Rick Mitchell is a journalist, teacher, artistic director, radio programmer and musician living in Portland, Oregon.

Rick has been writing professionally for 50 years about all subjects, but primarily music. He has published three books, including Whiskey River (Take My Mind): The True Story of Texas Honky Tonk (University of Texas Press, 2007), and Jazz in the New Millennium: Live and Well (Dharma Moon Press, 2014), published in partnership with Da Camera of Houston. He has written for numerous regional and national newspapers and magazines, including The Oregonian and Willamette Week in Portland, Oregon; LA Weekly, The Los Angeles Times and The Houston Chronicle, where he was the pop and jazz music critic and editor from 1989 to 1999. For a sampling of Rick’s  articles, click here.

From 2014 to 2017, Rick taught English at Lamar High School in Houston. From 2001 to 2007, he taught English, history and philosophy and coached basketball and debate at the Awty International School in Houston. Prior to becoming a fulltime high school teacher, Rick served as an adjunct professor at the University of Houston, teaching courses on the history of American music and advanced journalism.

From 2007 to 2013, Rick was Director of Performing Arts for the Houston International Festival, for which he had previously worked as a curatorial consultant. In this capacity, he traveled abroad looking for unusual and exotic bands and performance troupes to bring to Houston, while booking top regional and national headliners. He also served as the festival’s Director of Education Programs, editing the Teacher’s Curriculum Guide that went out free to Houston-area schools each year. The festival ceased operations in 2014, a year after Rick’s departure.

Between 1983 and 1987, Rick led the Portland all-star jazz-funk-rock band Le Bon. In 2010, the band reunited to perform at the Oregon Music Hall of Fame ceremony. From 1974 to 1987, Rick hosted a late night radio program on KBOO-FM in Portland called Saturday Night Jam. He currently produces a weekly one-hour radio show, also called Jazz in the New Millennium, that is syndicated by the African American Public Radio Consortium and airs on around 20 stations nationwide.

A longtime student and practitioner of Zen Buddhism, Rick is a member of the Dharma Rain Zen Center (activivate link) in Portland,  where he can be found most Sunday mornings, facing the wall. His Buddhist name, given to him by his teacher Tenshin Roshi Reb Anderson, is Hogetsu, which translates as Dharma Moon.

For 37 years, Rick has been married to Lori Sumako, R.N. Their daughter, Chelsea Cole, lives nearby in Portland with her husband and two sons.