Heather Matthews & Friends at the Eagles for Monday Night Jazz
Originally published on The JOLT News on January 14, 2026
Have you ever been to Monday Night Jazz at the Eagles Lounge? Next week will be my first time, and I cannot wait to see what my friend Heather Matthews brings to the stage (read our previous conversation here). Matthews will be joined by friends Lisa Seifert on clarinet, Vince Brown on guitar and Nick Rawson on bass.
Besides my friendship with Matthews, there is something else that brings me to this event: Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
“What better way to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day than to hear music that was born from Black resistance and joy?” Matthew asked.
I could not agree more.
Admittedly, there are many of us who think of MLK Day as a day off of work, and we forget to pause and remember the why. This event offers the opportunity to connect multiple senses to the heart of this day, and invites you to sit back, relax and listen to some good music.
With all ages welcome, the event will be from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. with a cover charge of $15-$30, and no one turned away for lack of funds.
All that jazz
Jazz is different compared to so many genres of music, not just because of the way it sounds, but the way it allows the musician to improvise.
“It’s definitely a lot freer as you can improvise a lot more without messing up the vibe of the music,” Matthews said. “In musicals, you can add little flourishes here and there, but you can’t improvise solos or anything like that. Classical music is written out exactly and you cannot really deviate.”
If everyone is doing their thing in jazz, how does it work? Matthews described jazz as a conversation between musicians. Much like a conversation in life, you can say what you want to say, but you have to be mindful of the way you change topics or tones throughout.
Musicians when improvising have to follow a sort of conversation guideline, better yet a chord structure that houses all the notes that musicians can play in a specific song.
“If part of a song was in an e-flat chord, you could do mixolydian or dorian, or whatever scale you like as long as it fits within that key," Matthews said.
If only every conversation we have in life could play music as lovely as jazz.
Why we jazz
The other day, my father told me he was going on a date to a jazz club in Portland and added “thank God there will be alcohol.” That is how some people feel about jazz, they just do not like it.
As I was chatting with Matthews about her upcoming event, we reflected on this phenomenon and agreed that anyone who does not like jazz just has not heard the right kind of jazz for them.
“Jazz is such a huge genre,” Matthews says, “there is something in there for everyone.”
Not found your right flavor of jazz yet? Matthews recommends checking out these two programs:
The documentary series by Spike Lee called, “Katrina: Come Hell and High Water” on Netflix.
“Treme” on HBO Max is about the historic New Orleans neighborhood that became a cultural hub and kind of the world capital of jazz.
Further into our conversation, Matthews reflected:
“I feel like any night you do jazz is a great commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr., and if you read about the history of jazz in Congo square and how it began, it’s basically all about celebrating culture and keeping traditions alive in the face of things like racism and efforts to exterminate these cultures and history. Congo Square in New Orleans is where slaves would be able to gather and practice their music and traditions, and that is where jazz was born.”
The effects of Hurricane Katrina impacted New Orleans not just in the obvious ways, but in the way New Orleans was able to preserve jazz and this part of our American history.
Jazz is both modern and historic, and with New Orleans being the birthplace of jazz, jazz is patriotic. You can read it on paper, but the best way to know it to your core is by listening to it. Come to Matthew’s event on Monday and see what I mean.
Until then, I invite you to listen to the most patriotic performance I have ever heard: Louis Armstrong's "Star Spangled Banner." It embodies both beauty and the ugly, triumphs and heartbreaks, and the tension we experience amid all the above each day. It is America.
https://www.thejoltnews.com/stories/heather-matthews-friends-at-the-eagles-for-monday-night-jazz,27796