Thick In The Throat Honey (photo by Jane Portnoff)
Portland, Oregon-based performance duo Thick In The Throat Honey (Claudia Saleeby Savage, spoken word & movement, and John C. Savage, composer & woodwinds) have created and performed together for 15 years and are known for their unique melding of seemingly disparate ideas and the unexpectedness of each performance. Whether in a chapel, an old-growth forest, or a high-rise surrounded by urban blight, their creations maximize artistic rigor with improvised play for a cathartic experience. Morphing the traditions of jazz, spoken word, experimental music, somatics, and movement, the duo’s work emerges through a spectrum of ensembles–a 12-piece jazz band, a saxophone quartet, electronically-altered chamber music, free jazz mayhem, or percussion jams with their daughter.
Claudia Saleeby Savage performs her poem In The Dark Your Anthem Comes, America with the Portland Jazz Composer’s Ensemble (John C. Savage, composer & conductor). June 2nd, 2023, The Old Church, Portland, Oregon.
Click Here to watch the performance.
Thick In The Throat Honey's work has been supported by the Creative Music Guild, Portland Jazz Composers' Ensemble, the Regional Arts and Culture Council, Oregon State University, and Literary Arts. In 2019, they were among 400 semi-finalists of 6,000 applicants for a Creative Capital Grant for their project about Syrian refugees in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon,