“Horvitz and his players have shown that
‘improvised’ or ‘new’ music can be utterly
lovely to listen to.”
–All Music Guide

A supremely versatile musician with a half-dozen projects going at any particular time, pianist/keyboardist Wayne Horvitz explores avant-chamber jazz spaces with a similarly flexible cast in the Gravitas Quartet. Featuring Vancouver cellist Peggy Lee, bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck and trumpeter Ron Miles, who like Horvitz is closely associated with Bill Frisell, the group released a beautifully textured 2006 album Way Out East that captures its singular mix of new music, jazz and improvised composition.

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A supremely versatile musician with a half-dozen projects going at any particular time, pianist/keyboardist Wayne Horvitz explores avant-chamber jazz spaces with a similarly flexible cast in the Gravitas Quartet. Featuring Vancouver cellist Peggy Lee, Los Angeles bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck and Denver trumpeter Ron Miles, the group released a beautifully textured 2006 album, Way Out East, that captures its singular mix of new music, jazz and improvised composition.

Horvitz started his career as an avant-garde jazz-obsessed student at U.C. Santa Cruz in the mid-1970s. Before the end of the decade he made the move to New York City, where he quickly gained recognition as an adventurous improviser at a time when the Downtown scene was rife with experimentation. He formed a particularly tight bond with guitarist Bill Frisell, a musical relationship that only deepened when both musicians moved to Seattle in the late ’80s.

Since settling in Washington, Horvitz has become even more prolific as a composer, player, and bandleader. His work has served as a muse for creative giants in other fields, such as choreographer Paul Taylor, whose 1992 collaboration with Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Company, “OZ,” was set to 11 Horvitz compositions. More recently, his string quartet “Mountain Language” premiered in Vienna. A restless bandleader, Horvitz has assembled several remarkable ensembles, including the rock-infused combos Pigpen, Zony Mash, and Ponga. The acoustic Gravitas Quartet, an improvisational powerhouse that blurs distinctions between folk, jazz and classical music, explores Horvitz’s most spacious and finely textured settings.

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