Our Composers Showcase is a new MOMF event that explores the art of composing from the perspective of the composer. This year’s event features Larry McDonough and the Larry McDonough Quartet.
The Quartet will present original pieces from the project SpecAbilities, in which children with disabilities write melody fragments and we write pieces based on the melodies. Larry has composed several pieces based on melody fragments written by the children. He created harmonies and rhythmic patterns to fit the melodies. Since the children wrote melodies unrestricted by conventional music training, they pushed him to use unconventional harmonies, rhythms and meters. An example is Funkabilty, where Lucas Jacobson and Jack Thuleen wrote angular melody fragments which Larry used as long tones over a ostinato funk bass line. It was performed by the Larry McDonough Quartet on the CD Alice in Stonehenge and other AcoustElectric Adventures, give it a listen HERE.
The event will be at the Arts Center of Saint Peter, following our “Songwriters in the Round” segment, Thursday, July 18, 2024, 8:00 pm. The Composers Showcase is co-produced, streamed and recorded by Triple Falls Productions of Mankato. The Larry McDonough Quartet includes Larry on piano and keys, Richard Terrill on saxes and poetry, Craig Matarrese on bass, and Dean White on drums.
About the musicians:
Larry McDonough is an award-winning St. Paul jazz composer, pianist, singer, and teacher, performing around the world and recording with his group the Larry McDonough Quartet as well as solo, and in duos and trios. He has performed with legendary saxophonist and composer Benny Golson, Trombonist Fred Wesley, and trumpeter Duane Eubanks, as well as a who’s who of local jazz artists, and was inducted into the Minnesota Rock Country Hall of Fame for his work in the group Danny’s Reasons. His awards include the American Composers Forum Showcase Award for the composition “Strait of Gibraltar.” He has released eleven CDs and DVDs as a leader. His current CDs are “Kind of Bill on the Palace Grounds, Marking 40 Years since the Death of Bill Evans,” playing on jazz radio stations and streaming services around the country, and “Intermodulating Undercurrents Live at the Kos: The Music of Bill Evans and Jim Hall.” The two-CD set “Alice in Stonehenge and other AcoustElectric Adventures” has played on radio stations and streaming services around the world and charted #18 on the Roots Music Report’s Top 50 Jazz Album Chart. “Simple Gifts” reached number 29 on the CMJ Jazz Chart and also has been played on hundreds of stations around the country and throughout the world. His other jazz projects include Fusebox (original jazz fusion trio) and Trios Trio (classic jazz). When not playing jazz, he performs jam fusion in Quantum Mechanics, funk in Funkin’ Right, classic rock in Whiskey Burn, indie-rock in HiFi, and punk in Saint Small.
Richard Terrill, sax player and retired Minnesota State University Mankato English Professor, received the Minnesota Book Award for Poetry for his poetry compilation Coming Late to Rachmaninoff (University of Tampa Press, 2003). Richard has been performing with Larry McDonough since December 2001. He also has performed with guitarist Jim McGuire and with Chaz Draper’s Uptown Jazz Quartet. As a college student, Richard was a member of the award-winning University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Jazz Ensemble and performed with later-to-be Pat Metheny keyboardist Lyle Mays in the Lyle Mays Quartet, winner of small group honors at the Midwest College Jazz Festival. He has also worked with pianist Geoff Keezer. His current books of poetry is What Falls Away Is Always and Essentially.
Bassist Craig Matarrese is Professor of Philosophy at Minnesota State University, Mankato, where he is also Director of the program in Philosophy, Politics, & Economics (PPE). He holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He teaches courses in 19th and 20th Century European philosophy, Philosophy of Music, Environmental Ethics, Social & Political Philosophy, and the Philosophy of Law. He has also been teaching electric & upright bass for the Music Department for the past ten years. Matarrese is the author of the book, Starting With Hegel (Continuum, 2010), as well as two recent essays: “Soundscape Ecology and a Sartrean Phenomenology of Listening,” Earthly Engagements: Reading Sartre After the Holocene, eds. Ally & Boria (Lexington Books, 2021) and “Hegel, Musical Subjectivity, and Jazz,” in Creolizing Hegel, ed. Michael Monahan (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). He has also worked on a number of documentary films that consider music, philosophy, and culture: Tuning the Pulse (2013), I Know You Well (2014), and Rez Metal (2020). Matarrese plays bass in a variety of ensembles and contexts, for MSU and generally around Minnesota, including Steely Ann, a Steely Dan cover band based in Mankato and Saint Peter.
Dean White grew up in Superior, Wisconsin, and played in various working bands while attending the University of Wisconsin, Superior. After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in percussion performance, he moved to Hollywood, California, to attend Musicians Institute College of Contemporary Music. Half-way through the first year, Dean was offered a main showroom gig at the Imperial Palace in Las Vegas. He was the first drummer in the Legends In Concert Show that still performs in various incarnations across the country today. He left Las Vegas to join Tony Axtell and Toshi Hinata in Tokyo to write and play original music. Since settling back in the Twin Cities, Dean has performed with many groups, including Good, the Bad and the Funky; the Autobody Experience; Century Big Band; Nova Jazz; Big Time Jazz Orchestra; the Shorn Hortz jazz quintet; Power of 10; Jack Knife and the Sharps; Tubby Esquire; Hennessy Brothers jazz; and many others. He has also studied privately with Gordy Knudtson and his Open/Close hand technique. Dean feels blessed to be part of the rich music scene in the Twin Cities.