Steve Griggs Ensemble at Panama Hotel

The Seattle Jazz Fellowship will present a 90-minute matinee at 2pm on December 7, 2024, of the Steve Griggs Ensemble performing Panama Hotel Jazz. The award-winning program of stories and music was commissioned by 4Culture and chronicles the experience of Seattle Japanese Americans during World War II. The performance coincides with the 83^rd anniversary of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

Seattle composer and saxophonist Steve Griggs was commissioned by 4Culture in 2012 to create a site-specific program for the Panama Hotel, a historically significant landmark on the corner of Fifth Avenue and South Main Street, the center of Seattle’s nihonmachi or Japantown. The program ran monthly for five years at the Panama Hotel and other regional historic sites through support from Earshot Jazz, the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture and the National Park Service, twice winning an Adventurous Programming Award by Chamber Music America and ASCAP. For this single performance revival, the Seattle Jazz Fellowship will host the show at its venue six blocks west of the hotel at 109 South Main Street.

Griggs’s research for the program included Jamie Ford’s novel Hotel on Corner of Bitter and Sweet set in the Seattle Panama Hotel and Mary Matsuda Gruenewald’s memoir Looking Like the Enemy: My Story of Imprisonment in Japanese American Internment Camps. “The seamlessness with which Griggs and his ensemble have sewn together history, narrative, and music gives the show depth and the ability to keep the audience engaged,” wrote Kamna Shastri’s in her 2017 International Examiner review. “The music isn’t just situated between stories; it carries the story forward, much like a cinematic score, where the music helps create moving pictures in the mind’s eye.”

Panama Hotel Jazz was the first of several programs that Griggs created as he evolved from skilled performer to citizen artist, focusing his craft to address regional social justice issues from indigenous rights, police abuse of force, and institutional systemic racism. “The kind of impact this program has had has been beyond my wildest dreams,” said Griggs. “And I invite people, everyone to enjoy the music and hopefully learn something important about the place we live,” said Griggs. In addition to Griggs, the musical ensemble includes other seasoned Seattle artists – trumpeter Jay Thomas, guitarist Milo Petersen, vibraphonist Susan Pascal, and bassist Phil Sparks.

Doors open at 1:00. Music starts at 2:00. $20 Suggested donation. All ages welcome. Seating is first come, first served.