Name: The Lepidopterans & BARBEDWIRE
Start: 2026-03-12T20:00:00-04:00
Location: Pageant : Soloveev

The Lepidopterans:
The Lepidopterans are a "supergroup" with Baltimore/Philadelphia long-time experimental scene players Toshi Makihara, Tom Borax, Jason Willett and John Dierker. Each member has decades of experience improvising and collaborating, having appeared in a dizzying list of projects, bands and records. They bring out virtuoso chops and strange and humorous theatricality to live sets that are like celebrations linking free jazz, early electronic music, and noise.
Jason Willett (b. 1967) is an uncategorizable bassist, electronics wiz and engineer/producer who founded Megaphone records and The True Vine record shop and has appeared on (not exaggerating) 100s of albums. He's been the primary bassist for no-wave punk legends Half Japanese for the past 30 years. He's performed with tons of amazing artists - a few examples - The Ruins, Jon Rose, Jac Berrocal, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Yamatsuka Eye, Matmos, Ron Anderson etc etc.
John Dierker (b. 1965) is arguably Baltimore's best and most flexible reed player. A virtuoso of saxes, clarinets, and flutes - he has been blowing minds in Baltimore music spaces for nearly 5 decades. Equally at home in straight jazz, club music, live wedding dance bands, and outrageous noise blowing - John is basically unstoppable and criminally underrated as a monster of reeds. He has a 3+ decades-long collaboration with Baltimore pianist Layfayette Gilchrist (Arkestra and David Murray). "....interweaving concepts augmented by howling lines, injections of blues-drenched choruses and Albert Ayler-like display of energy." (All About Jazz.)
Tom Borax (b. 1974) is a multi-media artist, musician/composer, founder of Baltimore's High Zero Festival of Improvised and Experimental Music (in its 27th year!). A multi-instrumentalist - he mostly plays on a self-built analog synthesizer and microtonal harpsichord. He has performed and improvised across the USA, Canada, Mexico, Europe, China, and Japan. He has improvised with a diverse range of musicians including Tetsuya Yoshida, Matmos, Jenny Graf, Ben Bennett, Jamal Moore, Ami Yamasaki, Emily Rach Beisel, Michael Zerang, Hanna Olivegren, Takahiro Kawaguchi, Chiang Ziyang, Bashi Rose, Simone Barone, Levi Lu, Jeff Carey, Ikue Mori, Forbes Graham, Weasel Walter, Tomomi Adachi etc etc.
Toshi Makihara's (b. 1960) performance work effortlessly blends percussion with dance-like body movement. Through a rigorous, systematic, and practiced process of experimentation and repetition, Makihara seeks out sounds that he and others have never heard before, experimenting with touch, force, and speed, and always remaining aware of sound's relationship to the body. He uses a variety of percussion instruments, as well as objects found in nature and everyday items, such as metal or machine parts.
BARBEDWIRE:
Phillip Greenlief:
Since his emergence on the west coast in the late 1970s, saxophonist/composer Phillip Greenlief has achieved international acclaim for his recordings and performances with musicians and composers in the post-jazz continuum as well as new music innovators and virtuosic improvisers. He has performed with Wadada Leo Smith, Meredith Monk, Rashaun Mitchell & Silas Reiner, and They Might Be Giants. Albums include two LANTSKAP LOGIC TRIO releases (w/ Evelyn Davis and Fred Frith), THAT OVERT DESIRE OF OBJECT with Joelle Leandre, ALL AT ONCE with FPR (Frank Gratkowski and Jon Raskin), and OH THAT MONSTER with LA punk pioneers Thelonious Monster. Recent residencies have included the Banff Center for Art and Creativity, Neue Muzik Koln, and Headlands Center for the Arts. His critical writing has been published in Artforum, Open Space (SFMOMA), Sound American, and Signal to Noise.
"The Bay Area's do-it-yourself ethos has produced a bevy of dazzlingly creative musicians, but few have put the philosophy to work as effectively as Phillip Greenlief." – Andrew Gilbert, San Francisco Chronicle
Jen Baker:
Jen Baker, NYC-based trombonist/composer has pioneered a widely diverse career based in redefining the role of trombone in contemporary music and traditional performance settings. Featured on numerous record labels including the soundtrack to Werner Herzog's Oscar-nominated Encounters at the End of the World, she performs locally and internationally as contemporary trombonist and improviser. Her book, Hooked on Multiphonics, fills the gap for trombonists and composers looking to understand this extended technique for her instrument. Hailed for her "formidable sensitivity” (New York Times), she has “performed with brilliant mastery and virtuosity” (San Francisco Classical Voice) at festivals worldwide, as Guest Artist at International Trombone Festival, American Trombone Workshop, Complete Trombonist Workshop, Ostrava Days (Czech Republic), Edgefest, Electro-Acoustic Improvisation Summit, International Society of Improvised Music, and others. Her compositions have been performed nationwide partly through commissions by members of Mivos Quartet, The Fourth Wall, loadbang, Asphalt Orchestra, Wavefield, and with solo and collaborative projects as composer/performer. She was a featured soloist on Chicago's Experimental Sound Studio in their Quarantine Concert Series. Her Silo Songs, recently presented by Edgefest!, blends site-specific field recording (realized with 4+ surround speakers) with live performance soloist.
Sara Schoenbeck:
The Wire magazine places Sara Schoenbeck in the "tiny club of bassoon pioneers" at work in contemporary music today and the New York Times has called her performances "galvanizing" and "riveting, mixing textural experiments with a big, confident sound.” Sara promotes the bassoon as a colorful and flexible voice in both her own work and in collaboration as an improviser, interpreter and composer. She has been a member of a number of music ensembles including Ghost Train Orchestra, Nels Cline's Lovers Orchestra, Anthony Braxton’s 12+1(tet) and the Tri-Centric Orchestra, Wayne Horvitz’s Gravitas Quartet with Ron Miles and Peggy Lee, Wavefield, Petr Kotek’s SEM ensemble, Dana Lyn’s Mother Octopus and Michael Bates’ Acrobat. Sara has performed regularly with many inspiring artists and ensembles including David Byrne, Henry Threadgill, Roscoe Mitchell, Satoko Fujii, Butch Morris, Wadada Leo Smith, Matt Mitchell, Marty Ehrlich, Johnny Reinhard, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Wet Ink, the Michael Leonhart Orchestra, Adam Rudolph’s Go Organic Orchestra, Brooklyn Raga Massive, Eve Risser’s White Desert Orchestra, Dakah Hip Hop Orchestra, Vinny Golia’s Large Ensemble, Harris Eisenstadt's Golden State and numerous regional orchestras. Sara can be heard on dozens of music and film recordings including The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, Spanglish and Dahmer, and on the Tzadik, Pi, Matador and Blue Note Record labels. In 2021, Sara released her self-titled debut album to critical acclaim on Pyroclastic Records, featuring nine duos with different partners; Roscoe Mitchell, Nels Cline, Robin Holcomb, Nicole Mitchell, Mark Dresser, Harris Eisenstadt, Matt Mitchell, Peggy Lee and Wayne Horvitz. The album was recorded in seven different locations across North America and appeared on numerous critics’ best-of-year lists.
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