Portland Jazz Orchestra

The Portland Jazz Orchestra is an eighteen-piece big band based in Portland, Maine. Founded in 2004 and run as a nonprofit, it is led by artistic director Dr. Chris Oberholtzer, a music educator on the faculty at the University of Southern Maine. The ensemble performs a mix of instrumental and vocal jazz drawn from the libraries of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Stan Kenton, Woody Herman, Bill Holman, Patrick Williams and Maria Schneider, alongside new charts written by Maine-based composers and arrangers including Craig Skeffington, Mike Sakash, Brad Ciechomski, Jake Sturtevant and Terry White. Its personnel are working New England musicians, many of whom also teach; among them are players who have performed or recorded with Natalie Cole, Tony Bennett, Roberta Flack, Barry Manilow, the Temptations, the New York Voices, Wayne Bergeron and the Artie Shaw Orchestra. The orchestra has played a regular series at One Longfellow Square in Portland since 2006, and that room is where it recorded the nine-track Live at One Longfellow Square, released in June 2024; an earlier album, Generations, appeared in 2019. Beyond concerts the organization runs clinics and school programs across northern New England, part of a stated mission to widen access to jazz performance in the region and to develop younger audiences and players.

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