Join us on November 1st at Portland State University where we will premiere six commissioned compositions inspired by six Oregon Book Award finalists and winners’ works! The 12-member ensemble performance draws literature by Oregonians spanning from a children’s book reimagining a Japanese folktale to a guide to keeping chickens in the city in Playing With Words and the sounds presented on stage are equally expansive.
Friday, November 1st, 2024, PSU’s Lincoln Recital Hall- Tickets on sale now!
Doors at 7 PM, music begins at 7:30 PM
The composer/literary pairings are:
- Hans Barkliss inspired by Josephine Woolington’s Where We Call Home: Lands, Seas, and Skies of the Pacific Northwest
- Nicole Buetti inspired by Tove Danovich Under the Henfluence: Inside the World of Backyard Chickens and the People Who Love Them
- Andrew Durkin inspired by Erica Berry’s Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear
- Gordon Lee inspired by Stephanie Adams-Santos’ Dream of Xibalba
- Ryan Meagher inspired by Patrick DeWitt’s The Librarianist
- Tim Willcox inspired by Waka T. Brown’s The Very Unfortunate Wish of Melony Yoshimura
About the Composers:
Hans Barkliss 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).
Nicole Buetti is the Contrabassoonist and Bassoonist with the Portland Columbia Symphony, the Vancouver Symphony, Oregon East Symphony, The Portland Choir Orchestra, and the Oregon Coast Music Festival. She is an active freelancer in both Oregon and Washington as well as abroad. She has performed with the Haydn Music Festival Orchestra in Vienna, and as a soloist and chamber music artist with the Assisi Performing Arts Festival in Italy. She has composed extensively for chamber ensembles and large ensembles of various configurations, as well as children’s music and music for media. Nicole co-owns Goes to Eleven Media, a music and media company specializing in recorded music for film and television and children’s educational songs.
Andrew Durkin is an author, songwriter, composer, and editor based in Portland, OR. His first book, Decomposition: A Music Manifesto (Pantheon, 2014), was one of Los Angeles Magazine’s “Best Little Music Books” of 2014. For more than ten years, he led the Industrial Jazz Group, a Los Angeles-based big band that released five critically acclaimed recordings, was featured on NPR, and toured the US and Europe. At Inkwater Press, he edited No God Like the Mother by Kesha Ajose Fisher, winner of the 2020 Ken Kesey Award for Fiction sponsored by the Oregon Book Awards. Currently, he is the editor-in-chief at Yellow Bike Press, and author of the forthcoming Bibi Blundermuss middle-grade fantasy series. In 2022, he released a debut singer-songwriter collection, Critical Kid.
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.
Ryan Meagher (pronounced Marr) is a graduate of the University of Nevada at Reno who has lived in Portland since 2012. He is an established guitarist in Portland’s jazz community and is also known for his roles as Artistic Director of PJCE and PJCE Records, an editor of Jazzscene Magazine, as well as in his role as an educator with Mt Hood Community College, University of Portland, Lower Columbia College, and with Metropolitan Youth Symphony.
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.
Tove Danovich’s nonfiction debut, Under the Henfluence: Inside the World of Backyard Chickens and the People Who Love Them was published by Agate (US) and William Collins (UK) on March 28, 2023.Her work appears in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Ringer, Eater, NPR, Vox, and many others. Her articles have been selected for Year’s Best Sports Writing and Best Food Writing and been notable selections in Best American Food Writing and Best American Travel Writing. She has been interviewed about her work by Ologies, CBS News, The Seattle Times, KCRW’s Good Food, 99% Invisible, The Takeaway, Marketplace, KERA Think, Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Radio, and others. She lives in Portland, Oregon and works as a freelance journalist.
Erica Berry’s nonfiction debut, Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear, was published in February 2023 by Flatiron/Macmillan (US+Canada), and Canongate (UK+Commonwealth) in March 2023 and is the winner of the 2024 Oregon Book Award! Wolfish is a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and a semifinalist for the Pacific Northwest Book Award.Her essays, often about the intersection between feelings and the natural environment, appear in The New York Times, Orion, The Yale Review, The Guardian, Aeon, Literary Hub, Wired, Outside, Colorado Review, and The Atlantic, among others. Winner of the Steinberg Essay Prize, she has received grants and fellowships from the Ucross Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources.
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.
Patrick DeWitt was born on Vancouver Island, Canada in 1975 and currently lives in Oregon,USA. He wrote the screenplay for Terri, a feature film starring John C. Reilly, which premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, and is also the author of the novels French Exit (a national bestseller), The Sisters Brothers (a New York Times bestseller short-listed for the Booker Prize), and the critically acclaimed Undermajordomo Minor and Ablutions. Born in British Columbia, he now resides in Portland, Oregon.
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.
Performers for the evening include:
Owen Broder, soprano sax and flute; Brian Myers, tenor sax, Mieke Bruggeman, baritone sax and bass clarinet; Jessika Smith, alto sax; Dan Davey, trumpet; Quinn Walker, trumpet; James Powers, trombone; Chris Shuttleworth, trombone; Kerry Politzer, piano; Eric Gruber, acoustic and electric bass; Ryan Meagher, acoustic and electric guitar; Dae Bryant, drums
Luciana Proano, dancer
A collaboration between Literary Arts and Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble, in partnership and support from:
