SOU’WESTER EVENTS!
Discover what’s happening during your next stay or plan a visit around our free live music, workshops, wellness offerings and more!
Rebecca Sanborn began writing songs at age six, starting an early pattern of straying creatively from sheet music. Her piano instructor taught her to write the music down, which seemed like a magical power. She also fell in love with theatre and writing, pursuing all of these arts with equal passion. Rebecca got her first agent at age ten and landed starring roles in commercials. One director hired her on the spot because she had a voice “like Lauren Bacall”. In High School she would wake at 5 am to jump rope in the driveway and then pound out short works of fiction on the typewriter in the garage so as not to wake anyone. The love affair with stories and music continued and at eighteen, she left her native Portland, Oregon to study at The College of Santa Fe, in New Mexico—majoring in Theatre and immersing herself in the free, unpredictable world of the Contemporary Music Program. Every Thursday night a Forum was held where new music was emphatically encouraged. Rebecca had found her home. She studied under the experimental composers Joseph Weber and Peter Gordon and was moulded by Martha Graham’s personal demonstrator, Juanita Barry, in rigorous modern dance classes for four years.
Upon returning to the Northwest after college, Rebecca met her husband and musical partner, drummer Ji Tanzer. They are both members of the adventurous jazz quintet, Blue Cranes, the art pop trio, Swansea, and Portland’s veteran indie group, Loch Lomond. Rebecca and Ji also starred in the film “Light of Mine”, which garnered a coveted spot at the A.F.I. Fest in 2011. “Light of Mine” was the only independent film from The States to be included in the festival. Rebecca plays in the all-female, cape-wearing, fog-machine-loving synth trio, Eccoh Eccoh Eccoh with Kyleen King (Brandi Carlile) and Jenny Conlee-Drizos (The Decemberists).
In 2021, Rebecca was invited to write an original set of music for the Montavilla Jazz Fest—composing and arranging eight songs in two months. She performed these tunes with her long-time mentor and hero, pianist Randy Porter, bassist Jon Shaw, and of course, Ji Tanzer. The work now stands as a collective entitled “Shadow Work”. Several pieces have since been arranged by Douglas Detrick, and were performed at the 2022 Montavilla Jazz Fest with the 12-piece Portland Jazz Composers’ Ensemble as a part of “The Heroine’s Journey” – an evening with Marilyn Keller, Darrell Grant, and Rebecca Sanborn. In 2023, Rebecca was awarded a RACC grant to record “Shadow Work”.
Throughout all of the years of hard touring and performing, Rebecca never lost touch with the written word. She earned a spot in the highly competitive Tin House Winter Workshop in 2016, mentoring under Mitchell S. Jackson. She has completed five novels and continues to work on her literary, musical, or theatrical craft on a daily basis. When Rebecca isn’t engaged in art or teaching, she can be found chasing after her costume-obsessed five-year-old daughter or trying to get some sleep.
Olivia Awbrey Live
Presented by Sou’wester Arts
Olivia Awbrey is a weathered songwriter based out of Oregon. Her debut full-length album, Dishonorable Harvest, gained international recognition amongst independent music enthusiasts and earned her a spot at festivals across the Northwest and in Canada. Flood Magazine notes that, “each of Awbrey‘s songs is an intricate story in itself.” An old-soul folk musician with a modern indie lens, Awbrey reflects on nuanced perspectives within conflict, drawing from the buttressing of urban and rural settings, searching for an honest moment that cuts through the noise of assumptions. She recently began pressing vinyl by hand. Her next album is forthcoming.
Live at The Sou’wester
LIVE AT THE SOU’WESTER
Lindsay Clark
Presented by Sou’wester Arts
Lindsay Clark finds balance between traditional folk, English folk, country and her own version of experimental folk that seems to come from within. With influences ranging from the Beach Boys, Elizabeth Cotton, Joni Mitchell, Appalachian folk, her classical upbringing and her father’s record collection, she blends many worlds into a uniquely warm sound. She has carved out a unique and vibrant place as an artist with her penchant for poetry, rich harmony and a style of self-taught fingerpicking influenced by Nick Drake, John Fahey, and others.
Originally from the small gold rush town of Nevada City, CA, she now resides in Portland, OR. She has shared the stage with musicians such as Alela Diane, Adam Torres, Nat Baldwin (Dirty Projectors), Ryan Francesconi (Joanna Newsom), Jolie Holland, and Michael Hurley. Her sound has been described as “folk with angelic vocals washing over smooth edges” (1859 Magazine), with her recent album Carpe Noctem called “stunning” by NPR Music. The album features William Tyler, Alela Diane, Sage Fisher (Dolphin Midwives), & Andy Rayborn (Paper Gates) and was engineered, co-produced, co-arranged with Jeremy Harris (Fruit Bats / Hand Habits). She has also recently contributed to Michael Hurley’s latest release, Time of the Foxgloves.
Live at The Sou’wester
Nick Jaina
Presented by Sou’wester Arts
Nick Jaina is a musician and author living with his wife and stepson in Oakland, California. He has published three books, released over a dozen albums, produced several ballets, and composed various film scores. He teaches writing workshops online and in person, and hosts magical tea services that involve music, reading, and color immersion. He was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in 2015. He has collaborated with dancers from the New York City Ballet and Oregon Ballet Theater.
Lê Almeida Live at The Sou’wester
10/19/23 Free & open to the public
Sou’wester Lodge Living Room
Presented by Sou’wester Arts
“Lê Almeida is the mastermind of an unlikely and noisy indie scene that emerged in the suburbs of RIO DE JANEIRO in the early 2000s. A prolific producer, initially labeled _lo-fi_, he was called the ‘Brazilian answer to Robert Pollard’ in a report in _The Guardian_ which makes less sense as his sound has incorporated elements of kraut, free jazz, afrobeat, hip hop and Brazilian music.” Excerpt from the biography available on DATABASE.FM/LEALMEIDA
October 2023 marks the release of I FEEL IN THE SKY, LÊ ALMEIDA’s new solo album. The album was recorded between 2022 and 2023, during the tour of his band ORUÃ, with more than 100 shows in the USA and Europe. The album will be presented at SouWester, during Lê Almeida’s first artistic residency in the United States, which takes place in Seaview, Washington.
His independent label Transfusão Noise Records was born in his bedroom in 2004 in Vilar dos Teles, Baixada Fluminense, and emerged in the center of Rio de Janeiro in 2013 with the creation of Escritório, a space for recording, rehearsals and shows. More than 100 releases have been made since then. Lê played a major role in recording and mixing most of these albums, where many of the visual ideas came from his collages, associating fantastic realism with improbable combinations of environments and colors.
Since 2011 he has dedicated himself to the visual arts, taking part in exhibitions and collage workshops, both individual and collective. His solo albums Paraleloplasmos (2015) and Todas as Brisas (2016) made him travel the art world beyond the usual music scene between tours of Brazil. Both albums were released by IFB Records, a small Atlanta-based label that presses his LPs independently and distributes them throughout the United States.
Oruã, his main band, was created at the end of 2016 and since 2018 he has been traveling extensively, promoting his first albums recorded in the office on old cassette tapes. 2018 was the year Almeida left Brazil for the first time. He went to play drums with Built to Spill in Chile and with Oruã in Uruguay. His story with Built to Spill began in mid-2018 when he joined the band for its first shows in South America and the following year he traveled between the United States and Europe playing more than 130 shows, 60 of them opening for Oruã. He recorded and mixed the latest BtS release, When the Wind Forgets Your Name (2022, SubPop), where he also acted as drummer.
I FEEL IN THE SKY is out on October 6 on the Transfusão Noise Records website
https://on.soundcloud.com/gDnYT
Pic by Melanie Radford (Central Park, 2023)
LIVE AT THE SOU’WESTER LODGE
K Van Petten
Presented by Sou’wester Arts
K Van Petten is a musician and poet based in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. Their current project explores a new genre they call ‘stargaze’ — music for looking at the stars, or that will make you see stars. Their music combines layered strings, soft harmonies, and moving poetry that explore themes of multiplicity, queerness, and nostalgia, drawn from their experience as a queer, non-binary, Gemini, middle-child. Their enchanting melodies and poetic compositions transport listeners to stellar realms, inviting them to revel in the in-between, liminal spaces of sonic possibility. K started their performing as a musician in residence at a harbor bar in Chicago while living on a sailboat. They relocated to Seattle a decade ago, and most recently authored and composed ‘For Someone,’ a cassette tape of music and poetry created during their residency at Centrum in Fort Worden, Port Townsend. The cassette tape is available at Elliott Bay Books, The Vera Project vending machine, Light in the Attic Records at KEXP, and online at Hello America Stereo Cassette. One of their tape pieces was adapted into a film showcased at Northwest Film Forum and selected for SIFF’s NW Folklife Forum in 2023. Previous projects include Baddy Gold, Wet Whitman, and Everyday in February. They currently support Sonic Guild, a local music non-profit. Find out more at instagram.com/kvanpetten
Hanna Haas
LIVE at The Sou’wester Lodge
Presented by Sou’wester Arts
Hanna Haas performs solo and as a duo (mainly cello as accompaniment). Hanna loves to engage her audiences in sweet story-telling and laughter, leaving her audience in a state of heart-felt introspection.
Isabeau Waia’u Walker
LIVE at The Sou’wester
Presented by Sou’wester Arts
The vision for her music is clear and thought provoking, often expressed through her master storytelling. The authenticity of her presentation as a performer and storyteller taps into human emotions and bonds her with the listeners and audiences in front of her. Grabbing hold of the space with never having to command the attention of the room. Soothing and soft while powerful, accessible while complex, melancholic in celebration, serious while playful, sweet but aching. Songs of love, care, community, fight, self. Vulnerable while her humility guards her impressive force. The tensions of the stretches and contractions nested in her core, reverberate through the layers of her product: storytelling, collaboration, presentation, music. Her craft is seemingly effortless, but a closer attention reveals meticulous engineering and caring intentionality in process and product.
