Racer Session #535 | Wayne Horvitz & Briggan Krauss | December 5, 2021
Welcome, improvisers and listeners!
Somehow, we’ve already arrived at the final Racer Session of the calendar year. It’s been such a dream to gather with you again, and we’ve got big plans for 2022. We hope you’ll join us for those, and one last 2021 session to send us all off into the rest of the holidays, the solstice, and the new year.
We really have one hell of a session this Sunday, too. Playing duo are Wayne Horvitz and Briggan Krauss, two musicians known and loved deeply both here in Seattle as well as in the other cities they’ve called home or places they’ve shared their music.
Wayne Horvitz is an accomplished composer, pianist and electronic musician who has performed extensively throughout Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America. He is the leader of the Gravitas Quartet, Sweeter Than the Day, Zony Mash, The Four plus One Ensemble and co-founder of the New York Composers Orchestra. He has collaborative relationships with Bill Frisell, Butch Morris, John Zorn, George Lewis, and Carla Bley, among others; and has been the recipient of numerous awards including the NEA American Masterpiece award, The American Prize in Composition, and The Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. He has greatly impacted and supported the Seattle music scene as a co-founder of The Royal Room, where he leads the live-conducted Royal Room Collective Music Ensemble (RRCME), is the Executive Director of the South Hudson Music Project, and has taught extensively to private student and ensembles of all ages.
Saxophonist Briggan Krauss has been an internationally recognized key player in New York City's downtown and creative music scene for more than twenty-five years. He connects the extreme edges of technique with the unexplored tonal possibilities of the instrument while making his work as much about shape as it is about his unique signature sound. He has worked with a diverse range of artists including John Zorn, Bill Frisell, Steven Bernstein, Levon Helm, Eyvind Kang, Robin Holcomb, Medeski Martin and Wood, Hal Willner, Bernie Worrell, and Joey Baron. Briggan's voice has been a part of Steven Bernstein’s iconic, GRAMMY award-winning quartet Sexmob from its inception more than twenty years ago. Briggan also plays guitar in several projects, and works in the areas of sound art, electronic music and interdisciplinary performance. He is currently a professor in the Performance and Interactive Media Arts [PIMA] and Sonic Arts MFA programs at Brooklyn College.
Wayne took the time to write a very thoughtful blog, sharing the history of his and Briggan’s creative relationship. You can find it below - take a few minutes to read it, and then find us at Cafe Racer this Sunday at 7pm for their duo set. It’s really going to be a special one.
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“One of the great joys of unstructured improvisation is making new connections and meeting new artists. It’s a great place to connect to a whole community, throughout the world. Maybe greater, however, is creating musical language over a long period of time with long-time musical collaborators. I can think of no better example than Briggan Krauss.
“Briggan and I met in Seattle when he was still a student at the Cornish College for the Arts. Oddly, he was “subbing” for Kenny Garett, in a rehearsal for a record Jerry Granelli was making. Jerry wanted to check out some arrangements I’d done, and brought Briggan since Garett was flying in the day of the recording. I had just moved to Seattle, and in fact I am writing this in the very same basement studio of my house where we met over 30 years ago.
“I could tell instantly that Briggan was someone I wanted to work with, and we have ever since.
Wayne Horvitz, Lê Quan Ninh, Briggan Krauss; image by Daniel Sheehan
“A lot of what we have done has been project based: Pigpen, Briggan as a guest improviser in various classical pieces, Zony Mash plus Horns, Briggan’s projects, and many more. But throughout we have played consistently in an improvised context, sometimes as a duo, often as a trio (with drummers Kenny Wolleson, Dylan Vand der Schyff, Le Quan Ninh and others) and in larger groups. I can’t really think of a single saxophone player who has stretched the nature of the instrument in any way close to what Briggan has done.
“There is nothing really “free” about free improvisation. We all bring to the table our language set, and sometimes that language set becomes a set of assumptions, and they can work for or against you. It’s like any human relationship. Sometimes it’s a good fit, and often it isn’t. Briggan is a great fit for me, and I know he feels the same way. When we play it’s like seeing someone after many years. You just start where you left off, and it’s easy - and liberating - in equal measure.
“Mostly our set up has been Briggan on alto, and myself on keyboards. Improvising with an electronic set-up has been part of my thing since the early 80s, but it often gets put away for more immediate projects. I miss doing it more, and I miss getting to do this music with Briggan. So I am just thrilled to get a chance to do it here, in the year 2021, at Racer. Hope to see you there.”
- Wayne Horvitz