Enjoy our free monthly concert series with top Portland musicians! Pack a lunch or stop by one of the many eateries at NE 24th and Glisan, bring your food in (no pork or shellfish, please) and come hear the music! These concerts are semi-acoustic and always enlivening. What better thing is there to do on a Friday afternoon?!

Kerry Politzer is a Portland-based jazz pianist, composer, and educator. She is on the music faculty of Portland State University, and she has also taught at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Swing University, the University of Portland, and the University of Manitoba.
Kerry received her music degree from the New England Conservatory of Music where she studied improvisation and composition with the late jazz guru Charlie Banacos,

She has also been a featured sideman on albums of George Colligan, Laura Dreyer, and the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble (PJCE). Her commissions include works for the PJCE as well as a solo piano piece, "Microclimates," for the pianist Andree-Ann Deschenes.

In 2019, Kerry was awarded a Regional Arts and Culture Council Artistic Focus grant to explore the music of Brazilian composer Durval Ferreira. The project culminated in the August 2019 release of Diagonal: The Music of Durval Ferreira. Kerry continues to be inspired by Brazilian music and studies Portuguese in her spare time.

Ben Graves Guitarist & Composer

Ben was born and raised in Tennessee, close to the musical cities of Nashville and Memphis, where he discovered his love of blues, rock, and jazz. Influenced by Wes Montgomery, Grant Green and John Coltrane at an early age; Ben has developed a style blended with not only jazz elements, but Latin, classical and world music as well.