Todd Sickafoose’s BEAR PROOF
Jenny Scheinman / violin
Adam Levy / guitar
Carmen Staaf / piano
Ben Goldberg / clarinet
Kirk Knuffke / cornet
Rob Reich / accordion
Allison Miller / drums
Todd Sickafoose / acoustic bass, composer
West Coast native Todd Sickafoose is a musical visionary. JazzTimes calls him “thoroughly
original” and “endlessly creative,” and the San Francisco Chronicle calls him “a captivating
improviser, imaginative composer, and master of collaboration.” He’s worked with an array of
amazing performers – the New Yorker has
referred to him as “Ani DiFranco’s secret weapon” and he is the Tony and GRAMMY award-winning orchestrator and music producer of Anais
Mitchell’s current Broadway hit “Hadestown”.
Tonight’s concert will be a rare performance of BEAR PROOF, an hour-long piece commissioned by Chamber Music America. Todd describes the music, which he composed specifically for this octet, as “a surreal meditation on BOOM and BUST.” Members of the all-star ensemble have played with a range of musical innovators, from Bill Frisell to Norah Jones, Dee Dee Bridgewater to Dr. Lonnie Smith, Tin Hat to Andrew Bird.
Keeping a band together, particularly among the mercurial community of jazz musicians, is no small feat. Other gigs beckon. Life outside of making art takes precedence. It’s a reality that makes the continued existence and progression of Portland quintet Blue Cranes feel so momentous. The ensemble — saxophonists Reed Wallsmith and Joe Cunningham, drummer Ji Tanzer, keyboardist Rebecca Sanborn, and bassist Jon Shaw — has been working together in a variety of formats since 2004, creating a solid body of work that has connected them to both the traditional sounds and the future-minded artists of their chosen genre.
What has kept them together, even as Cunningham has lived outside of Portland for the past few years, is strong personal and creative bonds. As a collective, their remit has always been to continually push their art further and further outside their comfort zones and to the edges of their abilities. It’s what fueled the group’s last album, 2021’s Voices, which found Blue Cranes recording for the first time with an assortment of vocalists (Laura Gibson, Edna Vazquez, Holland Andrews, Peter Broderick, Laura Veirs). And that desire to stretch even further beyond their previous work is at the heart of their new album My Only Secret. “I felt like I was getting in a rut, harmonically,” Wallsmith says. “I was trying to get out of that. To bring in more complexity and not do the same thing again.”
To that end, Wallsmith brought elements of twelve-tone and through-composition into his writing. “Semicircle” has an ever changing tonal center, while “Forward” keeps shifting and evolving in the manner of cloud formations being pushed along the sky. Cunningham, meanwhile, took on a nonlinear form of songwriting. “Gaviota” evokes the minimalist work of John Adams with its intertwining melodies and an extended coda that brings in some rattling percussion, the flute playing of John C. Savage, and the trombone of James Powers.
Another major shift for the band was to change the way they recorded My Only Secret. Created during the height of the quarantine, Blue Cranes altered their usual way of recording out of necessity, tracking each part separately and in duets across the studio window in Wallsmith’s basement. With some help from longtime cohorts Jason Powers and Todd Sickafoose, Wallsmith built the songs up using the individual components, usually adding Tanzer last in the process, because, he notes, “Ji is such an expressive player and is so in the moment, reacting to what’s happening. I felt like we’d lose all that otherwise.” Even with this temporal separation, says Cunningham, “it was like we were responding to each other. There was communication happening in the same space but at different times. And somehow it sounds like we’re playing live in the same room.”
What will always stay the same with Blue Cranes no matter how much they change as people, as players and as composers is the vibrant emotional core within the music they create. Each song on My Only Secret has a core memory attached to it, whether it is the birth of a child (“Sloan”), a parent’s comfort after the death of a beloved pet (“Rhododendron”), or the agony of the 2016 election results (“Forward”). They feel every moment of every song deeply, something which colors every note they play. “We’re a good emotional band,” says Cunningham. “We can go to that place.” The beauty of My Only Secret, like all of the work Blue Cranes has produced to date, is that they want anyone and everyone to join them.
Harlan believes in the power of music to comfort our minds and relax our bodies. As a cellist and multi-instrumentalist, his musical talents span across genres from classical music for meditation and wellness to hip hop. His diverse list of songwriting and producing credits range from Michelle Branch to The Late Show’s John Baptiste and the hip hop artist, Duckwrth. As a solo artist, Harlan has released four instrumental albums that have been wildly featured on playlists for mediation and wellness.
As a film and television composer, Harlan brings together all elements of his musical background. He has worked such talents as Lakeith Stanfield and had his music featured on such hit series HBO’S INSECURE and Hulu’s WOKE.
Harlan’s musical training began at the age of four, when he began playing the cello after seeing Yo-Yo Ma perform on television. Harlan went on to study with renown cellist Eugene Friesen at Berklee School of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.
