Hailed as “incomparable to anything else… experimenting with a whole new form of expression” (The Culture Trip), SHOUTHOUSE is a collective of musicians based in New York. Founded by composer and pianist Will Healy in 2014, ShoutHouse brings together complex grooves, poetic hip-hop, high-octane vocals, and instrumental solos in a way that is “sweetly and smartly off the rails” (Billy Collins). With a core roster of a dozen musicians, ShoutHouse has formed a large community of artists that come together to present cutting-edge concert experiences that are redefining the boundaries of genre.

Recent season highlights include performances on The Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage, National Sawdust’s Resonator Festival, The Harlem Arts Festival, Satellite Collective’s Echo & Narcissus at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Cooper Hewitt Museum’s summer concert series, and on 44 Charlton at The Greene Space. ShoutHouse often appears at New York’s legendary clubs like The Bitter End, The Shrine, Rockwood Music Hall, and more. ShoutHouse’s first EP was featured on radio programs around the world, including WNYC’s “New Sounds” with John Schaefer, WBAI’s “Making Music” with Jordan Maclean. Since its inception, ShoutHouse has received support from The Juilliard School’s entrepreneurship program, the Brooklyn Arts Fund, Jerome Fund for New Music, the Queens Arts Council, The Sparkplug Foundation, and others.

More information about the composers on Cityscapes:

Will Healy (Tracks 1, 2, 3, 6, 7)

Will Healy is a composer and pianist based in New York. Noted for his "lushly bluesy" sound and "adroitly blended... textures" (New York Times), he is the artistic director of ShoutHouse. After playing trumpet in an Afrobeat band for many years, he grew interested in collaborating with performers from all corners of the New York music scene. He is also an accomplished pianist specializing in Bach, with a repertoire that includes the complete Goldberg Variations. Healy attended The Juilliard School, where he studied with John Corigliano, Steven Stucky, and Samuel Adler.

Recent awards include a 2017 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an ASCAP Morton Gould Award, the W.K. Rose Fellowship, a JFund commission from the American Composers Forum, and prizes in the Juilliard and Kaleidoscope Orchestra Composition Competitions. He was the recipient of the Aaron Copland Prize from the Bogliasco Foundation in 2018, and has been a fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, Minnesota Orchestra Composers Institute, and the L.A. Phil’s National Composers Intensive. Healy’s work has appeared at The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, The Apollo, on the NY Philharmonic’s Biennial series, on "New Sounds" with John Schaefer (WNYC) and "Making Music" (WBAI), and more.

Aaron Ewing (Track 4, For Those Who Look Up)

Aaron Ewing is a New York based percussionist, composer, and educator, whose musical aesthetic combines elements of new music, jazz, and pop. He holds an M.A. in Jazz Performance and Composition from New York University, where he has also served on the faculty, and studied with drummers Antonio Sanchez and Billy Drummond.

In addition to his collaborative efforts with ShoutHouse, he has performed with a number of jazz artists, including Brian Lynch, Joe Lovano, Jean-Michel Pilc, Kenny Werner, Ralph Alessi, George Garzone, and Lenny Pickett. He has appeared at numerous New York venues including National Sawdust, Blue Note, and Jazz Gallery, and has performed internationally at a number of European jazz clubs and festivals.

Ewing grew up in Fort Smith, Arkansas, influenced artistically by his father, who is also a percussionist, and his grandmother, who was a writer and painter. He was very active in Fort Smith’s unique music scene, performing with jazz, blues, and bluegrass bands, as well as with the Fort Smith Symphony.

Jesse Greenberg (Track 5, Ancient Tools)

Jesse Greenberg is a Queens-based composer, percussionist, keyboardist, and educator.

As keyboardist and mallet percussionist for ShoutHouse, Jesse has performed at The Greene Space and the Cooper Hewitt Museum, and presented workshops at The Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music. He plays glockenspiel with Zamler-Carhart/Rauh/Greenberg, a trio improvising around poetry. Their improvisations draw from the metrical, poetic, and sonic qualities present in the texts/languages with which they work. They have performed throughout southern and central France, with several appearances at the Festival Les Troubadours chantent l’art roman, where they presented evening-length improvisations on Occitan poetry from the 12th through 14th centuries. They have also appeared in Liege, Belgium as well as the Composers Now festival at DiMenna Center in New York, where their music was described as “delicious” by Muhal Richard Abrams. As a member of LCollective, Jesse has performed at the Standing Waves series at MIT Press Bookstore (Boston, MA), 150 Sutton Street Gallery (Providence, RI), and perform frequently at the Huub (Orange, NJ) and regularly in Teodora Stepancic’s Piano+ series. Jesse performs on keyboards/synthesizers with artists Tiff Ortiz and Naeemah Maddox.

As a composer, Jesse’s work draws from maze-like medieval melodies, jazz and structured improvisation, and often draws from visual art and nature. His music for small chamber ensembles usually emphasizes communication and sometimes contains an element of instrumental theater. He was selected as a composition fellow for CISUM Percussion, received a commission from ModFest/Mahagonny Ensemble, and was featured composer on the Call and Response podcast. His wind trio “Phantasmagoria” was awarded the Jean Slater Edson Prize. In addition to performing on mallet percussion and keyboards, he composes and arranges for ShoutHouse.

Jesse studied music and philosophy at Vassar College. He teaches music privately and as a teaching artist in the NYC public schools through 92nd Street Y’s Discover Music program.

Alex Burtzos (Bonus Track, Love & Loss & Loathing & Lizards)

Alex Burtzos is an American composer and conductor based in New York City and Orlando, FL. His work has been performed across four continents. Alex has collaborated with some of the world's foremost contemporary musicians and ensembles, including JACK Quartet, Yarn/Wire, Contemporaneous, ETHEL, loadbang, Jenny Lin, RighteousGIRLS, and many others. He is the founder and artistic director of ICEBERG New Music, a New York-based composers' collective, and the conductor of ShoutHouse

As a composer, Alex is committed to pursuing artistic expression unconstrained by boundaries of school or style. His music often incorporates elements of the 20th Century avant-garde, jazz, rock, metal, and hip-hop alongside or against classical/preclassical structures and sounds, justifying these juxtapositions with a great depth of musical ideas and extra-musical knowledge. Alex’s music takes as its basis and provides commentary on a diverse array of subject matter, from early colonial history to recent events, from Shakespeare’s tragedies to naughty text messages. His unique approach has earned him accolades and awards from organizations around the world.

Alex exclusively conducts contemporary repertoire, and has given over 40 world and regional premieres by emerging and established composers. Alex holds a DMA from Manhattan School of Music, where his primary teachers were Reiko Fueting and Mark Stambaugh. He serves as Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Central Florida.