The Ocular Concern

The creative jazz ensemble known as the Ocular Concern, hailing from Portland, Oregon, initially formed as a trio consisting of Andrew Oliver—who co-established the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble back in 2007—handling electric piano duties, alongside Dan Duval on electric guitar and Stephen Pancerev handling drums. Their first recording came in the shape of a self-titled EP released in 2011, blending electric creative jazz with post-minimalist elements and influences drawn from Eastern European and Middle Eastern traditions. In August of that same year, guest clarinetist and saxophonist David Evans joined them to perform Oliver's original composition accompanying a showing of the 1966 Japanese monster film Gamera vs. Barugon at Portland's Hollywood Theatre. The project's success prompted the group to contemplate making a clarinetist a permanent fixture, and upon the 2012 relocation of Oakland, California-based reed player Lee Elderton to Portland, he joined as the fourth member. The lineup grew further into a quintet through the inclusion of Portland percussionist Nathan Beck, who contributed vibraphone and mbira; as part of the ten-piece Zimbabwean-style dance ensemble Boka Marimba, Beck had spent 18 months in Zimbabwe studying the mbira, the Shona people's traditional thumb piano. Oliver and Duval started composing fresh material for this quintet configuration. In 2013, Duval received a grant from Portland's Regional Arts & Culture Council to compose and perform new works with an enlarged group that incorporated the quintet of Oliver, Duval, Elderton, Beck, and Pancerev, augmented by violinist Erin Furbee, violist Brian Quincey, and cellist Justin Kagan—affiliated with both the Oregon Symphony Orchestra and the Neah-Kah-Nie Project String Quartet—as well as bandoneonist Alex Krebs of Krebsic Orkestar and the Alex Krebs Tango Quartet. That summer, the Ocular Concern tracked Sister Cities at Portland's Map Room Studio under engineer Josh Powell, with the PJCE label—affiliated with the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble—issuing the album in January 2014. Five selections featured solely the core ensemble, while the four-part "Sister Cities Suite" involved the quintet joined by Furbee, Quincey, Kagan, and Krebs. Two movements originated from Oliver and two from Duval, with the suite's score derived from musical notation linked to letters within the names of Portland's ten global sister cities. Overall, the suite and album considerably broadened the sonic range beyond the 2011 EP, fusing creative chamber jazz, electric fusion textures, post-minimalist contemporary composition, and worldwide influences spanning Argentina to Zimbabwe into a distinctive sonic blend.