Chuck Israels brings his jazz orchestra back to Jack London Revue

The bassist who spent five years in the Bill Evans Trio has made Portland home, and his big band plays Jazz Titan Thursdays on Nov. 5.

Back in 1961, Chuck Israels took over the bass chair in the Bill Evans Trio after Scott LaFaro died. That's about as heavy an inheritance as jazz has. He held it for five years. Next Thursday, November 5, he'll be leading his own orchestra in a Portland basement club, and that's a story worth showing up for.

The Chuck Israels Jazz Orchestra plays Jack London Revue as part of the room's Jazz Titan Thursdays series. According to the TicketWeb listing, doors are at 6 p.m. and the music starts at 7. Tickets start around $21, and the show is 21 and over.

This isn't a one-off. Israels has become a regular fixture of the series. He had the stage on a Thursday in July alongside the Mel Brown B3 Organ Group, per Jazz Oregon, and the venue has hosted him under some memorable billings, including a holiday show titled "No Christmas Music." Our own records show him playing Portland more than anywhere else, fifteen dates and counting.

The résumé explains why players line up to sit in his band. With Evans, Israels recorded *Town Hall*, *Trio '65* and *Time Remembered*. Away from the trio, he worked with Stan Getz, Herbie Hancock and J.J. Johnson. He also played on John Coltrane's *Coltrane Time*. From 1973 to 1981 he led the National Jazz Ensemble, a repertory big band built to treat jazz's past as living music. Then he spent years running jazz studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham, until 2010.

After that, he came south. Israels moved to Portland to get back to full-time playing and writing. He formed the jazz orchestra here, and in 2013 recorded *Second Wind: A Tribute to the Music of Bill Evans*. He also leads an octet stocked with some of the best players in town, much of its book arranged by Israels from Evans's recorded performances. A 2016 documentary by Elijah Hasan, *Rhythm and Romance*, tells the longer story.

He inherited the Evans bass chair from Scott LaFaro, and Portland gets him on a Thursday.

That's what makes these Thursdays special. Israels doesn't treat the Evans songbook as a museum piece. He hears it as material for a larger band and writes his own way into it. Listen for how he moves the trio's give-and-take onto horn sections without losing the intimacy. That's what an arranger who was actually in the room can do.

We didn't find a new recording announced ahead of this show. You don't need one. Israels was born in 1936, and he's still writing charts and fronting a big band on a weeknight. That alone should get you down the stairs.

The Chuck Israels Jazz Orchestra plays Jack London Revue on Thursday, Nov. 5. Doors 6 p.m., music 7 p.m., 21+. Get there early for a table near the bandstand.

Sources: TicketWeb: Chuck Israels Jazz Orch - Jazz Titan Thursdays (ticketweb.com); Jack London Revue: Chuck Israels Jazz Orch - Jazz Titan Thursdays (jacklondonrevue.com); TicketWeb: Chuck Israels Jazz Orchestra: No Christmas Music (ticketweb.com); Jazz Oregon: Chuck Israels at Jack London, July 16, 2026 (jazzoregon.org); jazz.com encyclopedia: Chuck Israels (jazz.com); iJazzMusic: Chuck Israels (ijazzmusic.com); Audaud: Chuck Israels: Rhythm and Romance (2016) (audaud.com); Chuck Israels - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); Jack London Revue (Willamette Week) (wweek.com)