Portland State Magazine Spring 2014

8 PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE SPRING 2014 Fanfare WE WANT TO HEAR about your books and recordings and your future exhibits, performances, and directing ventures. Contact the magazine by emailing psumag@pdx.edu , or mailing Portland State Magazine, Office of University Communications, PO Box 751, Portland OR 97207-0751. Remembering Freedom Summer NEW YORK TIMES critic Nate Chinen called it one of the finer piano trio albums of 2013. The “it” was The Endless Mysteries by George Colligan, jazz area coordinator in PSU’s School of Music. Colligan, 44, is a jazz pianist, drummer and trumpeter who has performed on more than 100 CDs as a sideman backing up some of the greats of contemporary jazz. He’s also an award-winning composer and a former faculty member at Julliard. The Endless Mysteries , released at the end of last year, is a collection of original Colligan pieces recorded in a few hours with no rehearsal. Chen refers to it as “the product of rough-and-ready post-bop expertise.” We call it cool virtuosity and a rich listening experience. FIFTY YEARS after activists claimed the seats of the MIssissippi delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention to demand equal voting rights for African Americans in that state, PBS will debut the documentary Freedom Summer about that turbulant time in Mississippi. Cyndee Readdean’95 produced the film for Firelight Media, a nonprofit that tells the stories that mainstream media often neglect. She tracked down people who were there, interviewing and filming their recollections. Readdean has produced or directed nearly 30 educational films, including another Firelight Media documentary for PBS about the Black Panthers. Freedom Summer appears on PBS’s American Experience June 24. A wow for the jazz world