BIO

Composer, performer, flutist, and saxophonist John C. Savage has been compared to Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Herbie Mann, Noah Howard, Ian Anderson, and Colin Stetson. Savage has performed with musical luminaries including Andrew Hill, Esperanza Spalding, Vinny Golia, The Temptations, Kris Davis, David Ornette Cherry, Holland Andrews, Keith Underwood, Marty Ehrlich, Ken Ollis, Mark Dresser, Michael Gamble, Matana Roberts, Esther Lamneck, John Gross, Gordon Lee, Curtis Fowlkes, Ken Ollis, André St. James, Mel Brown, Robert Dick, Darrell Grant, BlipVert, and NEA Jazz Masters Roscoe Mitchell and Reggie Workman. His chamber music ensemble, Re:Soundings Trio (with pianist Dana Reason and oboeist Catherine Lee), collaborated with Roscoe Mitchell on a recent version of the composer’s Nonaah (Wide Hive Records 2020).

Savage has also been featured on several releases with Portland Jazz Composers’ Ensemble (PJCE) Records as a leader or co-leader, including Demolition Duo, Senses Sharpened, The Black Heron and the Spoonbill, and as a large ensemble member on Oregon Stories, From Maxvilled to Vanport, and Ekta: The Unity Suite. In 2023 Savage and PJCE Records released Lie Very Still’s Nova Pangaea, a climate suite written by Savage featuring Mike Gamble, Shao Way Wu, and Ken Ollis. He also collaborates with the poet Claudia Saleeby Savage as Thick In The Throat Honey, and recently composed and performed a poetry and music composition with PJCE entitled, In the Dark Your Anthem Comes America.

Savage holds a Ph.D. from New York University with emphases in flute performance, improvisation, and music theory. He is a dedicated educator and currently teaches at both at Reed College and Mount Hood Community College (MHCC) where he leads jazz ensembles and teaches flute and saxophone. Before teaching at Reed and MHCC, he taught at Western Oregon University and was the Instrumental Music Director at Northwest Academy, a private arts-focused middle and high school in downtown Portland. A dedicated arts advocate, Savage served for six years as both Assistant Artistic Director and Development Coordinator for the Creative Music Guild (CMG). The CMG is a not-for-profit that produces concerts of jazz and improvised music with an array of talent including local performers and visiting artists such as Matana Roberts, Tim Berne, Tatsuya Nakatani, Joëlle Léandre, Ken Vandermark, and many others. Savage is an in-demand  recording session musician, and can be heard playing flutes on composer Mark Orton’s original film score for the 2023 Oscar nominee, The Holdovers.

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EQUIPMENT

Brannen-Kingma quartertone system C flute, Pearl C flute, Eva Kingma partial quartertone system alto flute, Haynes piccolo, Buffet Evette-Schaeffer alto and tenor saxophones, blues harp,Db didjeridu (Australia), sogeum (Korea), suling (Indonesia), fue (Japan), bansuri (India)