Brooklyn pianist and composer Shawn Onsgard presents fresh selections from his avant jazz compositions arranged for solo piano and Hammond organ.
Through composition and performance Onsgard seeks an epistemology in music practice which might inform new and meaningful life experiences. He is currently developing an improvisatory solo piano repertoire that explores imbalanced harmonic structures inspired by Alexander Scriabin and Vijay Iyer. When not at the piano, he composes for all sound-producing things from ice cream trucks, to hundred meter piano wires, to snoring grandparents, and everything in between exploring politics, metaphor, narrative, and perception of space through sound.
His work has been performed and exhibited internationally, and he has worked with composers Anthony Braxton and Alvin Lucier; film makers Pierre Huyghe, and Jane & Louise Wilson; choreographer Mollie O’Brien; and media artists Aaron Davidson & Melissa Dubbin, and Woody Vasulka. He has received grants from Meet the Composer, NYSCA Independent Media Artist award, NYFA Special Opportunity Stipend; and he received his MA in experimental music composition from Wesleyan University, CT.
Maguire, Cleaver, and Halvorson
“Then I reflected that all things happen to oneself, and only in the present; countless men in the air, on the land and sea, yet everything that truly happens, happens to me….”
This decidedly unbalanced trio of drums, electric guitar, and exposed Rhodes integrates extended sections of exact notation with improvisational passages to create a vivid aural landscape of textural diversity and rhythmic sensuality.
Mary Halvorson is a guitarist, composer and improviser living in Brooklyn. She grew up in Boston and studied jazz at Wesleyan University and the New School. Since 2000 she has been performing regularly in New York with various groups and has toured Europe and the U.S. with the Anthony Braxton Quintet (Live at the Royal Festival Hall, Leo Records) and Trevor Dunn’s Trio-Convulsant (Sister Phantom Owl Fish, Ipecac Recordings). She has also performed alongside Joe Morris, Nels Cline, John Tchicai, Elliott Sharp, Andrea Parkins, Marc Ribot, Tony Malaby, Oscar Noriega and Jason Moran. Current projects which Mary composes for and performs with include a chamber-music duo with violist Jessica Pavone ( On and Off, Skirl Records, 2007); The Mary Halvorson Trio with John Hebert and Ches Smith; and the avant-rock band People (Misbegotten Man, I & Ear Records, 2007). She also performs regularly in ensembles led by Taylor Ho Bynum, Ted Reichman, Tatsuya Nakatani, Jason Cady, Matthew Welch, Brian Chase and Curtis Hasselbring.
Gerald Cleaver, born and raised in Detroit, is a product of the city’s rich music tradition. Inspired by his father, John Cleaver, also a drummer, he began playing the drums at an early age. He also played violin in elementary school and switched to trumpet during junior high and high school. While in his teens, he gained early working experience with Ali Muhammad Jackson, Lamont Hamilton, Earl Van Riper, and Pancho Hagood and later with Marcus Belgrave, Donald Walden, Rodney Whitaker, A. Spencer Barefield and Wendell Harrison. Cleaver earned a B.A. in music education from the University of Michigan. During his studies he was awarded an National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Study Fellowship to study with drummer Victor Lewis. After graduating he began teaching in Detroit, and later joined the jazz faculty at the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. He relocated to New York in 2002. Cleaver has worked with Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill, Jacky Terrasson, Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan, Mario Pavone, Charles Gayle, Matthew Shipp, Reggie Workman, Joe Morris, Craig Taborn, Ralph Alessi, Eddie Harris, and Miroslav Vitous, among others.
Carl Maguire grew up in Madison, Wisconsin where his early piano teachers included Jacquelyn Patricia, Ellsworth Snyder, and Joan Wildman. He continued on to the University of Wisconsin, studying improvisation with Roscoe Mitchell. Moving to New York in 1995, Carl engaged in a curriculum of liberal arts at Hunter College, Schenkerian analysis at Mannes, and post-tonal theory at CUNY Graduate Center. He studied piano with Fred Hersch, Marilyn Crispell, and Ursula Oppens, and of particular importance, composition with Mark Dresser. Carl performs on piano and Rhodes, with both traditional and less-traditional techniques, and sometimes on accordion. He has performed or recorded with the Carter Thornton Assembly; Brett Sroka’s Ergo; Tyshawn Sorey Quartet; The Wau Wau Sisters; Laura Andel Orchestra; Barbez; Ben Gerstein Collective; Momenta Quartet; and was a featured soloist in Butch Morris’ New York Skyscraper.Since 2001, Carl has led Floriculture with Chris Mannigan, John Hebert, and Dan Weiss. The band plays exclusively Maguire’s compositions. Donald Elfman says “These are exceptional players, but each man’s every note is at the service of making brilliant, involving music.” In 2006, Floriculture released its first album on Between The Lines, to critical acclaim.