Portland Jazz Hero
Rita Rega can’t remember a time when she wasn’t passionate about jazz. Starting from age seven when she saw Louis Armstrong in the film High Society through her first experience of live jazz with the Charles Mingus Big Band in New York City to her current position as artistic director of the Jazz Society of Oregon-sponsored Cathedral Park Jazz Festival, she has loved, broadcast, written about and advocated for the music she calls “life affirming.”
Rega’s work on behalf of jazz in the Pacific Northwest began in earnest when her husband’s employment took the couple to a small town in southwest Washington state, where she landed a job at a commercial radio station that allowed her to program jazz. Then she joined a nascent board of directors raising funds to start the non-commercial station KMUN FM in Astoria, Oregon, where she hosted jazz shows and interviewed musicians on air. In 1985, when she moved to Portland, she became program director and an on-air host for the short-lived commercial jazz station KKUL; when it changed its format, she became a volunteer deejay on jazz station KMHD. Currently, she hosts a bi-weekly jazz show on Portland community radio station KBOO.
Behind the scenes on the JSO board’s development committee, she helped produce events. She eventually became the Society’s president, writing the “Musician of the Month” column for its monthly publication Jazzscene for 20 years.
In 2015 Rega became involved in programming the annual Cathedral Park jazz fest, an admission-free, three-day, outdoor community established in 1981, which features top local musicians as well as touring acts. A couple of years ago, she took on its artistic directorship as a volunteer. Her contributions have been crucial to the Festival’s longevity and success. After 2020’s event was held online due to the pandemic, the festival returned fully to life in the park in 2021.
Her volunteer advocacy and production activities, enhanced by her vision, make Rita Rega a verty deserving recipient of Portland’s 2022 JJA Jazz Hero award.
“Of course, I am honored by this award,” she says. “I have a very long view of this scene, and I’m happy to still be involved after all these years. My attitude is that there’s still much more to do. I am always looking for the next new thing.” — Lynn Darroch and Rick Mitchell
