Eager to use them all

This piece in the Friday New York Times caught my eye: a profile of 28-year-old Caleb Burhans, an Eastman School of Music alum and NYC resident musician about town (composer, singer, multi-instrumentalist). He's forging the kind of all-terrain post-classical music career that myself and many of my peers are onto as well.

The Times describes it this way:

At 28, Mr. Burhans has pursued a career path so logical that it seems almost foolproof. Just sing, compose and master several instruments (besides the violin he plays viola, guitar, bass, keyboards and percussion) and the New York freelance world is your oyster. But this is a new development. Until recently, the conventional wisdom went, musicians with diverse talents should specialize: decide whether they are better suited to composing or performing, singing or playing an instrument, working in classical music or a variety of pop.

And while most young musicians still make the traditional choices and scramble to find work in freelance ensembles until they have established themselves as recitalists or chamber players, others are seeking to diversify. Mr. Burhans’s generation is the third to come of age during the rock era, and where conservatories once taught only classical music, most now offer courses and even degrees in jazz and rock, recording technology and the music industry itself. And musicians who grew up hearing everything from Mozart and Ligeti to Wilco and Radiohead are less inclined than their elders to compartmentalize their passions.

And this younger set, I should add, is also less inclined to rely - exclusively, anyway - on full-time symphony or opera gigs to sate their creative appetites or line their pockets. I've been on this horse before, I know, but it's worth revisiting.

So who are some of Portland's noteworthy inventive post-classical musicians? A short list would undoubtedly include important local names like...

Mattie Kaiser: Classical Revolution PDX proprietress, music educator, and kickass violist with chamber classical and pop groups in town.
Doug Jenkins: Portland Cello Project founder and player with PDX indie pop groups like Bright Red Paper and Weinland.
Ben Landsverk: composer, multi-instrumentalist, singer and conductor, for starters; working with everyone from pop darlings Holcombe Waller and Chris Robley to singing regularly with Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.
Tuesday Rupp: affecting singer, conductor/music director and impresaria (In Mulieribus)
Rachel Taylor Brown: formidable dark pop songstress (of her self-named band) and occasional high-flying early music soprano (Cappella Romana, Tudor Choir, etc). That's Brown in the photo above (by Tricia Beck).

Hey You People Who Care About The Arts: these are but five Portland-based critically important musical artists you should know and care about in town. You should be following their work.

Are there other PDX post-classical musicians of note missing from this list? Maybe - so why don't you tell me who they are and why they're important. And I'll promise to write more about them another day.