Music Blog

Portland native Esperanza Spalding won two Grammys Sunday night. Her record Radio Music Society won "Best Jazz Vocal Album." The song "City of Roses" won "Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists" for Spalding and her mentor and co-arranger Thara Memory. Spalding and Memory accepted the award together onstage. Here is last summer's performance of the song at a benefit concert for the American Music Program, the jazz education program headed by Memory.

Thursday night at 8 on OPB-TV Thursday night at 8, the special Masters of Jazz profiles Thara Memory and the role he's played in teaching and mentoring young jazz musicians in Portland.

It features interviews and performances by Esperanza Spalding and saxophone player Hailey Niswanger, interviews with other young students in the program, and some remarkable footable of Memory teaching his class the nuances of jazz performance and study. You can also find the program on-demand at the Art Beat website later this week.

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