PDX Jazz was bestowed a very generous gift from Roberto Lovato and Laura Golino de Lovato to establish a fund to underwrite the cost of attendance at the annual PDX Jazz Festival and seasonal PDX Jazz concerts for Portland-area under-served and under-represented youth, with an emphasis on students of color. At the Lovato’s suggestion, this fund was named “Bright Moments,” which honors the great jazz musician Rahsaan Roland Kirk, whose tenacious spirit fashioned a brilliant career in jazz despite blindness and stroke, and who spoke passionately from the stage about Black history and civil rights. Kirk’s everyday greeting in the face of major obstacles was “Bright Moments.”

“Music is the universal language that everyone can hear and understand.”

– Rahsaan Roland Kirk