Six women will headline the 13th Annual Montavilla Jazz Festival when it opens Friday, Sept. 4, across Portland neighborhood venues with 25 shows running through Sunday, Sept. 6.

Rebecca Sanborn kicks off the three-day run Friday, Sept. 4, at the Alberta Rose Theater, debuting her album Shadow Work with the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble.

The eight-song project grew out of Sanborn's pandemic experience and Jungian therapy sessions. Twenty-nine musicians contributed to the recording.

"A friend gave me a key to his studio, so I'd drive there at 11 pm, then work til 2 or 3 am. I needed to be really loud …" Sanborn told Oregon ArtsWatch. A mini-documentary about the making of Shadow Work will screen during intermission.

Saturday, Sept. 5, brings two headline sets at the Metro Arts Building. Shelly Rudolph premieres

Orfea Rising, a feminist reimagining of the Orpheus myth she spent roughly 10 years developing. The hour-long jazz-chamber work pairs a five-piece band with two aerial dancers, Alicia Antony and Tia Palomino. Rudolph composed 10 songs and three poems for the piece.

"I didn't set out to write a retelling of the myth from beginning to end," Rudolph told Oregon ArtsWatch in an Aug. 21 preview. "The songs and poems arrived first. Only later did I begin to recognize the story they were telling."

That afternoon, Sherry Alves leads Four for King, a tribute to Portland jazz vocalist Nancy King, who died Aug. 5, 2025, at 85.

Alves, the Zina and Edna Professor of Jazz Voice at Portland State University, is writing her Ph.D. dissertation on King. She recruited three former PSU students who studied under King and assembled a rhythm section of King's longtime collaborators, including pianist Randy Porter and drummer Todd Strait.

Neil Mattson, the festival's executive director, described King in a December 2025 tribute published by CBC Music as a singer whose "real mastery was in her gift for drawing out the emotional core of a lyric."

Saturday evening moves outdoors to the Caldera Amphitheatre in Mt. Tabor Park. Jessie Marquez performs compositions by Cuban composer Enrique Cárdenas in the Filín style, a mid-century Cuban fusion of bolero and jazz. A Chamber Music America Jazz Consortium Award helped fund the show. Messages from Marquez's colleagues in Cuba will be projected on stage.

Sunday, Sept. 6, features University of Oregon music professor Idit Shner performing an hour-long bass clarinet suite at Soundtruck NW, rooted in melodies from her synagogue's Torah chanting.

The festival closes that evening at the Caldera Amphitheatre with Lo Steele and her band greaterkind. Steele, 29, is the daughter of Portland blues and gospel artist LaRhonda Steele and keyboard artist Marc Steele. She has won a Drammy award, completed three tours in Brazil, and recently performed in Lizard Boy at Portland Center Stage.

The festival also features Sofi Nava, Aléa Lorén & Co, and Wen'ipt, described by Oregon ArtsWatch as possibly Portland's only Native American jazz band.

Schedules and tickets are available on the festival website.