SAWYER, Mich. — On Saturday Aug. 29, the non-profit arts organization HotHouse will present a one-day star-studded music festival in Sawyer, Michigan.

The HotHouse Creative Music Festival brings together many of the musicians that have been featured on the long running critically acclaimed series “Jazz on a Summer’s Day” presented by HotHouse.

The acclaimed concert and performing arts series was formerly showcased in the Lakeside Inn. The death of the owner last August prompted HotHouse to seek a new location for its series.

The featured artists include many of the world’s top creative improvising artists. They are regular winners in the (“jazz bible”) Downbeat Critic’s Polls and appear at top performing arts centers and museums around the nation. This occasion is a rare chance for Harbor Country to hear and mingle with this caliber of avant-garde artistry.

Veteran impresaria Marguerite Horberg is founder of the fabled nightclub HotHouse. HotHouse has long been one of the world’s premiere stages for Jazz and eclectic contemporary cultural expression. HotHouse has been bringing the same world renowned international talent to Harbor Country since 2009. The artists featured on the festival are all top-tier musicians presenting wholly original work; are widely praised as innovative composers and artists and are featured at festivals throughout the world.

HotHouse chose the gallery and studio of artist Joe Hindley as the site for this year’s one-day mini-festival. Hindley’s studio is in the converted Flynn Theater in downtown Sawyer, conveniently located in the epicenter of Harbor Country enchantments. The funky environs filled with Hindley’s murals, paintings of rural Michigan and noir street scenes will provide a great atmosphere for the music. The gallery is located adjacent to Fitzgerald’s restaurant and in front of the Sawyer Garden Center. Attendees at the Festival can sample fresh produce from the center or patronize the many area restaurants and microbreweries.

This event is dedicated to the memory of Dev Bowly and Gwynne Winsberg – two area residents that were long time supporters of HotHouse’s programming.

Over the course of the event, the artists will play in their own ensemble then mix it up in improvised combos. Audiences are invited to witness the spontaneous conversation between seasoned improvisers. In fact, the point of the program is to provide opportunities to have access to a rather complex structure of music and an informal access to these talented musicians in a way that they might not otherwise experience.

 

Featured artists include

EDWARD L. WILKERSON, JR., is an internationally recognized American jazz composer, arranger, musician, and educator based in Chicago. As founder and director of the cutting edge octet, 8 Bold Souls, and the 25-member performance ensemble, Shadow Vignettes, Wilkerson has toured festivals and concert halls throughout the United States, Europe, Japan, and the Middle East. Defender, a large-scale piece for Shadow Vignettes, was commissioned by the Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest Fund and featured in the 10th Anniversary of New Music America, a presentation of BAM’s Next Wave Festival.

 

TATSU AOKI is a prolific and accomplished musician, composer and educator. He works in a wide array of musical styles, ranging from traditional Asian music to jazz to experimental music and is a much in-demand artist performing on both contrabass and the shamisen (Japanese thee-stringed lute). He has recorded more than 100 albums featuring many of the musical legends of Chicago, including Fred Anderson, Von Freeman, Malachi Favors Maghostut, Don Moye and John Watson Sr.

 

MICHAEL ZERANG was born in Chicago and is a first generation American of Assyrian decent. He has been a professional musician, composer, and producer since 1976, focusing extensively on improvised music, free jazz, contemporary composition, puppet theater, experimental theater, and international musical forms.

 

RENÉE BAKER is a composer, violinist/violist, conductor is founder/leader of thirteen contemporary music performance entities. She has created eclectic chamber festivals for Adler Planetarium, Shedd Aquarium, Joffrey Ballet Chamber Series, Norris Cultural Arts Center and Classical Symphony Hall.

 

JAMES SANDERS is a violinist with dozens of jazz and classical credits in his career. He is a member of Dee Alexander’s Evolution Ensemble and was featured on her recent Down Beat 5-star reviewed CD, Wild is the Wind.  He appeared with Nicole Mitchell’s Black Earth Ensemble in her tribute concert to Alice Coltrane in Millennium Park, and is a member of Alfonso Ponticelli’s Swing Gitan, Reneé Baker’s Mantra Blue Free Orchestra, and Doug Lofstrom’s New Quartet.

 

SHANTA NURULLAH is a talented multi-instrumentalist and long-time member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Joining with other members from this institution of innovative Chicago jazz, Shanta co-founded Sojourner and Samana, two all-woman groups in which she played percussion, bass and sitar. She performs with The AACM’s Great Black Music Ensemble and Classic Black.

 

VOLCANO RADAR is described as a fusion of ecstatic improvisational energy and Apollonian intellect.  A power quartet fueled by dual free jazz/noise/avant guitarists Elbio Barilari and Julia A. Miller, Volcano Radar moves fluently through a stylistic range from noise-funk improvisation to structured sonic forms.With Rollo Radford, electric bass; and Lou Ciccotelli, percussion.

 

JULIA A. MILLER is a sound artist, guitarist, improvisor, composer, visual artist, curator and educator. Julia is a founding member of the Chicago Scratch Orchestra and also a founding member of the artist collective Articular Facet.

Julia is a frequent soloist and collaborator in experimental and avant garde chamber music. Poetry and the voice live at the heart of Julia’s work, and poetic documents as scores, performative objects, and new media poetics are part of Julia’s ongoing exploration into the hybridization of voice, instruments, electronics, and video to create an organic whole from one source of material (her voice).

 

ABOUT HOTHOUSE

HotHouse was founded in 1987 to provide a forum for expression in the arts that was under-represented elsewhere in the Chicago cultural community. It was created primarily to curate multi-arts and educational activities that bolstered the prominence of innovative artists working in the margins of the commercial market and to facilitate events that amplified a variety of progressive social movements. The New York Times wrote of HotHouse “few clubs anywhere offer a wider range of first-rate world music, from wildly vibrant Afro-pop to avant-garde jazz than HotHouse.” And a “Best of Chicago” award opined “from European avant-garde jazz acts that don’t even play in this hemisphere to performance art to world music to the city’s more esoteric acts, [HotHouse] has consistently pulled in some of the planet’s most innovative acts.”

For two decades the organization maintained two award-winning cultural centers where it presented its programs-the first catalyzed growth in the Wicker Park neighborhood (1987-1995) and the second spurred development in the South Loop in downtown Chicago (1995-2007). The board of directors is currently pursuing plans to build its third site.

HotHouse develops its programs in response to a variety of community needs and seeks to extend the milieu of the academy and position high caliber (and international) arts innovation before underserved populations throughout the Chicago metropolitan region.