Rick Mitchell, a Portland, Oregon-based writer and syndicated radio show host who also has
professional ties to Houston, has joined the board of the Jazz Journalists Association.
Mitchell has been writing about all kinds of music for 50 years. He worked as the jazz and pop music critic at Willamette Week and The Oregonian in Portland in the 1980s and at the Houston Chronicle in the 1990s, and has freelanced for dozens of national and regional publications through the decades. He is the author of three books, the most recent of which, Jazz In the New Millennium, was published in 2014. Since 2015 he has produced the weekly radio program Jazz in the New Millennium, syndicated nationally by the African American Public Radio Consortium.
In 2000, Mitchell began writing tprogram notes for the nationally-acclaimed Da Camera of Houston jazz series. From to 2007 to 2012, he was the artistic director of the Houston International Festival. He has also worked as a college instructor, high school teacher, bartender, DJ and musician. He retired from full-time teaching in 2017 and returned to Portland, where he hosts local jazz and blues programming on KBOO-FM.
Rick Mitchell is married to Lori Sumako, a retired nurse, and has worked with colleague Lynn Darroch for the past five years to identify and celebrate the JJA’s Portland Jazz Heroes.
Other members of the JJA board are: Bob Blumenthal (Boston), Susan Brink (Schenectady), Janis Lane-Ewart (Minneapolis), Andy Gilbert (SF Bay Area), Carolyn McClair (New York/Newport), Don Palmer (Baltimore) and Neil Tesser (Chicago). Paul deBarros withdrew from the board in July. Howard Mandel serves as JJA president.
