<< back to schedule The Improvisation Summit of Portland 2016


Date: Saturday, June 4  |  Time: 8:15pm  |  Stage: Stage 2

Portland, OR-based Thick in the Throat, Honey (Claudia F. Savage, poetry, and John C. Savage, flutes and saxophones) began in 2007 at The Atlantic Center for the Arts. Morphing the traditions of jazz, spoken word, experimental music, chants, and devotional intoning, the duo is known for their unique melding of the disparate. Claudia regularly collaborates with visual artists and has been awarded residencies from Ucross, Jentel, and Hambidge, among others. Her poetry and interviews have recently been in Columbia Journal, Denver Quarterly, CutBank, water-stone review, clade song, Forklift, Ohio, Nimrod, and Bookslut. She is the author of the forthcoming collection Bruising Continents (Spuyten Duyvil, 2017) and the chapbooks: The Last One Eaten: A Maligned Vegetable’s History and The Hour of Anjali. She teaches privately and as an associate poetry fellow at The Attic. John C. Savage has been compared to Rahsaan Roland-Kirk, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Noah Howard, Herbie Mann, and Colin Stetson. He is known equally as “a thoughtful and rigorous improviser” and “a badass, knock-down-drag-out force to be reckoned with” (Willamette Week). John has received honors from New York University (NYU), the Oregon Arts Commission, and RACC, and holds a Ph.D. from NYU in music performance. His most recent release, Cartridge’s Black Heron and the Spoonbill (PJCE Records), featured Claudia’s poetic work which “captured the feel of the album’s carefully layered soundscapes” (Willamette Week). Thick in the Throat Honey’s work has been supported by the Creative Music Guild, RACC, and Oregon State University. Their first album, Love Letters We Never Sent, was released on Thrum Recordings and is available at www.thickinthethroathoney.bandcamp.com