Join PJCE for a preview event of Playing With Words featuring a discussion between writers Stephanie Adams-Santos, Josephine Woolington, and Waka T. Brown and composers Gordon Lee, Hans Barklis, and Tim Willcox.
Authors and composers will be prompted by PJCE Artistic Director, Ryan Meagher, to discuss the creative process behind new music to be performed by the 12-piece Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble on November 1st at PSU as part of Literary Arts’ Portland Book Festival.
The conversation is free to attend. Please RSVP at the link below to receive updates. Food and drinks will be available for purchase at Rose City Book Pub.
Composers & Authors in Conversation
Backyard Social
1914 N Killingsworth St, Portland
Monday, October 7th
6:30 PM
About the Composers:
Hans Barklis believes that music is a cultural flower with each blossom celebrating the diverse roots of its community-ecosystem and the horticulture of its peoples’ histories. Hans’ garden has been tended by a formal education featuring fertilization from world-famous classical and jazz instrumentalists (including Darrel Grant and Jerry Hahn at Portland State University), landscaped by international musical cooperation from NE Brazil to Mexico’s gulf coast (including work with Miguel Bernal, Son de Madera, Laura Rebolloso, and Ramón Gutiérrez Hernández, Jorge Alabé, and others), and amended by experience with special needs populations (including work with Creative Goal Solutions in Portland) and participation in centuries-deep afro-latin dance and martial art forms (like capoeira that he studies with Pedro Cruz and Capoeira São Salvador).
Gordon Lee is a composer, jazz pianist, arranger, conductor and music educator. Although he is best known for his jazz performances and compositions, Lee is active in many styles of music. He has had commissions to compose chamber music and music for large ensembles from Oregon Symphony members, the Amadei String Quartet, big bands, and vocalists including a collaboration with Ghanaian singer Obo Addy on an orchestral suite in 2004. He taught improvisation, theory and jazz history at Western Oregon University from 1999 to 2019 and was Executive Director of the award winning W.O.U./Mel Brown Summer Jazz Camp. He conducted the jazz ensembles at Reed College from 2009 to 2017.
Portland saxophonist Tim Willcox was born in Eugene, OR. Taking up saxophone at the age of eleven, Tim quickly fell in love with jazz music. He was exposed to great jazz recordings by two very inspirational teachers, Carl Woideck and Joe Ingram. Moving to New Jersey in 1994 to attend the internationally acclaimed William Paterson University, Willcox got the chance to study with jazz greats Kenny Burrell, Harold Mabern, Vic Juris, Rufus Reid, Steve Wilson, and John Riley, as well as taking lessons outside of school from Rick Margitza, Lee Konitz, and the NY Philharmonic’s David Demsey.After graduating in 1998, Willcox moved to New York City where he played with Marc Copland, Jeff Hirschfield, Vic Juris, Reid Anderson, Ben Monder, Matt Penman, Sunna Sunnlaugs, Scott McLemore, John Hebert, Michael Kanan, and Allison Miller.
About the Authors:
Josephine Woolington is a writer, musician and educator. She lives in the Willamette Valley, near the confluence of the Columbia and Willamette Rivers, where she was born and raised. She is the author of “Where We Call Home: Lands, Seas, and Skies of the Pacific Northwest,” a nonfiction essay collection about native plants and animals. When she’s not writing, she’s most likely birding.
Stephanie Adams-Santos is a Guatemalan-American writer whose work spans poetry, prose, and screenwriting. Often grappling with themes of strangeness and belonging, their work reflects a fascination with the weird, numinous and primal forces that shape inner life. They are the author of several full length poetry collections and chapbooks, including DREAM OF XIBALBA (selected by Jericho Brown as winner of the 2021 Orison Poetry Prize and finalist for a 2024 Oregon Book Award) and SWARM QUEEN’S CROWN (finalist for a Lambda Literary Award). Stephanie served as Staff Writer and Story Editor on the television anthology horror series TWO SENTENCE HORROR STORIES (Netflix), and was winner of a 2022 Gold Telly Award in TV Writing. They have received grants and fellowships from Sundance, Film Independent, Vermont Studio Center, Regional Arts and Culture Council, and Oregon Arts Commission. In addition to their literary work, Stephanie is illustrating an original Major Arcana tarot deck called Tarot de La Selva.
Waka T. Brown is a Stanford graduate with a B.A. in International Relations and a Master’s in Secondary Education. She has authored the following children’s books through Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins Children’s Books: While I Was Away (2021) is her debut novel, Dream, Annie, Dream (2022) is her first work of historical fiction, The Very Unfortunate Wish of Melony Yoshimura (2023) is a contemporary re-imagining of the Japanese folktale, “The Melon Princess and the Amanjaku”, Perfect, her debut picture book (illustrated by Yuko Jones), publishes on Oct. 1, 2024.
