Jazz Journeys: A Musical Tour of In Spite of Modernism featuring Sarah Marie Hughes
Join us for a musical tour of In Spite of Modernism with local jazz artists. Each Sunday in March, during the run of the exhibition, a local musician will lead visitors on a jazz journey creating improvisational music in response to the artworks within the galleries. Roving jazz tours will start every 30 minutes from 2PM to 4PM. This program is free for all and presented in collaboration with Arlington Cultural Affairs, a division of Arlington Economic Development that delivers public programs as Arlington Arts.
Advance registration is not required.
March 6: Sarah Marie Hughes
March 13: Frank Mitchell
March 20: Elijah Jamal Balbed
About the Artist
Sarah Marie Hughes is a performing artist who resides in Maryland. She plays the saxophone, flute, and clarinet and also creates on the guitar and piano. Her improvising vocabulary is influenced by jazz music and contemporary improvisation.
From 2004-2008 Sarah studied classical saxophone performance with Dale Underwood at the University of Maryland and earned a bachelor’s degree in music education. She received a master’s degree in jazz saxophone performance from the New England Conservatory in Boston where she studied with Jerry Bergonzi, Donny McCaslin, Ran Blake, Anthony Coleman, and Ben Schwendener.
Sarah has performed extensively in various concert settings in venues throughout Washington DC and Baltimore, with occasional concert performances in NYC and Chicago. Before studying jazz formally at NEC, she shared the stage with an impressive list of jazz luminaries, including but not limited to Lee Konitz, Dan Tepfer, Matt Wilson, Freddie Redd, Mary Halvorson, and Alison Miller. After graduating from NEC, Sarah continued to have opportunities to share the stage and bills with great improvisers, including Joe Morris, William Parker, Hamid Drake, Daniel Carter, and Fay Victor. In 2015 she traveled to Sweden with Amy K. Bormet’s ensemble Ephemera, to participate in their first Women in Jazz Festival.
In 2018 Sarah released her first album, Coy Fish, containing free improvisation and poetry, with Sam Burt on daxophone, Daniel Ostrow on bass, and Nate Scheible on drums. Live performances by the quartet invited audiences to participate in collective improvised drawings and balloon playing. In 2019 Sarah released her second album, The Drag, which included Sam Burt on bass clarinet, Steve Arnold on bass, and Joseph Leo Arkfeld on moog. The album includes performances of Sarah‘s graphic scores and improvised singing/reading of her prose. In 2019 Sarah participated in an interdisciplinary collaboration at the D’Clinic Studio Residency in Zalaegerszeg, Hungry which resulted in the creation of a book containing her visual art and prose.
Sarah‘s most recent solo album, Forever Cocoon, can be found on her bandcamp page: https://theogdrag1.bandcamp.com/music. Her visual art can be seen at https://www.etsy.com/shop/shop4artbysarahmarie and on Instagram @sarahmariehughes.
