Imagine you’re a young jazz saxophonist, fresh out of college and living in Manhattan. The year is 1977: John Travolta is dancing at the discoteque in Saturday Night Fever, America is swept up in three-piece suits and neck scarves, and you have just landed a spot in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messangers, a group that’s been the definitive New York jazz ensemble for more than two decades. This is the beginning of Bobby Watson’s long love affair with jazz.

Since then, Watson, who plays the Oxford jazz series this weekend in Bend, has become a jazz powerhouse, working with some of the best jazz musicians alive and directing numerous ensembles like the Grammy-nominated Tailor Made Big Band. He has played the sax on more than 100 albums released by pretegious labels such as Blue Note, Palmetto and Columbia Records.

Actor Robert DeNiro had him to write and record an original composition for his 1993 directorial debut movie, A Bronx Tale. Watson spoke to us in a phone interview a few weeks ago from his hometown where he is currently Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music.

Of all his success, jazz accolades, directorships and recordings Watson said he still looks back to those early days in New York City as the foundation for the sound he’ll bring to three shows at The Oxford this weekend in his Bend debut. Joining Watson onstage is Portland’s Mel Brown Sextet.

“My greatest achievement in my life was being accepted, embraced and respected by the jazz community when I first came to New York,” said Watson.

Despite the diverse styles of jazz that were prominent at the time, such as jazz funk, latin jazz, avant-jazz and fusion, Watson describes the New York jazz scene as a brother and sisterhood. The image of collegial cooperation runs contrary to popular jazz history that emphasizes the rivalry between players and styles.

“When I got to New York I dropped a lot of labels and categories that I learned in school,” explained Watson, who received formal training at the University of Miami, a school known for its jazz program. “Once you become part of the community of musicians—which is what it is, a community, a village—and you know people personally, those divisions sort of fade away.”

His community included master musician and keyboardist Herbie Hancock, drummers Max Roach and Louis Hayes, fellow saxaphonist George Coleman and trumpetor Wynton Marsalis.

Watson’s musical style leans toward a punchy, hard-bop jazz, yet he spent many pre-dawn hours in the loft of multi-instrumentalist Sam Rivers, listening to free jazz after the commercial clubs had closed. He cites Rivers as being one of his greatestest influences, despite their distinctly different styles.

You can hear many stylistic influences, including free jazz, in the sounds of Lemoncello, an original Watson composition recorded in 2004 with the acclaimed Horizon ensemble. The seven-minute piece is the first track on the hit album Horizon Reassembled. The song is dominated by an upbeat, melodic chorus, which is dissected, deconstructed and seemlessly pieced back together with solos by Watson on sax, Terrell Stafford on trumpet and Edward Simon on piano. The group has an invigorating feel and has been dubbed the “happy band.”

“I like to try and celebrate this life and I think it comes out in my playing,” said Watson. “I like hope, optimism, because I think that’s what I heard in Charlie Parker...Through it all, hope has to stay there, it makes life more worth living.”

Watson’s three performances are the sixth installment of the “Jazz at the Oxford” series, which has featured artists such as vocalist and pianist Diane “Deedles” Schuur and, most recently, Portland-based pianist and composer Darrell Grant.

Although this is Watson’s first trip to Bend, this will not be his first time performing with Mel Brown, whose ensemble played the Jazz at the Oxford series in January.

“If you are part of the [jazz] community and you get around, you meet Mel Brown,” said Watson. “Because he’s one of those guys who has influenced a lot of people in his area. I am really looking forward to playing with him.”

Bobby Watson with The Mel Brown Septet
$45 at bendticket.com

8pm, Fri., March 16; 5pm and 8pm, 

Sat., March 17

The Oxford Hotel, 10 NW Minnesota Ave.

“Hey, are you guys here to see the band?”

“We are the band.”

That’s how my night starts at The Horned Hand when five young guys drift up to the bar looking confused. Apparently, they are Animal Eyes. And, apparently, they are playing a show later.

These guys are inconspicuous, to say the least. Probably because they are all barely 21-years-old and were born and raised in Homer, Alaska. They don’t look like the types who would rock the roof off a venue but somehow, in a town of about 5,000, they developed a unique brand of worldly folk rock that’s turning heads in Oregon.

“Pretty much no bands come there. I didn’t see one big show in Alaska,” explains Tyler Langham, one of two guitarists and one of three vocalists.

Without a lot of live music, the band was left to discover their own style. They will be bringing their passionate and unpretentious indie rock-and-roll to a second show at Silver Moon Brewing on Friday.

Peter Yarrow, Mary Travers and Noel Paul Stookey sang about "the hammer of justice," "the bell of freedom" and "the song about love between my brothers and my sisters, all over this land," many times as their version of Pete Seeger and Lee Hayes' "If I Had a Hammer" rose to number 10 on the Billboard national pop singles chart.

But one day was different.

This was not the trendy folk clubs of Greenwich Village or the friendly confines of a Northeast coffee shop.

The date was August 28, 1963, and the place was the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in a brimming mall on a balmy, 84-degree day in Washington, DC. where Dr. Martin Luther King was about to deliver one of the most stirring and famous speeches in history, “I Have a Dream.”

Before last week, I was not familiar with the term “Janxta Funk.”

After talking to Brian J, the front man of The Pimps of Joytime, however, I find it to be an aptly descriptive phrase that makes perfect sense, especially when used to describe the sound of this Brooklyn-based band.

First, some background. To understand Janxta Funk you need to have a basic understanding of the types of funk music out there. According to Brian J, there are two primary types of funk: the polished, crisp sound of bands like Kool and the Gang and the more raw sound exhibited by bands like Sly and Family Stone.

You also need to have a handle on the term, “janky,” a word used to describe something that's kinda half-put together, wrapped in duct tape and is always in danger of rattling apart. An amalgamation of janky and gangster, Janxta Funk is a term coined by Brian J to describe the vibe of his band, which has been churning out dance-worthy cuts.

Tony Smiley has always wanted to play rock music, but he doesn’t want to be in a band. He’s been there, done that and the rock band dynamic just isn’t for him. This would be the end of the line for most aspiring rock musicians. Time to clip on the Guitar Center nametag or start giving guitar lessons to Nirvana-loving junior high kids, right?

Smiley is indeed still playing rock music and he still doesn’t have a band. The 37-year-old Hood River-native now based outside of Vancouver, Wash., is making the best music of his career and he’s doing it all on his own with the help of a few loop pedals and an arsenal of instruments ranging from keyboards to drums. His appeal here in Central Oregon has boomed in the past year and he plays one of his most notable shows in the region on Thursday night at McMenamins Old St. Francis School. At this show – and all his shows, for that matter – Smiley is surrounded by a tangle of wires, guitars and, of course, effects pedals, and takes his audiences’ initial confusion and molds it into an all-out raging dance party when he sees fit.