NYE First Seating: Jason Okamoto feat. Mike Burdette
For the first dinner seating on New Year’s Eve, Jason Okamoto and featured guest Mike Burdette will perform in a special duo configuration, transporting listeners back to 1920s Paris, when gypsies with guitars, violins and upright basses made the leap from traditional French musette to American “hot jazz” and kept Parisians dancing to this evocative new sound, popularized by guitarist and composer Django Reinhardt.
Jason Okamoto is a self-taught musician and composer based in Portland who combines elements of bossa nova, flamenco guitar and French gypsy jazz using primarily classical (nylon string) guitar and a looping station. Jason’s rich, storied musical history includes being a founding member of Portland’s early idiosyncratic country indie rock band The Flatirons.
Mike Burdette is the bandleader for the popular swing group Stumptown Swing, a well-loved local band closely associated with the network of Lindy Hop, Balboa and swing dance clubs that have made Portland a major center of the Swing Dance revival. Mike is also a founding member of Rio Con Brio, a band known for playing the traditional bossanova, fado and choro music of Brazil.
