The Snarky Horns, a group of four horns from the three-time GRAMMY Award-winning jazz/rock group Snarky Puppy Jazz, will conduct a three-day residency at Marietta College from March 18-20 that will conclude with a concert at 7:30 p.m. on the final day at The Gathering Place.
The visit was made possible after Marietta College and The Edward E. MacTaggart Department of Music received a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to establish a residency that will serve the students and faculty at Marietta College, as well as the students and community of Marietta and the Mid-Ohio Valley.
All events are free and open to the public.
According to Music Department Chairman, Marshall C. Kimball, “This is a once in a lifetime experience for our music students and also for our area,” said Marshall C. Kimball, Music Department Chairman. “The opportunity for students to work with a GRAMMY Award-winning ensemble is not one that comes every day. We want to make certain that we get as much out of this experience as possible. Everything on the schedule is open to Marietta College students, community members, high school music teachers, directors and students. People can even watch the recording/tracking sessions in the DreamWeaver Recording Studio. There is no charge for any of it. It’s really a win-win situation. We truly hope the everyone will take advantage of this amazing opportunity.”
The Snarky Horns are a dynamic and virtuosic group of instrumentalists that bring their collective experience as long-standing members of Snarky Puppy together with their broad careers as solo artists and sidemen to explore the boundaries of a horn section’s potential.
The genesis of the Snarky Horns started in Denton, Texas, at the University of North Texas. While there, each of the members had tenures in the GRAMMY Award-winning One O’Clock Lab Band, performing with the group around the globe and recording on several of the band’s albums. It was also while in Texas that the Horns started performing with Snarky Puppy while also maintaining busy freelance schedules in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
In the time since then, each member of the Snarky Horns has gone on to record 12 albums, tour extensively, and garner numerous accolades from publications worldwide with Snarky Puppy; maintain vibrant and diverse careers as sidemen, performing and recording with the likes of David Crosby, Donald Fagen, Lalah Hathaway, Kirk Franklin, Soulive, Chris Thile and Eric Harland, to name a few.
As a co-led group, the Snarky Horns’ sound is a synthesis of each member’s influences. In this unique context, listeners can expect to hear brand new repertoire composed specifically for the group as well as reworkings of their compositional contributions to other groups such as Snarky Puppy or their respective solo projects. In addition, the Horns are constantly creating fresh interpretations of music by their biggest influences, filtering important traditions of music from the past through their singular sound as a cohesive unit.
The Snarky Horns are also committed to arts education. Having given clinics throughout North America and Europe — both with Snarky Puppy and as individuals — the Horns have worked with all skill levels of students in every imaginable setting. Therefore, they value the importance of approaching each educational situation as special, each with its own set of challenges and opportunities to make a positive impact on students.
During their three days on campus, the Snarky Horns will be conducting various events. Some of the activities taking place during this residency are coaching opportunities for high school and middle school jazz ensembles, a presentation on Marketing your Arts/PR with question and answer time, brass and woodwind sectionals with the college concert bands and any high school students wishing to attend, rehearsals with two college jazz groups, recording/tracking sessions with two other college music ensembles, and more.
The residency will conclude with a joint concert with high school jazz ensembles serving as warm-up groups for the Snarky Horns, performances by two college ensembles that have been coached by the Snarky Horns and a performance by Snarky Horns.