Portland State Magazine Spring 2018

12 between the word “job” and the word “gig” is a reflection of Grant’s artist mindset and perhaps discomfort with the idea of settling in to a confining routine. Even though he’s taught at PSU longer than any other jazz faculty, the position represents only the hub of his professional life—not the whole thing. “I’ve never seen this as a job. I see it as a platform,” he says as he looks around at all the accoutrements of his Lincoln Hall office: a Steinway baby grand piano, computers, copiers. “I have all the tools to do everything I want,” he says. At PSU, that has included helping to establish the jazz degree program; founding the Leroy Vinnegar Jazz Institute, which puts on performances and educational events to connect jazz with the Portland community; and starting LV’s Uptown Jazz Lounge at University Place. At one point, he was offered the chair of the piano program at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston but chose to stay at PSU. “When I turned that down, I started thinking about why I really wanted to stay here and what I wanted to do. I decided I wanted to try to connect the music more with the community,” Grant was quoted as saying in Rhythm in the Rain, a book by jazz journalist and radio personality Lynn Darroch. “I was looking for a sense of community, a place where I could make a contribution and serve.” For example, he wrote and recorded an extended suite about Oregon called “The Territory,” which balanced the ideas of Oregon as a utopia with its troubling history of oppression against blacks. In the same vein, he composed and performed the suite “Step By Step” about Ruby Bridges, the first African American child to attend an all-white public elementary school in the American South. He’s currently applying for funding to write a chamber opera about gentrification in Northeast Portland. In 2017 Grant contacted some local musicians and organized a performance in the Elliott State Forest in Southwest Oregon as a way to bring attention to the possible sale of the land. The project included hauling a piano on a rental truck up steep, bumpy logging roads. “In a way it was like giving something back. The land has inspired me, and I wanted to go to the forest and see what came out musically,” he said in an Oregon Public Broadcasting interview. guitarist Dan Balmer performed a lot with Grant in his early days in Portland and is impressed with how far-reaching Grant’s influence has become. “One of the things that make him special is the number and variety of different directions he’s gone since he’s been in Portland,” he says. “He has a different awareness of various things. He navigates different waters.” The challenge is how to pack it all in. Grant, 56, is an early riser, and will often come to campus and practice from 6 to 7 a.m., then go home to make his son’s breakfast and see him off to school. He’ll come back and put in a full day at work, go home at 6 p.m. for dinner, then head out the door to play a gig with one of his two bands (he has a trio and a quartet), or as part of another ensemble. He also has some album projects he wants to do, and he’s promised himself he will write a book. He came to the conclusion last year that the schedule was not sustainable, so he hired a manager to help keep him organized. Looking back at his two decades of work at PSU, he sees music and his teaching of music not as ends in themselves, but as a path to something larger—a communication channel to tap into the soul and communicate truth without words. “I have students all over town from these 21 years doing amazing things—making music, serving in the legislature, being lawyers, starting companies,” he says. “My belief is that artistic training is an incredible way to become an effective human being.”  John Kirkland is a staff member in the PSU Office of University Communications . LOCAL JAZZ WAFFLING GRANT’S COMPOSITION “THE TERRITORY” BALANCES THE IDEAS OF OREGON AS A UTOPIA WITH ITS TROUBLING HISTORY OF OPPRESSION AGAINST BLACKS.