ASTORIA – On the night of the Fall Solstice, nearly 100 people crowded into Cargo, a shop and gallery on Astoria’s main street. In just three hours, it had been transformed from a retail establishment into a performance space for the music series, Minntah and Friends. The concert featured Portland’s Single Malt Trio with 19-year-old singer and Astoria resident Minntah Haefker.

The trio included drummer Brent Follis, who produces the series with Minntah; bassist Tim Gilson, a veteran of Mel Brown’s groups; and guitarist Dan Faehnle, formerly with Diana Krall and now a regular with Pink Martini. 

They played with the verve and complexity you’d expect from top-tier jazz artists, and though Minntah lacks their experience and expertise, she didn’t just ride along — on songs like “Misty” and Icelandic pop singer Laefey’s “Dreamer,” she became for the most part a true partner in crafting the music. Closing the show with Amy Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good,” she loosened her usually careful approach, opened her throat, and brought the crowd to its feet.

Mike Francis, a former reporter and editor for the Business Journal and The Oregonian, moved to Astoria in 2021. He’s among a number of Portland transplants who have found a welcoming home in a town “where creative people support each other,” he says. And indeed there were a number of local artists at Cargo that night. But Minntah’s support appears to be wider. 

In the audience were Astoria’s mayor, a city commissioner, a local radio host, the Director of “Jazz on the River,” the Director of Cascadia Chamber Opera, two instructors from Clatsop Community College, and a couple from Gearhart who have been following Minntah for years. Friends and family attended, too.

“My little Astoria town,” Minntah says fondly. “It’s really nice because it’s such a small community and everybody knows each other, so there’s a lot of support.” She’s quick to point out that the series is a free, community event, subsidized by Cargo and the Astoria Coffee Company. “It wouldn’t be a success without the community,” she says.

Big ambitions, small town

Some say that Astoria, with a population slightly more than 10,000, is becoming an arts hub for the northern coast. Like its sister cities of similar size, Newport and Lincoln City, Astoria is home to a surprising number of arts events. In February, for instance, the annual Fisher Poets Gathering brings thousands of people to readings in theaters and pubs. Last month, The Cascadia Opera Music Festival presented a “Pint-Sized Opera” at the Fort George Brewery, which is a regular music presenter and the largest of several brew pubs in town. And “Jazz on the River” brought The Yugen Music Project from Portland in August.

As the first permanent Anglo-American settlement west of the Rockies, Astoria is also a significant historical site. It was once home to a thriving fishing and cannery industry — until most of the infrastructure burned in 1924. Today, according to mayor Sean Fitzpatrick, there’s more construction going on than anytime since the waterfront was rebuilt.

The setting’s magnificent, too: cargo ships line up in the wide Columbia, and stately Victorian homes on the hillsides stand like memorials to lumber barons and shipping magnates whose industries have been only partly replaced by tourism.

It’s small enough to offer a friendly atmosphere and, as Francis observes, “If you want to do stuff, there’s always openings for you here.” That’s been true for him anyway: he’s a member of the Planning Commission and the Historic Landmark Commission, and twice a month he hosts a Blues show on KMUN FM, the local community-supported radio station.

And in a small town, community support is essential.

Minntah’s voice teacher, Gina Saputo, a recording artist who recently relocated to Oregon from L.A., has performed in the Minntah and Friends series. She understands the importance of Astoria in the young singer’s development. Saputo grew up in a small town herself.

“It was really important to me to be embraced by the community, and I think that’s going to be the same for her,” says the Springfield native. “I want her to feel encouraged and supported so that she can become the artist that she envisions.”

But Astoria doesn’t offer many opportunities for a singer who needs to play more frequently with jazz musicians, especially younger artists. 

“It’s important for her to get some experiences with her peers as well as learning from musicians from an older generation,” says pianist and composer Clay Giberson, who has accompanied Minntah in various contexts and currently meets with her weekly to work on jazz performance. Since she can’t find those opportunities in Astoria, this summer she came to Portland every Saturday to busk at the Farmer’s Market with pianist Issac Briare, a former high school classmate. She also fits in lessons on her Portland weekends.

“She’s passionate about music,” Giberson adds, “and interested in expanding her musicianship.”

“Minntah has a huge future ahead of her,” says Saputo. To get there, she’ll need to work on “the subtleties and nuances — like her phrasing, breath support, vowel shapes … all the things a professional singer would think about.”

But the foundation’s there.

“She has this beautiful, light instrument, and she has a lot of control, too, because of her background in classical music,” observes Saputo. “She’s beautiful, happy-go-lucky, excited about singing and excited to be up there.”

Of course there’s a lot to learn on the technical side as well as figuring out what you want your sound to be. And to get what you want from the artists you work with, it’s necessary to learn to communicate in the language of music. 

“That’s what we’ve been working on,” says Saputo, “how to say exactly what she wants in the music. It will strengthen her over time and give her more autonomy over her artistry.”

That technical training has come somewhat late in her development; many young musicians read music and understand some theory by their second year in college. And that’s just one way Minntah’s path has been unconventional. She chose to study privately rather than take music classes in high school and college, began performing professionally at a very young age, and she’s been sitting in with strangers in Germany and Thailand for the past four years.

Two cultures

Those choices helped shape the unique singer she is on the road to becoming. More important to that identity, perhaps, is her bi-cultural experience.

”I get inspired when I go outside my shell, my little Astoria,” she says. Her mother’s a native of Thailand; Minntah speaks fluent Thai and returns to her uncle’s home in Chiang Mai every winter. Her paternal grandfather emigrated to the U.S. from Germany. Last summer, she and her father went on their third trip in as many years to Berlin and Potsdam, where they visited relatives and she sat in at several clubs. (She also speaks German.) She’s done the same in Thailand, and this year plans to headline her own concert in Chiang Mai, where her American uncle – as she calls her father’s step-brother, the movie producer Chris Lowenstein – will help with the production.

And yet she doesn’t feel she belongs in Thailand either. 

“I feel like I’m right in between.”

While the music of her mother’s homeland has had little effect on her as a vocalist, Thai culture has shaped her as a performer and a person.

“We’re very giving people,” she says. “Whenever guests come to our home, we feel obligated to treat them. So when I’m performing, I want to make sure my guests are happy. I want to make sure my attitude and the way I’m communicating with the band makes everybody happy.”

On the other hand, her family connections to the arts in America are strong. Her paternal grandfather was a singer with Portland Opera; her grandmother is a visual artist; Bela Balogh, the violinist and co-founder of 3 Leg Torso who she calls “uncle,” invited her on stage with his band when she was seven years old. Even then she had the voice and stage presence to be an asset to the performance, and they invited her back for such cameo spots frequently over the years.

She continued to take advantage of such opportunities, and in the past 18 months, she’s made an appearance singing in Thai with Pink Martini at Astoria’s Liberty Theater, and she shared billing with America’s Got Talent finalist Jimmie Herrod in another Astoria show.

Outward bound

She hasn’t always lived in Astoria, either.

In 2015, when she was nine, her family moved from a home on NE Killingsworth in Portland, where her mother operated a food truck out of their driveway, to a 6,000-square-foot Victorian overlooking the Columbia in downtown Astoria. 

It was a difficult transition; there weren’t many kids like her in school. That’s one reason she’s drawn to the contemporary singer Laufey. “She may have had a childhood similar to me,” Minntah speculates; “you’re living in Iceland but you’re half Asian and you feel and sound very different.” She pauses. “But it helped me become what I am today.”

Her father, Kris Haefker, remodeled the house, installed a couple housemates, and remodeled and now rents out several nearby buildings. He’s become part of the community, too, and is currently a member of the Planning Commission. But in 2020, the family moved back to Portland part-time so Minntah could attend Lincoln High School.

“It was a great decision for me,” she says, “because there was a little more diversity and more options for subjects in the arts. And being in downtown Portland was fun after being in a small town.”

She was studying opera during those years, too — she started classical training at age 9 — and attended a summer program in Italy before winning the OSAA State Soprano Competition and singing for the opening of the State legislature in 2023. But the freedom “to put my own creativity on it,” as she says, drew her back to the jazz and pop music she had also been studying since she was eight.

Last year, she attended Portland State University, living with grandparents after her parents returned to Astoria. But this Fall, their health took a downturn, so, worried about bringing illness into the home, she decided to stay in Astoria and attend the local community college.

But not during Winter term. Because, even though the world is just a click away from anywhere today, she is hungry for more real world opportunities.

“Being in Astoria can be lonely,” she admits, and she’s looking forward to Thailand, where she plans to perform as often as possible while visiting family and keeping up with online courses. In fact, one of the gigs she finds most memorable was at the nightclub Buddha and Pals in Bangkok. As was the case on all her performances there, the musicians were all Thai, the audience mostly tourists.

No matter the nationality, though, she’s making new friends through music. In Bangkok and Chiang Mai, Portland, Potsdam and Berlin, she’s finding opportunities to collaborate with people who are new and different. And what could be more exciting? 

I picture her riding a song from Astoria out into the world.

The Minntah Quartet plays the PDXJazz at the Hoxton series, October 17, 5-7:00 pm. Tickets and more information here.