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CMG Improv Summit: Wayne Horvitz & Sara Schonbeck • Battle Hymns & Gardens

$15-$30, 21+, 8PM
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https://creativemusicguild.org/

Wayne Horvitz
https://waynehorvitz.bandcamp.com/
https://www.waynehorvitz.com/
https://linktr.ee/waynehorvitz
https://www.instagram.com/waynehorvitz/

Recipient of the 2019 American Prize in Orchestral Composition, composer Wayne Horvitz performs extensively throughout Europe, Japan, and North America. In addition to creating work for his own ensembles, he has created new work for The Kitchen, BAM, Seattle Symphony, Berlin Jazz, Nocco, Vienna Radio Orchestra, Centrum, and ACT among others. He has received awards from, MAP, McKnight Foundation, the NEA, Meet the Composer, and The Shifting Foundation. among others. Narrative works include pieces centered around the life of Joe Hill, the story of the Everett Massacre, and the poems of Richard Hugo. Installation work has been presented at Ft. Worden, SAM and Arizona State Museum of Art. He is the recipient of the 2016 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award.

Collaborators include Robin Holcomb, Bill Frisell, Reggie Watts, Butch Morris, Alex Guy, Ikue Mori, George Lewis, Steve Swallow, Yukio Suzuki, Billy Bang, Carla Bley, Eyvind Kang, John Zorn (Naked City etc.), Bill Irwin, Gus Van Sant, Paul Taylor, Beth Fleenor, Rinde Eckert, Yohei Saito, Barbara Earl Thomas, David Moss, Carey Perloff, Paul Taylor, Dayna Hanson, and Gus Van Sant. He has produced recordings for the WorldSaxophone Quartet, Human Feel, Fontella Bass, Marty Ehrlich, John Adams, Bill Frisell, Robin Holcomb, and Eddie Palmieri.

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Selected Works for Theater and Dance
Score for Invisible Ink based on the life of Mata Hari. Directed by Nikki Apino, Choreography by Wade Madsen, and produced by House of Dames. Premiere at On The Boards, Seattle. (2002)

Town Mouse and Country Mouse: A musical adaptation of the classic Aesop’s fable. Script by Todd Jefferson Moore. Music and Lyrics by Wayne Horvitz. Comissioned by and premiered at the Seattle International Childrenís Festival, May 2001. Featuring Reggie Watts and Danny Barnes.

Score for The Professor, The Puppet, and The Executioner. Written and performed by Todd Jefferson Moore. Directed by Nikki Apino. Premiered April 2001, ACT Theater, Seattle.

Score for Death of a Salesman, ACT Theater, Seattle. Directed by Gordon Edelstein. (1998)

Musical director and composer, The Last Paving Stone, by Y. York, directed by Mark Lutwak. Idaho Theater for Youth. (1998)

Live Score for Broken Day by Choreographer Crispin Spaeth (with Julian Priester and Eyvind Kang). Performed at On The Boards and Oberlin College. (1997)

Three year collaboration with choreographer Liz Lerman for evening length work Shehechianu. Premiere of final work at Washington D.C.’s Shakespeare Theater. (1997)

Community based performance work with choreographer Liz Lerman in Portsmouth, N.H. One month residency in Portsmouth working with local marching band, women’s choir, tap dancers and others. Composed and recorded electronic works for dancers, choral work for the choir based on Hebrew text, and two 8-10 minute pieces for marching band. All works were performed various times during the last week and all together on the Final Sunday entitled Portsmouth Pages – The Shipyard Project. 90 minute documentary for NH PBS, aired in spring 1999. (1997)

Music for Bill Irwin’s Broadway show Strictly NY. Also performed throughout the US. Music of OZ by choreographer Paul Taylor in collaboration with the White Oak Dance Company.

Music for Ezra Pound’s Elektra and the American premier of Harold Pinter’s Mountain Language. Both works directed by Carey Perloff.

Selected Movie and Television Works
Sound design for Gus Van Sant’s Psycho.

Composed, arranged and performed score for PBS (KCTS) 90 minute documentary on Seattle glass artist Dale Chihuly entitled Chihuly in Venice. First PBS HDTV broadcast. Premiered October 1998.

Produced and performed on the Bill Frisell score for the animated television special Tales from the Far Side by cartoonist Gary Larson. Broadcast nationally on CBS in October 1994.

A sequel entitled Tales from the Far Side II has been completed and is due to be released on Fox Television in 1999.

Composed music for two Interactive CD-ROMS for Microsoft, comprising educational programs for children entitled Ancient Lives and Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs received an EMMA award for Best Sound Design for a Multimedia title (Germany, 1993).

Produced and co-composed score with Robin Holcomb for the PBS documentary A Woman’s Health (produced by KCTS, Seattle WA, and broadcast nationally in November/December 1994.)

Composed and performed music for parts of an Interactive Laser Disc entitled Math Sleuths (produced by Video Discovery, Seattle).

Produced soundtrack for major motion picture La Scuola by Daniele Luchetti, music performed by Bill Frisell. Performed music for Books on Tape: William Burroughs reads Naked Lunch (1996) Composed music for Levi’s 501 Blue Jeans commercial directed by Gus Van Sant (1996).

Composed “Midi File” pieces for Microsoft Network, and special projects: Get a Life and Cannes Film Festival website.

Composed music for 24 Episodes of Elementary Science Sleuths, a children’s science program co-produced by Scholastic in NY and Video Discovery.

Sara Schonbeck
https://saraschoenbeckpyroclastic.bandcamp.com/
https://www.saraschoenbeck.com/

The Wire magazine places Sara Schoenbeck in the "tiny club of bassoon pioneers" at work in contemporary music today and the New York Times has called her performances "galvanizing" and "riveting, mixing textural experiments with a big, confident sound.”

Sara promotes the bassoon as a colorful and flexible voice in both her own work and in collaboration as an improviser, interpreter and composer. She has been a member of a number of music ensembles including Anthony Braxton’s 12+1(tet) and the Tri-Centric Orchestra, Wayne Horvitz’s Gravitas Quartet with Ron Miles and Peggy Lee, the Nels Cline Lovers Orchestra, Wavefield Ensemble, Petr Kotek’s SEM ensemble, Dana Lyn’s Mother Octopus, Michael Bates’ Acrobat and the Ghost Train Orchestra. Sara has performed regularly with many inspiring artists and ensembles including Henry Threadgill, Roscoe Mitchell, Satoko Fujii, Butch Morris, Wadada Leo Smith, Matt Mitchell, Marty Ehrlich, Johnny Reinhard, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Wet Ink, the Michael Leonhart Orchestra, Adam Rudolph’s Go Organic Orchestra and Brooklyn Raga Massive, Eve Risser’s White Desert Orchestra, Dakah Hip Hop Orchestra, Vinny Golia’s Large Ensemble and Harris Eisenstadt's Golden State.

Sara can be heard on dozens of music and film recordings including The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, Spanglish and Dahmer, and on the Tzadik, Pi and Blue Note Record labels. In the fall of 2021, Sara released her self-titled debut album to critical acclaim on Pyroclastic Records, featuring nine duos with different partners; Roscoe Mitchell, Nels Cline, Robin Holcomb, Nicole Mitchell, Mark Dresser, ​Harris Eisenstadt, Matt Mitchell, Peggy Lee and Wayne Horvitz. The album was recorded in seven different locations across North America and appeared on numerous critics’ best-of-year lists.

She has performed at major venues throughout North America and Europe, including: Free Music Festival (Antwerp, Belgium), Biennale Musica (Venice, Italy), Berlin Jazz Festival, Jazz Em Agosto (Lisbon, Portugal), ZomerJazzFiets Tour (Amsterdam, Holland), Newport Jazz Festival, New Orleans Jazz Festival, SXSW, EarShot Jazz Festival in Seattle, Victoriaville, Edgefest (Ann Arbor), Ottawa Jazz Festival, Vancouver International Jazz Festival, Angel City Jazz Festival (Los Angeles), San Francisco Jazz Festival, Saalfelden Festival (Austria), Tampere Jazz Festival (Finland), Winter Jazz Fest (NYC), American Festival of Microtonal Music, Micro Fest (Los Angeles), BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn, Vision Fest (NYC), Big Ears (Knoxeville), Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Birdland, the Kitchen, Iridium, Disney Hall, Redcat, and the Kennedy Center.

Sara received her BFA from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. She is currently on faculty at Brooklyn Conservatory of Music and adjunct faculty at Brooklyn College. She has been adjunct faculty at California Institute of the Arts and Citrus College and has given masterclasses on improvisation for bassoonists at Amherst College, Hampshire College, Cornish College, University of Denver, Western Washington University and Sacramento State University.

Battle Hymns & Gardens
https://battlehymnsandgardens.bandcamp.com/
Reed Wallsmith
https://www.instagram.com/reedwallsmith/
Joe Cunningham
https://www.instagram.com/howdidyoupayforthat/
Jon Shaw
https://www.instagram.com/marleschingus/
Tim DuRoche
https://www.timduroche.com/
https://www.instagram.com/tim_duroche/

BATTLE HYMNS & GARDENS
Battle Hymns & Gardens is Reed Wallsmith (alto saxophone, composition), Joe Cunningham (tenor saxophone, percussion, composition) and bassist Jon Shaw of the acclaimed ensemble Blue Cranes, and Tim DuRoche on drums, gongs, and little instruments. This album also features trombonist James Powers and guitarist Dan Duval augmenting the core ensemble.
Originally formed in 2007 as a free improvisation ensemble, BHaG have evolved over time into one of the more compelling units on the Portland scene, balancing original compositions by Cunningham and Wallsmith, reminiscent of the harmolodic drop-kicked joy of Don Cherry and Ornette Coleman and Loft Jazz era giants like Sam Rivers with spacious, lyrical landscapes, a la Paul Motian and Roscoe Mitchell—with a strong influence of folk-form and melody and a healthy dose of conversational interplay and humor, along for the ride.
Battle Hymns & Gardens have shared bills and/or collaborated with Tim Young, Allison Miller, Lucian Ban, Mike Gamble, Elina Duni, The Tiptons, and Elliott Sharp among others, and appeared at the Portland Jazz Festival, PDX Pop Now! fest, the Creative Music Guild’s Improvisation Summit of Portland, and The Cathedral Park Jazz Festival. They’ve also created an original scores for dance (with choreographers Tere Mathern Dance, Heidi Duckler, and Mike Barber’s Ten Tiny Dances, and live silent-film scores.
“Battle Hymns and Gardens have found a nuance and precision to their sound that’s wholly their own. Yet this still pretty ‘out there’ jazz we’re talking about. Just listen closely to that sense of freedom in the wild timbres of Reed Wallsmith and Joe Cunningham’s interlocking sax lines and the freight train rhythm section of Jon Shaw and Tim DuRoche” —PDX Pop Now
“[BHaG] persuasively combining some ‘60s-style free-jazz possibilities with a more structured framework to create some of the city’s most intriguing improvisation.”
—Willamette Week

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BRIDGETOWN TRIVIA

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KARAOKE with KJ JESSICON