Vanport's Siren Song at Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble

Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble (PJCE) reconvenes the creative team for its acclaimed From Maxville to Vanport project to create a new song and talk about the unique towns of Maxville and Vanport in Oregon’s history. This event continues PJCE’s monthly PJCE Online series focused on new jazz music by and discussion with Portland-based artists. It is offered with sliding scale tickets as part of Vanport Mosaic’s annual Vanport Mosaic Festival.

Lyricist S. Renee Mitchell, vocalist Marilyn Keller, and composer/pianist Ezra Weiss have collaborated to create a new song, “Vanport’s Siren Song,” as an addition to the From Maxville to Vanport suite, originally composed in 2018....

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Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble (PJCE) reconvenes the creative team for its acclaimed From Maxville to Vanport project to create a new song and talk about the unique towns of Maxville and Vanport in Oregon’s history. This event continues PJCE’s monthly PJCE Online series focused on new jazz music by and discussion with Portland-based artists. It is offered with sliding scale tickets as part of Vanport Mosaic’s annual Vanport Mosaic Festival.

Lyricist S. Renee Mitchell, vocalist Marilyn Keller, and composer/pianist Ezra Weiss have collaborated to create a new song, “Vanport’s Siren Song,” as an addition to the From Maxville to Vanport suite, originally composed in 2018.

The new song adds more detail and emotional urgency to the suite, further depicting the impact of the 1948 flood that destroyed Vanport in a matter of hours, rendering nearly 20,000 residents homeless overnight. It was a terrible day for all Vanport residents, but the tragedy was compounded for Black Oregonians because they were actively excluded from living in Portland proper.

The “siren song” of the title was the promise of good jobs during the war, where Black Portlanders hoped to turn this opportunity into a long lasting livelihood. The song celebrates the creativity and resilience of these people who persisted in Portland by forming new communities despite the resistance of racist Portland leaders and residents, in addition to recounting the terror of the flood.

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