier Series which presents internationally acclaimed artists who are reimagining how theatre is created and shared. The 2017/18 series features three bold new works: They, Themself and Schmerm by Becca Blackwell (New York), The Holler Sessions by Frank Boyd (Seattle) and White Rabbit Red Rabbit by Nassim Soleimanpour (Iran). These are limited, one weekend engagements, offering Portland audiences access to fresh touring performances from around the world. The Frontier Series is curated by Jerry Tischleder, Artists Rep ArtsHub Director and Artistic Director of Risk/Reward Festival.

Artists Rep has become a significant presence in American Regional Theatre with a legacy of world, national and regional premieres of provocative new work with the highest standards of stagecraft. The organization is committed to local artists and features a company of Resident Artists, professionals of varied theatre disciplines, who are a driving force behind Artists Rep's creative output and identity.

Artists Rep is committed to developing new work through its new play development program Table|Room|Stage. With T|R|S, Artists Rep strives to empower and support Oregon-based playwrights while also creating a Portland home for writers from around the country to develop their work. Additionally, this program strives to make a meaningful impact on diversity, equity and inclusion in the theatre field by mandating opportunities for women writers and writers of color, and cultivating the next generation of theatre-goers by creating work specifically for young people (13 and up). Artists Rep makes a vital impact on the Portland arts community with its ArtsHub, creating space and offering a home to 12 multidisciplinary arts organizations within its facility.

RESIDENT ARTISTS - Artists Rep productions feature the work of a core group of over two dozen multidisciplinary theatre professionals. Hailing from around the country, our Resident Artists are nationally renowned and award-winning actors, directors, writers, designers and educators who have chosen to make Portland and Artists Rep their artistic home. Working together and independently, they create inventive and theatrically rich experiences for our audiences while playing a major role in defining Portland's cultural landscape.

TABLE|ROOM|STAGE - Established in 2015, Table|Room|Stage (T|R|S) is Artists Rep's robust new play program that offers development opportunities for local and national playwrights, and ensures that underrepresented voices are heard on stage. With this program, Artists Rep is committed to bringing the work of exciting women, transgender and non-binary writers and writers of color to its stages. Artists Rep's first completed T|R|S commission was The Talented Ones, by Yussef El Guindi. The will produce Larissa Fasthorse's The Thanksgiving Play as part of their regular season in April. Current playwright commissions include: Linda Alper, Larissa Fasthorse, Hansol Jung, Dael Orlandersmith, Steve Rathje and Andrea Stolowitz. The works created by these writers through T|R|S will establish Artists Rep and Portland as an engine for new play development and will enrich the national new play landscape. To learn more about all the projects, playwrights and programs of Table|Room|Stage visit here.

ARTSHUB - Artists Rep is also home to the growing ArtsHub, where 12 arts organizations find a home in the building. A diverse range of artists and arts organizations can thrive here with access to affordable administrative, performance and rehearsal space, as well as a myriad of support services. The ArtsHub serves as a community arts center, where its performance venues and lobbies buzz with creative energy and Portland's arts-loving audiences can gather. Over the last year, more than 500 performances, events and happenings by Portlanders found a place in Artists Rep's building. To learn about the arts organizations Artists Rep's ArtsHub visit here.

The 2017/18 Artists Repertory Theatre season is presented by Ronni Lacroute David & Christine Vernier, and The Robert & Mercedes Eichholz Foundation. Other season support comes from: The Collins Foundation; The Renaissance Foundation; Regional Arts Culture Council; Oregon Community Foundation; Oregon Arts Commission, a state agency; Meyer Memorial Trust; James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation; and Work for Art.

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