Roy Parnell (1943-2006) - Earshot Jazz

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These Hills of Glory March 5: Ron Miles, trumpet, soloist March 19: Tom Swafford, violin, soloist Café Paloma, 7:30pm Admission: $10 at the door Wayne Horvitz presents the fourth and fifth instalments of his series of presentations of These Hills of Glory: Composition No. 2 for String Quartet and Improviser, with Denver-based trumpeter Ron Miles and Seattle-based violinist Tom Swafford as soloists. They join the odeonquartet, a top-class string, in interpreting Horvitz’s work, which rests at the intersection of composition and improvisation. Keyboard player Wayne Horvitz has long played and composed in multiple genres, and combinations of them. He enjoys high repute throughout North America, and much further afield. Here in Seattle, he has been the leader of several stellar projects, including Zony Mash, Pigpen, and The Four plus One Ensemble. He was also co-founder of both East and West Coast versions of the New York Composers Orchestra. And, he has long and often performed and collaborated with many jazz leading of the day, including Bill Frisell, Butch Morris, John Zorn, Robin Holcomb, Fred Frith, 14 • Earshot Jazz • March 2006 Julian Priester, Philip Wilson, Michael Shrieve, and Carla Bley. His composing has brought him as much renown as his playing. His compositions for small jazz groups have made him a club favorite, and he has been a mentor to a whole generation of outjazzers and rockers-turned-jazzers here in Washington state. He also has received many commissions from such quarters as the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet The Composer, the Kronos String Quartet, Seattle Chamber Players, Mary Flagler, BAM, and Earshot Jazz. His compositions often have a transporting, dancing quality, so it is no surprise that he has often collaborated with choreographers, including Paul Taylor and the White Oak Dance Project, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, and Crispin Spaeth. His film work includes music and sound design for three PBS specials and Gus Van Sant’s feature film, Psycho. In 2001, Horvitz received an Artist Trust Fellowship (Seattle) and in 2002 he was awareded a Rockefeller Foundation MAP Grant. Last month, Earshot Jazz awarded him a special Golden Ear for his many contributions to Seattle creative music. He and trumpeter Ron Miles go way back. Miles has often performed with longtime Horvitz New York colleagues, including Bill Frisell and Don Byron, and has also been a member of the Ellington Orchestra and Fred Hess’ Boulder Creative Music Ensemble. A staple of the Denver jazz scene, he also is in demand the world over for his rich, distinctive sound. The “phenomenally gifted trumpeter,” as critic Bill Milkowski has described him, is also a fine composer. He has lived in Denver since he was 11, where he began studying the trumpet. He studied music at the University of Denver and the Manhattan School of Music, and in 1999 served as musical director and arranger for drummer Ginger Baker’s disc Coward of the County (Atlantic 1999). His compositions anchor that record. He also released a series of well-received discs on Gramavision (My Cruel Heart, Woman’s Day) and Capri (Witness, Ron Miles Trio). Tom Swafford grew up in Seattle. He began improvising in 1991 as a member of Tufts University New Music Ensemble. In the late 90’s, while a composition graduate student at U.C. Berkeley, he performed with 024c, Dan Plonsey, John Schott, and Matt Ingalls, among others. He also recorded the CD Hill Music with the Emergency String Quartet. From 2001 to 2002 Tom studied composition in Amsterdam with Louis Andriessen. Since returning to Seattle, he
has been active in Seattle’s thriving creative music community. He is a member of Doublends Vert, Cipher, Tone Action Orchestra, Thingsome Q, Volute, and a duo with drummer Matt Crane, as well as the Irish/Punk band, Meisce. He wrote, played, and recorded string arrangements for pop bands Guster, Papas Fritas and SweetLou. In the Seattle-based odeonquartet, Miles and Swafford will meet one of the most distinguished of modern string quartets, with Gennady Filimonov, violin; Heather Bentley, viola; Jennifer Caine, violin; and Page Smith, cello. Among their distinctions is to present high-quality performances of new chamber music, and to bring new composition to new audiences. The quartet has been, for example, the Lehmann Ensemble-in- Residence at Cornish College of the Arts during 2001-2003 season. They have appeared to increasing acclaim. Gavin Borchert, in the Seattle Times, wrote: “Just a few seasons old, this young, vibrant group has made a Kronoslike commitment to a 20th century music all over the artistic map – from serialism, evocations of folk and pop music from around the world, American classics and European neo-romanticism.” The ensemble features works in varied American and international styles including fresh and imaginative performances of standard and lesser-known masterpieces as well as new works and unusual repertoire. Their work may, for example, weave in threads of tango, American prison blues, Persian folk music, jazz, Russian orthodox hymns, minimalism, European neo-romanticism, and contemporary and folk influences. For this, the quartet has received a prestigious King County Arts Commission grant, and regularly appeared on the Seattle Chamber Music Festival’s “Under Forte” series. The series will end next month, on April 16, with a performance of the work by the odeonquartet and, as soloist, Gust Burns, at Gallery 1412. For more information, visit www.waynehorvitz.com and www.odeonquartet.org. Please Put Me On Hold Tell you one thing: Whoever is programming the City of Seattle phone system’s hold music is hip. When you call the Public Utilities department at the city, Wayne Horvitz, Bogey Vujkov, Carlos Cascante’s Tumbao with Thomas Marriott, and Dave Peck are some of the musicians whose recordings you hear while waiting. Music by some of the city’s leading lights of jazz and other forms of music is part of city employees’ vision of making the vexed experience of waiting on hold a little more pleasant, and to promote the city’s music scene while doing so. Also on rotation have been Aono Jikken, which creates music from found objects; the Northwest Chamber Chorus; Seattle Pro Musica, an early-music group, performing “To Mistress Margaret Hussey;” pianist and accordianist Murl Allen Sanders; and Wu Ziying, a performer of Chinese classical music. The announcement between tunes is a rather clunky announcement by Mayor Greg Nickels hippin’ the caller to what’s happenin’. He even tells you how to subscribe to a ``podcast’’ to Origin Records available GRETA MATASSA Favorites From a Long Walk Origin 82452 have the music automatically downloaded onto your computer, via www. seattle.gov/onhold. According to Nate Brown of the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, some listeners now actually want to be put on hold. And, San Francisco is planning to copycat us by placing its own cats on an on-hold system. City employees cooked up the idea because callers had been complaining that the exisiting on-hold music...well, it sucked, and are we surprised? Selling the idea of replacing it with something tastier was not difficult, Brown says, because the music industry employs 8,700 people in Seattle and generates $1.3 billion in annual sales. City employees and musicians they knew selected the first rotation of cuts, but a more permanent group will make the selections in the future. Cuts will rotate every quarter. The program is already drawing some extra attention to Seattle music. The Bloomberg business news service wrote about it, which prompted the LA Times and some others to do the same. – Peter Monaghan New Releases at Bud’s, Tower, Silver Platters & Easy Street JOHN BISHOP Nothing if Not Something Origin 82455 SEATTLE REPERTORY JAZZ ORCHESTRA Sacred Music of Duke Ellington Origin 82456 ORIGIN RECORDS OA2RECORDS www.originarts.com - 206/781-2589 distributed by: CITY HALL RECORDS 415/457-9080 March 2006 • Earshot Jazz • 15
Page 1 and 2: EARSHOT JAZZ A Mirror and Focus for
Page 3 and 4: Golden Ear Awards Each year the Gol
Page 5 and 6: Time after Time: Earshot Jazz Sprin
Page 7 and 8: Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares Sunda
Page 9 and 10: New Dutch Swing into Seattle ICP Or
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Page 13: oom, and Parnell’s certainly was
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Page 19 and 20: The Frank Gratkowski Quartet appear
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Page 23 and 24: A $35 basic membership in Earshot b

Roy Parnell (1943-2006) - Earshot Jazz

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