Bhob Rainey
Bhob Rainey is an award-winning composer / performer. He has a long and well-regarded history as an improviser, known for a masterful yet often understated technique that transforms the soprano saxophone into an electronic-like, textural, or percussive device. He is also known for his ongoing critique of improvisational practice, which has brought influential concepts and stylistic components into the practice as a whole. While Rainey has worked with numerous improvisers globally, he is best known for his solo work, Nmperign (with trumpeter Greg Kelley), and his direction of the improvising large ensemble, The BSC.

Rainey’s work extends to the realm of electronic and algorithmic composition. A programmer from a young age, he has contributed a significant set of extensions to the SuperCollider language and has used contemporary computational techniques from fields like gaming and big data to trouble the formal content of his electronic works. His collaborations in this area are not only with algorithms and electrons, but also with regarded composers such as Ralf Wehowsky, Jason Lescalleet, and Chris Cooper.

In 2013, Rainey was awarded the prestigious Pew Fellowship in the Arts for his work in these areas. In 2014, the American Composers Forum (Philadephia Chapter) awarded him a Subito grant for work on Axon Ladder. (www.bhobrainey.net)

Joda Clément

Raised in Toronto and based in Vancouver, Joda Clément has been performing and composing experimental music in Canada for over 15 years, developing a unique repertoire of methods for working creatively with sound. His work utilizes analog and acoustic instruments, microphones, found objects and noises recorded from natural and urban environments, investigating hidden properties of sound, space and recording techniques that transcend a distinction between audio and source.

Joda has performed compositions, improvisation and exhibited audio/visual installations in Canada and abroad, including appearances at The Music Gallery, MOCCA, Issue Project Room (NY), Reheat (Austria), Suoni Per Il Popolo, Extermination Music Night, Electric Eclectics, MUTEK and Oboro New Media lab and his music has been released internationally on labels such as Alluvial Recordings (US), Mystery Sea (BE), Unfathomless (BE), Simple Geometry (CA) and caduc (CA).

Over the years, collaborators include Magali Babin, Michael Northam, Hitoshi Kojo, Olivia Block, Bhob Rainey, Bonnie Jones, Kai Fagaschinski, Chris Cogburn, Tomasz Krakowiak, Mathieu Ruhlmann and Lance Austin Olsen, for example. (jodaclement.wordpress.com)

The Creative Music Guild is a Portland, Oregon all-volunteer, non-profit organization whose mission is to promote experimental, improvised music by presenting concerts, workshops and other events that bring together internationally recognized musicians with local performers, audiences and music students of all ages. For over twenty years, the CMG has been a leader in cultivating Portland’s experimental and improvised music.

Confluence, our visiting artist series, is where the CMG started back in 1991 with bringing the best improvisers in the world to Portland.

We present 6-8 concerts a year by artists from all over the world at venues around Portland. Our programming committee carefully curates this series taking into account diversity (both musical diversity as well as gender & ethnic diversity), quality and recognition (extremely high quality of craft is a given and some degree of critical and/or community recognition within the creative improvisation scene is crucial) and the ability of the musicians to come to Portland without our help (we generally don’t get involved in concerts that would happen without us).