Composer and trumpeter Samantha Boshnack premieres portions of a new suite, as well as pieces from her quintet’s brand-new debut release Exploding Syndrome, on a double-bill concert with Linda Oh’s Sun Pictures band, March 30, Seattle Art Museum.

Performing Boshnack’s compositions – a collection of short ostinato bass figures, choice pianism, sweet and spicy bass clarinet, and layered rhythmic dynamism, on the Exploding Syndrome release – the quintet features Boshnack (trumpets), Beth Fleenor (clarinets, voice), Dawn Clement (piano, keyboards), Isaac Castillo (bass) and Max Wood (drums). 

I caught up with Samantha Boshnack in February, just a few days before she flew to Florida for a three-week Atlantic Center for the Arts artist-in-residence program with pianist and New England Conservatory alum Marilyn Crispell. While there, Boshnack will work with other artists and Crispell on the relationships of improvisation and composition. Boshnack plans time at the residency to work on music for the forthcoming Nellie Bly: Explositions of a Lasting Legacy project, her suite bringing to light namesake inspiration Bly (1864-1922), a reporter working in journalism during un-hospitable times for women in the field. 

A fiery and persistent individual, Bly covered factory workers and prison facilities, advancing strides in investigative journalism and for women in her field. Apropos for Boshnack, the narrative of Bly’s personality and career parallels the composer’s view on modern challenges and opportunities, as a performer and as a woman composer. 

Since being voted the 2012 Emerging Artist of the Year by Seattle jazz fans, Boshnack keeps tremendous momentum rolling with exciting new projects, compositions, and a focus on craft. In 2012, she attended the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute, presented by Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies, as well as the American Composers Orchestra, at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. In January, she attended the ASCAP conferences in NYC, and she’s in Florida, this February, with Marilyn Crispell. In 2015, she’ll premiere a new piece for the NW Symphony Orchestra with conductor Anthony Spain. Her 2013 Go to Orange, a large-ensemble Kickstarter and grant-funded project featuring her compositions for strings, horns, and percussion, was received with critical acclaim and galvanized her as a leader in the music community. And the new quintet record is all new, all Boshnack compositions.

Today, a catalyst in bringing together communities of musicians from disparate scenes to perform her compositions, with available funding, Boshnack’s always shown the entrepreneurial spirit. In the 10 years since the trumpeter moved to Seattle, she’s received support from Meet the Composer, 4Culture, Artist Trust, Jack Straw, and the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture. She’s performed or recorded with Skerik, Wayne Horvitz, Stuart Dempster, Eyvind Kang, and Balkan street band Orkestar Zirkonium. She composed for Reptet and booked and drove national tours, including nightly gigging and teaching day-time school programs, with co-leaders Izaak Mills and John Ewing. The group’s Do This! (2006), Chicken or Beef? (2008) and At the Cabin (2011), present primarily Boshnack compositions, works featuring her bass ostinato figures, melodic counterpoints, and interwoven odd-meter rhythmic drive. 

These compositional characteristics are explored further on new release Exploding Syndrome (2014), with her Sam Boshnack Quintet. On Syndrome, too, Boshnack has made way for the voices of colleagues to shine – Dawn Clement in deep understanding of Boshnack compositions; Castillo with anchored sound and fine arco moments; Fleenor with driving, bass clarinet counter point and a great recorded take of her improvised Patton-esque vocals. 

In leading with composing, Boshnack joins other influential leading figures in music here ­– Amy Denio, and Tobi Stone in the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra. “I’m still new,” she says. “You realize, you know, it’s a long haul. You have to find ways to think long term.”