Site Location: Willow-Witt Ranch
Title: Framework: Scaffolded Clouds
Composed by Terry Longshore
Performed by Left Edge Percussion
#artbeyond2021
About the Artist
Terry Longshore is a percussionist whose genre-crossing work exhibits the artistry of the concert stage, the spontaneity of jazz, and the energy of a rock club. Based in Ashland, Oregon, he maintains an energetic career as an educator, performer, and composer. He serves as Professor of Music and Director of Percussion Studies at the Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University, where he directs Left Edge Percussion and is Chair and Graduate Coordinator of the Music Program.
Whether collaborating with multi-media artists, composing live music for dance and theatre, or premiering works by today’s most ground-breaking composers, Terry Longshore brings a dynamic voice to every musical encounter. He is the co-artistic director of flute and percussion duo Caballito Negro and multi-media duo Left Edge Collective, and is member of the Portland Percussion Group and Flamenco Pacifico. He has performed extensively with ensembles Skin & Bones, Conundrum, Sonoluminescence, and red fish blue fish, and has performed at numerous festivals and concert series including the Bang on a Can Marathon, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella Series, the Britt Music & Arts Festival, the Transplanted Roots International Percussion Symposium (Montreal and Guanajuato), Musik i Väst Festival (Sweden), the Cabrillo Music Festival, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Festival of New American Music, the Northwest Percussion Festival, The Oregon Fringe Festival, Center for New Music (San Francisco), and numerous times at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC). His compositions for percussion have been performed at festivals and competitions throughout North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.
Longshore has premiered over 100 compositions for solo percussion, percussion ensemble, chamber ensemble, symphony orchestra, and the theatre. With nearly 100 tracks on Spotify and other music platforms, his recordings include multiple CDs for composer Mark Applebaum on the innova and Tzadik labels, the percussion music of Iannis Xenakis on Mode Recordings, music of percussion maverick William Kraft on Albany, and Michael Gordon’s Natural History on Cantaloupe Music. He also champions new solo and chamber works for percussion by commissioning, organizing, and participating in consortium commissions for works from a diverse body of composers. Recent projects include collaborations with and commissions by composers Rajna Swaminathan, Joby Talbot, Aaron Garcia, Susanna Hancock, Finola Merivale, Emma O’Halloran, Shruthi Rajasekar, Steven Snowden, Annika K. Socolofsky, Ivan Trevino, Molly Joyce, Alejandro Viñao, Bryan Jeffs, Jared Brown, Jodi French, David Crowell, Mark Applebaum, Peter Garland, Eugene Koshinski, Robert Honstein, Wally Gunn, Erik Griswold, Elliot Cole, and Roshanne Etezady. Terry Longshore is a Marimba One Vibe Artist, a Yamaha Performing Artist, and an artist endorser for Zildjian Cymbals, Vic Firth Sticks and Mallets, Remo Drumheads, Gon Bops Percussion, and Beato Bags. He is a member of the Black Swamp Percussion Education Network, and is a trained HealthRHYTHMS facilitator.
Terry Longshore holds bachelor’s degrees from the California State University at Fresno (Business Administration – Computer Applications and Systems) and Sacramento (Music – Percussion Performance) and earned the master’s and doctoral degrees in Contemporary Music Performance from the University of California, San Diego. His education includes significant study of Spanish flamenco and the classical music of India, including study at the Ali Akbar College of Music. His teachers include Steven Schick, Daniel Kennedy, Swapan Chaudhuri, Ronald Holloway, David Glyde, Chuck Flores, and Kartik Seshadri. He enjoys fly fishing, cycling, hiking, and especially traveling the world with his wife Jennifer and hanging out with his children, Madeleine and Maxwell.
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Artist Statement
Framework: Scaffolded Clouds was commissioned by the Schneider Museum of Art for Art Beyond, an outdoor art exhibition focusing on sculptural and installation based artworks. It will be performed on Avantika Bawa‘s A Yellow Scaffold on the Ranch, an installation artwork created for the exhibition and erected at Willow-Witt Ranch outside of Ashland, Oregon.
The performers play on the artwork itself, an idea that came to composer Terry Longshore when Scott Malbaurn, Director of the Schneider Museum of Art, first described the work to him, “I instantly thought of climbing on and playing directly on the scaffolding, but I was afraid that would not be welcomed. It turned out Avantika loved the idea; ‘Beat the hell out of it!’ she said. I was thrilled!”
Similar to Bawa’s works, Framework: Scaffolded Clouds is modular and minimalist in nature, utilizing cells of rhythmic and textural musical material including a technique borrowed from Greek-French composer and architect Iannis Xenakis – “stochastic clouds of percussive sonorities.” Silence is also employed, inspired by the “space between” – a meadow, a cloud, an interior, etc. – one experiences when viewing Bawa’s Scaffold series. The score is arranged in a scaffolded fashion, the cells of musical materials built upon and connecting to each other, with instructions to the performers on how to move between them during a performance.
The premiere of Framework: Scaffolded Clouds will be performed by Left Edge Percussion on June 5, 2021, at 4:00 pm. Performers: Terry Longshore (Artistic Director), Jade Hails, Delaney Jai, Bryan Jeffs, Bobby Odle, and Parker Stockford.
Related Events
Saturday, June 5th, 4pm
Performance with Left Edge Percussion
Site: Willow-Witt Ranch