Spontaneous Conduction: Butch Morris Tribute

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only); presented by Nonsequitur (photos: Daniel Sheehan/EyeShotJazz)

This tribute to the brilliant Butch Morris, who passed away earlier this year, features two of his closest friends and musical colleagues – Wayne Horvitz (Seattle) and JA Deane (New Mexico) – using the conduction techniques developed and pioneered by Morris with the Royal Room Collective Music Ensemble. Employing an elaborate repertoire of hand signals, Horvitz and Deane guide the musicians through spontaneous compositions in which the musicians control the content while the conductors control the form and structure.

Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris (1947-2013) was a composer and trumpet/cornet player known for developing the concept of "conduction," a method of using elaborate hand signals to guide diverse ensembles of improvising performers through large-form works that draw on the spontaneous elements of group improvisation while retaining the formal logic and structure of composition. Morris was hugely influential, working with musicians from many countries, cultures, and musical styles. Some of the artists who worked with him went on to form their own conduction ensembles based on his techniques. Butch Morris documentary. Italian interview + vocal performance. NY Times obituary.

Wayne Horvitz is a composer, pianist, and electronic musician, and a co-founder of the Royal Room in Columbia City. He has performed extensively throughout Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America with a wide range of collaborators: Bill Frisell, Butch Morris, John Zorn, Robin Holcomb, Fred Frith, Julian Priester, Philip Wilson, Michael Shrieve, Bobby Previte, Marty Ehrlich, Skerik, William Parker, Ron Miles, Sara Schoenbeck, Peggy Lee, Steven Bernstein, Briggan Krauss, and Dylan van der Schyff, among many others. Some recent projects include JOE HILL: 16 Actions for Chamber Orchestra, Voices and Improviser, and These Hills of Glory for string quartet and improviser. Ensembles include The President, Pigpen, Zony Mash, The HMP Trio, The New York Composers Orchestra, The 4 Plus 1 Ensemble, Sweeter Than the Day and The Gravitas Quartet.

JA Deane ("Dino") is a multi-instrumentalist, sound-designer, and conductor now living in rural New Mexico. As a trombonist he has played with everyone from Ike & Tina Turner to Jon Hassell and Brian Eno. He became a close collaborator in Butch Morris' real-time composition creations called Conductions and in 1995 co-produced Morris's epic 10 CD box set Testament for New World Records. Deane has an extensive background in composition for modern dance having created over fifty dance/music works with dancer/choreographer Colleen Mulvihill. He has an equally long history creating sound design for dramatic theater, working with Sam Shepard, Julie Hebert, and Theater Grottesco. Inspired by his experience with Butch Morris, Dino formed the conduction ensemble Out of Context, which he has led in New Mexico since 1997.

The Royal Room Collective Music Ensemble is a 15-20 piece band featuring some of Seattle’s finest and most innovative improvisers under the direction of composer Wayne Horvitz. Tonight's members include Ivan Arteaga, Sam Boshnack, Ryan Burns, Chris Credit, Eric Eagle, Beth Fleenor, Craig Flory, Geoff Harper, Jacob Herring, Al Keith, Steve O'Brien, Christian Pincock, Naomi Siegel, and Jacob Zimmerman.

Rinus van Alebeek + Paris Hurley

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only).

Dutch artist Rinus van Alebeek (Berlin) is a writer, lo-fi sound artist, and Director of Staaltape, the cassette offshoot of esteemed label Staaplaat. Paris Hurley (Seattle) is known primarily as a violinist (Degenerate Art Ensemble, Jherek Bischoff, Kultur Shock) and increasingly as a dancer and performance artist. Tonight they each present work for multiple cassette recorders.

Rinus van Alebeek is a Dutch writer who uses his (environmental) recordings on tape to narrate a story. During the nineties he published two books in his native country under the pseudonym of Philip Markus. The first novel, De Weg naar Oude God, won the prestigious Geert Jan Lubberhuizen Prijs, a yearly award for the best first novel. An accidental encounter with electronic and avant garde music in the year 2000 at the Lem festival in Barcelona, and an introduction to the cassette culture gave way to his further artistic development. In the first decade of this century van Alebeek made a thorough research on how to make or manipulate recordings. Thanks to a great number of concerts, sometimes an average of ten in a month, he developed an approach that has been referred to as "between noise and pure poetry."

Paris Hurley is an experimental performance artist working to externalize the internal through sound, movement, and the transformation of spaces. A violinist of 23 years, she thrives in a wide-array of roles – composing, performing, recording, producing, dancing, and creating with a long list of Seattle’s most influential artists. Seamlessly morphing between styles and genres, Paris has come to be known for her chameleon-like abilities, exquisitely manipulating her strong classical roots to embody and push the boundaries of many traditions from around the world including Balkan, Javanese, Brazilian, Argentinian, noise, jazz, fiddle, rock, and pop, to name a few.

Carver Audain + Rafael Anton Irisarri

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only); presented by Nonsequitur.

New York-based composer Carver Audain creates immersive sound environments using digital signal processing and editing techniques on a variety of environmental and instrumental recordings. His recent works continue to explore harmonic structures comprised of slowly shifting sound fields that merge and transform within their physical surroundings. Tonight he presents three works:  

rotor (shifting) is a stereophonic work which represents a continuation of the acousmatic practice, largely comprised of piano and voice.  

shell.shore.storm (shifting) is a monophonic work adapted for multiple channel systems. Comprised of environmental recordings and guitar, this piece was inspired by a visit to the beach during a tempestuous summer storm.  

continental drift is comprised of organ and guitar, intended for multiple channel systems. This piece is based around some of his earliest work involving organ, and was not fully realized until the addition of live guitar.

Rafael Anton Irisarri is a Seattle-based composer, multi-instrumentalist, curator, producer, and interdisciplinary artist predominantly associated with post-minimalist, drone, and ambient music. His recorded output captures an essential vision of floating tones, deep pulsing bass and textured Gaussian curves. His use of ostinato phrases taps into minimalist ideals, whilst his use of atmospheric layers of reverb suggests a more cinematic quality. His work is widely published on over a dozen labels around the globe, including Morr Music, Touch, Room40, Ghostly International, and Miasmah. Irisarri will be debuting a new piece for electric guitar, synthesizer, and digital looping objects.

Seattle Improvised Music Festival #3

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only); presented by Seattle Improvised Music and Nonsequitur.

The longest running improvised music festival in North America celebrates its 28th year, presenting a series of four concerts over three days. This year, festival organizers Gust Burns, Paul Hoskin, and Greg Campbell have made a concerted effort to broaden the Seattle aspect of the festival, bringing together a gamut of Northwest luminaries to meet up with three remarkable visiting musicians: LaDonna Smith (violin, viola, voice) from Birmingham, Alabama; Tucker Dulin (trombone) from Brooklyn via South Carolina; and Craig Taborn (piano) from NYC via Minneapolis and Ann Arbor. Tonight's program:

Trio: LaDonna Smith (violin, viola, voice), Tari Nelson-Zagar (violin), Monica Schley (harp)

Duo: Craig Taborn (piano), Greg Campbell (percussion)

Solo: Tucker Dulin (trombone)  

Also, today at 1:00 PM: Craig Taborn and Gust Burns piano duo @ Gallery 1412 (1412 18th Avenue)

Seattle Improvised Music Festival #2

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only); presented by Seattle Improvised Music and Nonsequitur.

The longest running improvised music festival in North America celebrates its 28th year, presenting a series of four concerts over three days. This year, festival organizers Gust Burns, Paul Hoskin, and Greg Campbell have made a concerted effort to broaden the Seattle aspect of the festival, bringing together a gamut of Northwest luminaries to meet up with three remarkable visiting musicians: LaDonna Smith (violin, viola, voice) from Birmingham, Alabama; Tucker Dulin (trombone) from Brooklyn via South Carolina; and Craig Taborn (piano) from NYC via Minneapolis and Ann Arbor. Tonight's program:

Quartet: Tucker Dulin (trombone), Gust Burns (piano), Mark Collins (bass), Jonathan Way (electronics)

Solo: LaDonna Smith (violin, viola, voice)

Trio: Craig Taborn (piano), Paul Hoskin (baritone saxophone), Mark Ostrowski (percussion)

Also, today at noon: Piano master class with Craig Taborn @ PONCHO Hall (Cornish College of the Arts, 710 East Roy)

Seattle Improvised Music Festival #1

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only); presented by Seattle Improvised Music and Nonsequitur.

The longest running improvised music festival in North America celebrates its 28th year, presenting a series of four concerts over three days. This year, festival organizers Gust Burns, Paul Hoskin, and Greg Campbell have made a concerted effort to broaden the Seattle aspect of the festival, bringing together a gamut of Northwest luminaries to meet up with three remarkable visiting musicians: LaDonna Smith (violin, viola, voice) from Birmingham, Alabama; Tucker Dulin (trombone) from Brooklyn via South Carolina; and Craig Taborn (piano) from NYC via Minneapolis and Ann Arbor. Tonight's program:

Quartet: LaDonna Smith (violin, viola, voice), Amy Denio (accordion, alto saxophone, voice), Beth Fleenor (clarinet, voice), Paul Hoskin (contrabass clarinet)

Trio: Tucker Dulin (trombone), Greg Powers (trombone), Stuart Dempster (trombone)

Quartet: Craig Taborn (piano), Ivan Arteaga (saxophone, clarinet), Wayne Horvitz (keyboard), Paul Kikuchi (percussion)

Amy Denio & Friends: Mythunderstandings

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only). Presented by Nonsequitur, supported in part by 4Culture.  This work-in-progress presentation features dialog with the audience after each performance.

Seattle's omni-musical treasure Amy Denio collaborates with the Tiptons Saxophone Quartet & Drums, Coast Salish storyteller and Native American flutist Paul "Che oke ten" Wagner, visual artist Aric Mayer, and director Lisa Halpern. This award-winning creative team has recorded and transcribed the oral histories of ten people from all walks of life, weaving these texts together into a rich tapestry of songs and images, based on these personal stories and myths they share. It will presented with humor and pathos, and propelled by musical and visual virtuosity.

These histories ~ revelations, challenges and learnings ~ come from an ex-Army Ranger; a refugee from Kurdistan, Iran; a woman living with MS for 30 years; a semi-retired insurance agent, a hoarder who the day we connected received news her cancer has come back; an adoptee who has a brain tumor removed (but not her sense of humor), plus stories from the wealth of local NW Salish Sea tribal knowledge.

Amy Denio & Friends: Mythunderstandings

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only). Presented by Nonsequitur, supported in part by 4Culture.  This work-in-progress presentation features dialog with the audience after each performance.

Seattle's omni-musical treasure Amy Denio collaborates with the Tiptons Saxophone Quartet & Drums, Coast Salish storyteller and Native American flutist Paul "Che oke ten" Wagner, visual artist Aric Mayer, and director Lisa Halpern. This award-winning creative team has recorded and transcribed the oral histories of ten people from all walks of life, weaving these texts together into a rich tapestry of songs and images, based on these personal stories and myths they share. It will presented with humor and pathos, and propelled by musical and visual virtuosity.

These histories ~ revelations, challenges and learnings ~ come from an ex-Army Ranger; a refugee from Kurdistan, Iran; a woman living with MS for 30 years; a semi-retired insurance agent, a hoarder who the day we connected received news her cancer has come back; an adoptee who has a brain tumor removed (but not her sense of humor), plus stories from the wealth of local NW Salish Sea tribal knowledge.

Phil Kline's Unsilent Night + Party!

6:30 PM meet up/prep
7:00 PM procession
8:00 PM party
FREE! Presented by Seattle Composers' Salon, Nonsequitur, and Joshua Parmenter.

Phil Kline's Unsilent Night is a free outdoor participatory sound sculpture of many individual parts, recorded on cassettes, CDs and MP3s, and played through a roving swarm of boomboxes carried through city streets every December. People bring their own boomboxes and drift peacefully through a cloud of sound which is different from every listener's perspective. Since 1992, this 45-minute work has grown into a worldwide annual communal event that has become an essential part of many winter holiday celebrations. The more participants the better, and all levels of audio fidelity are welcome (including MP3 players and phones). Please join us for this unusual sonic celebration of the Winter Solstice and the Seattle experimental music community. You can come for the walk, the party, or both. Here's how to participate:

First, download an MP3 file of the music here. You will randomly get one of four possible parts. Don't worry, it doesn't matter which one you get; they are all similar and equally important.

Then, you'll need to burn that to a CD-R or copy it to a cassette tape. (note: if copying to CD, be sure to convert the MP3 file to WAV or AIFF CD audio using iTunes or another music program - most boomboxes will not play MP3 files!)

Bring the CD/cassette, your boombox, and fresh batteries and you are ready to go! It does not have to be a fancy player - all levels of sound quality are encouraged.

Don't have a boombox? You can also use an iPod or other MP3 device, such as a smart phone, with battery-powered speakers plugged in. If you are using an iPhone, you can download the special new app created by Josh Parmenter.

6:30 PM - Meet at the Chapel Performance Space up on the 4th floor of the Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford, where we will all load up our players and go over the route.

7:00 PM - We begin a slow-moving procession as a group through Wallingford, lasting about 45 minutes.

8:00 PM - Return to the Chapel for a "New-Music Holiday Office Party", with hot cider, snacks, music, and prizes.

Eyvind Kang: Time Medicine

(photo: Daniel Sheehan/ Eyeshotjazz.com)

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only)

Genre-defying violist/composer Eyvind Kang presents new work with an ensemble of local greats: Stuart Dempster, trombone, percussion; Ahmad Yousefbeigi, Greg Campbell, and Dave Abramson, percussion; Moriah Neils, double bass; Taina Karr, oboe, English horn; Mary Riles, cello; Paul "Che Oke Ten" Wagner, Native flute.

In the writing of musical time, every symbol is qualified by a signature, typically a pair of numerals which indicate a cycle and a unit of measure. By convention these signatures are written in rational form, with cyclic numeral in the upper position and unit of measure in the lower. In my notation, I include a reference to clock time (metronome number in beats per minute) as a subscript to the lower term, and an additional term for “number of measures” as a superscript to the upper term.

One of the arithmetic puzzles in the writing of time is the disjuncture between the numerical bases in the terminologies of different time scales: base 60 in terms of minutes and seconds, base 10 per units within the second. In terms greater than the hour, the day is divided into a base of 24, the month into an average of base 30, the year into an average of base 365. To these last three correspond astronomical observations: the movements of the earth, moon.

The first effort in the writing of time signatures would be to describe all of these time scales within the lower term of the signature. To extend the signature to its limits, the smallest to largest possible durations could be written with the same base. Of particular interest are the negative integers, which could allow the time of memory into the signature, as well as cardinal and ordinal numbers, which would allow extension of the signature into durations both infinitesimal and infinite.

Polarity Taskmasters + Magda Mayas

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only). Video samples here, here, and here.

Flutist/vocalist Emily Hay, pianist Motoko Honda, and percussionist Brad Dutz are all major players in the Los Angeles experimental/improvised music scene. As the trio Polarity Taskmasters they create abstract experimental soundscapes through intense improvised ensemble interaction combined with electronic effects, jazz idioms, extended classical techniques, primal vocals, and stories from the id.

Based in Los Angeles, Emily Hay has been a figure on the left coast music scene for years and is known for her work both as an improviser and new music performer in groups such as U Totem, The Motor Totemist Guild, The Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, Rich West Ensemble, Go: Organic Orchestra, The Jeff Kaiser Okodektet and others. She records and tours around the world and is featured on record labels such as Cuneiform, Public Eyesore, Meta, pfMentum, and a host of others.

In addition to his work as a top studio session musician, Brad Dutz has released numerous solo and collaborative CDs and is a featured sideman on releases by top-name experimental, jazz and pop artists. On the faculty at Cal State Long Beach, Brad also teaches and gives workshops on world percussion techniques and has written several books on drumming.

Originally from Sendai, Japan, Motoko Honda studied piano and improvisation at CalArts with Wadada Leo Smith and is a well-known composer, improvisor and sound artist, performing in numerous ensembles in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. She combines virtuoso piano technique with unusual electronic effects both in and outside of the instrument.

Opening the show is German pianist Magda Mayas. Developing a vocabulary utilizing both the inside as well as the exterior parts of the piano, using preparations and objects, she explores textural, linear and fast moving sound collage. Alongside the piano, Mayas has recently been performing on a Clavinet/Pianet, an electric piano from the 60s with strings and metal chimes, where she engages with noise and more visceral sound material, equally extending the instrumental sound palette using extended techniques and devices. Magda Mayas has performed and toured in Europe, the USA, Australia and Lebanon and collaborated with many leading figures in improvisation and composers such as John Butcher, Peter Evans, Annette Krebs, Phill Niblock, Andrea Neumann, Axel Dörner, Thomas Lehn and Tristan Honsinger.

Rova Saxophone Quartet

(photo: Myles Boisen)

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only).

For over 30 years,  Rova Saxophone Quartet has explored the synthesis of composition and collective improvisation, creating exciting, genre-bending music that challenges and inspires. Founded in 1978 and inspired by a broad spectrum of musical influences - from Ives, Varese, Messiaen, Xenakis, and Feldman to Art Ensemble of Chicago, Coltrane, Braxton, Lacy, Taylor, Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman - Rova began composing, touring, and recording, collaborating with such like-minded colleagues as guitarists Henry Kaiser and Fred Frith and saxophonist John Zorn, along with fellow Bay Area trailblazers Kronos Quartet and Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. In 1983 Rova became the first new music group from the USA to tour the Soviet Union; Saxophone Diplomacy, a documentary video of the tour, was aired widely on PBS.

Rova has since had many other notable collaborations: quintets with Anthony Braxton and Steve Lacy; a sextet with Fred Frith and Tom Cora; the saxophone octet Figure 8 with Tim Berne, Glenn Spearman, Dave Barrett and Vinny Golia; and joint projects with bands including Mr. Bungle, the Splatter Trio, and the Hub. Their new projects are the Celestial Septet with the Nels Cline Singers, and Electric Ascension, an epic re-imagining of John Coltrane's masterwork with an all-star large ensemble.

The list of composers who have written music for Rova is likewise long and illustrious: Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, Jack DeJohnette, Terry Riley, Alvin Curran, Marty Ehrlich, Mark Dresser, Tim Berne, Annie Gosfield, George Lewis, Fred Ho, Muhal Richard Abrams, Robin Holcomb, Wadada Leo Smith, Lindsay Cooper, Fred Frith, Henry Kaiser, David Lang, John Carter, Chris Brown, Pauline Oliveros, John Butcher, Satoko Fujii, Barry Guy, Dana Reason, Gino Robair, Myles Boisen, and Miya Masaoka, among many others. Rova's members have written extensively for the group themselves, and have also created collaborative pieces such as Radar, an improvisational piece based on a system of hand gestures.

Cat Lamb & Bryan Eubanks

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only)

Composer/performers Cat Lamb and Bryan Eubanks present solo compositions as part of a North American tour. Lamb will perform Shade/Gradations (2012) for viola and filtered oscillators and Eubanks will perform (test)Spectral Pattern (2012) for soprano saxophone, feedback, and digital synthesis.

Catherine Lamb (b. 1982, Olympia, WA) is a composer/ violist exploring sound through intimate ensembles and solo work. She is interested in microscopic color variances in (mostly) narrow bands, often with an ever-opening form. She is interested in the elemental/ spectral interaction between tones and their shadows, between beings. She works with the phenomenological dimensions of quiet perceptual/sensual layers moving in and out of presence, as a being moving in space.

Bryan Eubanks (b. 1977, WA) is a musician focused on collaborative improvisation, solo musical projects, and generative sound installations. Primarily active within the traditions of experimental and live electronic music, he works with unstable instruments of his own design that incorporate open-circuits, samplers, radio transmission, feedback, digital synthesis, the soprano saxophone, and other acoustic instruments. His compositions and installations involve practical research into computer music, generative composition, electronics, and sound localization in an effort to bring into being situations that examine transformations in the perception of sonic space/time.

Fred Sturm plays Federico Ibarra

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only); presented by Nonsequitur.

New Mexico-based pianist Fred Sturm has specialized in the music of Latin America for over twenty-five years, most recently focusing on the music of Mexican composers, and Federico Ibarra in particular, performing all of Ibarra’s works over a series of concerts devoted to music of Mexico and Spain. In addition to his new recording of music by Ibarra, Sturm has released five CDs to date, featuring music of the 20th century from Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, and Spain by composers such as Ginastera, Villa-Lobos, Nazareth, Lecouna, Mompu, Granados, Turina, and Halffter.

He was interviewed earlier this year in Fanfare Magazine, where his CD Spanish Dances was also favorably reviewed, noting that “His surveys of Latin American, American, and Spanish music have earned him well-deserved prominence in this corner of the vast keyboard literature.”

Sturm makes his home in Albuquerque, where he has made most of his living as a piano technician at the University of New Mexico for over 25 years. He regularly writes articles for the Piano Technicians Journal and teaches classes at national and regional conventions, including one entitled “From the Point of View of the Pianist,” where he tries to give his fellow piano technician a better understanding of the needs of the performing musician.

Chris Cochrane + Climax Golden Twins

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only).

One of downtown NYC's great, unsung guitar heroes, Chris Cochrane has a long-standing record of work in bands such as early Knitting Factory-era prog/post-rock outfits No Safety (with Zeena Parkins) and George Cartwright's Curlew, the proto-queercore Suck Pretty, and collaborations with everyone from Fred Frith, Mark Ribot, Derek Bailey, and Ikue Mori to T Bone Burnett and Richard Buckner. His raw, angular guitar style embraces a gamut of tender, bluesy lyricism and harsh noise.

Tonight he performs music from his new CD on John Zorn's Tzadik label. Originally composed for a 1985 collaborative dance/theater work with choreographer Ishmael Houston-Jones and writer Dennis Cooper, THEM is an edgy, unflinching look at the dynamics of gay male relationships and loss in the midst of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Ahead of its time twenty-five years ago, the piece has recently been revived to great critical acclaim, winning awards and touring widely. Cochrane's music provides a perfect sonic metaphor for the entangled struggle of bodies, loss, and innocence in this disturbing yet poetic tour de force. (Read an interview here.)

 Climax Golden Twins is the inscrutable and ever-morphing sonic beast animated by Rob Millis and Wall of Sound proprietor Jeffrey Taylor. Together, individually and with others, they push the definition of a "band" to its limits, making live movie soundtracks, gallery installations, weird ethnographic films, and deeply immersing themselves in the dusty, crackling grooves of old 78s. Willfully defiant of accepted genre boundaries, their extensive catalog of recordings in various formats includes permutations of mutant rock, ungodly noise, and minimal ambient drone. Among many other things.

Novi_sad

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only). Fans of Spanish sound artist Francisco Lopez or Portland's Daniel Menche will appreciate Novi_sad's approach to atmospheric electro-acoustic music that draws on a wide range of sources, from processed field recordings and planetary radio frequencies to analyzed data from world financial markets. His 2009 concert at the Chapel was a revelation of dramatic breadth and emotional expressiveness.

Living and working in Athens, Greece, Novi_sad explores sound as sensation, pulling apart its physical properties to reveal its relationship with human perception. Amplified environmental recordings, drone manipulations, structured ambient soundscapes, microtones and overtones all come together in a hyper-structure of iconoclastic form. Some of his projects are primarily focused in architectural acoustics and the relationship between architecture and sound, when other projects are based on various methods of audio analysis and the use of quantitative and numerical data from different sources. His vertiginous structures destruct and reconstruct architectonic, organic and sentimental abstractions with precision and hypnotic beauty. Being immersed in his sonic environments is an experience both visceral and cerebral.

Novi_sad's audio works are available from Sedimental [US], Touch [UK], Staalplaat [NL] and Sub Rosa [BE]. He has presented his work in cinemas, industrial spaces, theatres, churches, museums, galleries, squats, and festivals internationally, and has worked and collaborated with an impressive roster of artists including Helge Sten [Deathprod, Supersilent], Francisco Lopez, Mika Vainio [Pan Sonic], Ryoichi Kurokawa, BJ Nilsen, Daniel Menche, Richard Chartier, CM von Hausswolff, Jacob Kirkegaard, Beckie Foon [A Silver Mt. Zion, Set fire to flames], Scott Konzelmann, Frank Kalero and Karl Lemieux.

Gavin Bryars' The Sinking of the Titanic

7:30 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only); presented by Nonsequitur. Period costume encouraged!

An all-star ensemble of thirty-plus Seattle avant musicians commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Titanic tragedy with an epic version of The Sinking of the Titanic (1969), by acclaimed British composer Gavin Bryars. The "score" consists mainly of Bryars' hand-written notes speculating on the musical and sonic aspects of the history and lore surrounding the Titanic disaster - particularly the conflicting reports by survivors as to the hymns played by the ship's orchestra as it sank. It includes his arrangements of these hymns for an ensemble replicating that of the ship's orchestra, as well as recorded interviews with survivors. But the work is extremely open-ended and can be realized in many different ways.

Directed by composer and Wayward Music Series founder Steve Peters, this performance will differ significantly from the recorded versions. It will last for about three hours, spanning the actual time it took for the Titanic to sink after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic on April 14, 1912. A stellar group of Seattle musicians will use the hymns as a basis for improvisation, spread out around the Chapel over six different half-hour sets: a string ensemble (violinists Claude Ginsburg and Tari Nelson-Zagar, violist Mara Sedlins, cellists Paul Rucker and Lori Goldston, bassist Evan Flory-Barnes); a wind ensemble (trombonist Stuart Dempster, trumpeter Lesli Dalaba, clarinetist Beth Fleenor, contrabass clarinetist Paul Hoskin, French horn player Greg Campbell); a solo piano set by Robin Holcomb; an accordion/concertina/harmonium ensemble (Amy Denio, Marchette DuBois, Steven Arntson, Tiffany Lin), and a vocal chorus.

PLUS: Ragtime tunes on toy piano by Tiffany Lin! Period 78s spun on vintage Victrolas by Climax Golden Twins! Field recordings and sound design by the Seattle Phonographers Union! Electronic processing by composer Joshua Parmenter! Atmospheric percussion by Dean Moore and Dale Speicher! Video projections by Killing Frenzy!

Magma Festival: 3 x 4

7:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only). Presented by Hollow Earth Radio and Nonsequitur.

Seattle's favorite online community radio station, throws this annual love fest for the local music community, presenting all kinds of music in venues all over town throughout the month of March.

This concert features four sets of eclectic improvised music by trios of similar instruments: Angelina Baldoz, Samantha Boshnack, Lesli Dalaba (trumpets); Byron Au Yong (erhu), Tari Nelson-Zagar (violin), Paul Rucker (cello); Beth Fleenor, Paul Hoskin, Jenny Zeifel (clarinets); Stuart Dempster, Paul Kikuchi, Susie Kozawa (percussion/toys/found stuff/homemades).

Electro-Gals

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only); presented by Nonsequitur.

Electro-Gals is an organization dedicated to promoting and inspiring electronic music and digital art by women. For this show, collective members Christi Denton (Portland), Briana Marela (Olympia), and Heather Perkins (Portland) will employ a wide variety of instruments and techniques, including hand-built electronic instruments, cassette-deck-loopers, vocoders, electric guitar, hand-coded music software, and gesture-operated synthesizers, to create rich sonic environments.

Christi Denton is a composer and sound installation artist who works with found sounds, electronics, and homemade and modified instruments. Last month, her laser MIDI controller competed in the 2012 Guthman Musical Instrument Competition.

Briana Marela is vocalist and song conjurer composing with processed vocals and audio samples through Max/MSP. Her first full length album is due out this April on Olympia label Bicycle Records.

Heather Perkins is composer, sound designer and Mad Scientist at WaterDog Studio in Portland, where she creates music and sound for dance, animation, computer games, film, theater, installation, and live performance.

Adam Tendler: Cage's Sonatas & Interludes

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only).

John Cage was working at Cornish College in Seattle in 1940, when he was asked by dancer Syvilla Fort to score a new dance called Bacchanale. Cage was mainly involved with percussion music then, but the stage was too small to accommodate his large array of instruments. Inspired by this limitation, he opted to explore the piano as percussion instrument, altering its sound by placing a variety of objects between and upon the strings and effectively putting "in the hands of a single pianist the equivalent of an entire percussion orchestra." Cage went on to compose many works for what he called the "prepared piano," including the wonderful Sonatas & Interludes (1946-48). In honor of the 100-year anniversary of Cage's birth, acclaimed pianist Adam Tendler performs the complete 70-minute work from memory.

Tendler first made national headlines with America 88x50, a completely independent concert tour offering free piano recitals of modern American music to under-served communities in all fifty states in the US. After the tour, he worked at a veterinary clinic and stowed away in a Malibu apartment with a silent keyboard and Cage's score, learning it line by line, working backwards from the end until he finally had the piece memorized. "It was crazy; I could play the whole thing from memory on a silent keyboard, but I'd never actually prepared a piano and heard it, so even the process of learning the piece was like an homage to Cage.” Tendler has toured with this work since 2007, and recently released a free download album of a live performance in Hawai'i.

An active pianist, composer, curator, arts advocate, and teacher in New York City, Tendler is the founding director of a daily music series at Soho House New York, and has written an interactive memoir about coming out and coming-of-age during the America 88x50 tour. He performs internationally, directs new music initiatives across the country, and serves as announcer and contemporary music liaison for NPR and Pacifica radio stations nationwide.

2012 Seattle Improvised Music Festival

All concerts start at 7 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only). Presented by Seattle Improvised Music and Nonsequitur. Made possible in part by support from the Seattle Mayor’s Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs.

Now in its 27th year, the Seattle Improvised Music Festival is the longest running festival of its kind in North America, an annual meeting place for improvisers at the forefront of improvised music in North America and around the world. SIMF offers Seattle audiences and musicians the opportunity to witness innovative experimental improvisation in music and sound by a host of practitioners representing a sampling of the world’s major players, scenes, and movements. This year’s festival features visionary musicians visiting from Tokyo, Berlin, Arizona, BC, Philadelphia, Portland and of course Seattle, performing in solo and duos, as well as first-time collaborations with Seattle Improvisers.

For a complete list of artists, instrumentation, and bios, go here.

Wednesday, February 8
Jeph Jerman / Jonathan Way / Matthieu Ruhlmann
Paul Hoskin / Lance Olsen / Wilson Shook / John Teske / Mark Collins
The Seattle Phonographers Union
Jamie Drouin / Lance Olsen / Mattieu Ruhlmann

Thursday, February 9
Jamie Drouin / John Teske / Matthieu Ruhlmann / Jonathan Way
Taku Sugimoto composition
Mara Sedlins / Jamie Drouin / Lance Olsen / Mark Collins / Jack Wright
Paul Hoskin / Jeph Jerman / Doug Theriault

Friday, February 10
Matthew Carlson / Jason Anderson
Jack Wright / Gust Burns / Tim DuRoche
Jonathan Way / Tyler Wilcox / Jeph Jerman / Mara Sedlins
Taku Sugimoto solo

Saturday, February 11
Tim DuRoche / Tari Nelson-Zagar / Wilson Shook / Mark Collins / Doug Theriault
Jack Wright solo
Taku Sugimoto / Jeph Jerman / Tyler Wilcox / Gust Burns
Large ensemble

Phil Kline's Unsilent Night + Party!

6:30 PM meet up/prep
7:00 PM procession
8:00 PM party
FREE! Presented by Seattle Composers' Salon, Nonsequitur, and Joshua Parmenter.

Phil Kline's Unsilent Night is a free outdoor participatory sound sculpture of many individual parts, recorded on cassettes, CDs and MP3s, and played through a roving swarm of boomboxes carried through city streets every December. People bring their own boomboxes and drift peacefully through a cloud of sound which is different from every listener's perspective. Since 1992, this 45-minute work has grown into a worldwide annual communal event that has become an essential part of many winter holiday celebrations. The more participants the better, and all levels of audio fidelity are welcome (including MP3 players and phones). Please join us for this unusual sonic celebration of the Winter Solstice and the Seattle experimental music community. You can come for the walk, the party, or both. Here's how to participate:

First, download an MP3 file of the music here. You will randomly get one of four possible parts. Don't worry, it doesn't matter which one you get; they are all similar and equally important.

Then, you'll need to burn that to a CD-R or copy it to a cassette tape. (note: if copying to CD, be sure to convert the MP3 file to WAV or AIFF CD audio using iTunes or another music program - most boomboxes will not play MP3 files!)

Bring the CD/cassette, your boombox, and fresh batteries and you are ready to go! It does not have to be a fancy player - all levels of sound quality are encouraged.

Don't have a boombox? You can also use an iPod or other MP3 device, such as a smart phone, with battery-powered speakers plugged in. If you are using an iPhone, you can download the special new app created by Josh Parmenter.

6:30 PM - Meet at the Chapel Performance Space up on the 4th floor of the Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford, where we will all load up our players and go over the route.

7:00 PM - We begin a slow-moving procession as a group through Wallingford, lasting about 45 minutes.

8:00 PM - Return to the Chapel for a "New-Music Holiday Office Party", with hot cider, snacks, music, and prizes.

The Tiptons Sax Quartet + Drums

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only)

Amy Denio - alto saxophone, clarinet, voice; Jessica Lurie - alto and tenor saxophone, voice; Sue Orfield - tenor saxophone, voice; Tina Richerson - baritone sax, voice; John Ewing - drums

Based in New York and Seattle, the Tiptons (formerly Billy Tipton Memorial Sax Quartet) perform original compositions and arrangements of world music on saxes, clarinet, voices and drums/percussion. With concerts that cover musical territory from New Orleans “second-line” to free jazz, Afro-Cuban to Balkan, Klezmer and beyond, the Tiptons create some of the wildest sounds ever to come out of a sax quartet. Their dynamic, playful concerts feature high-energy interaction between members, and a repertoire using sax, voice and drums that touches on soulful music from around the world. This tour features the dynamic Seattle drummer and long-time friend John Ewing from the Reptet.

The band's newest CD, Strange Flower, includes 12 songs penned by each of the players, inspired by the lonely echo of train whistles at night, scientific findings on bees from Harper’s Magazine, and covering genres from micro-Big Band to Gospel, Bluegrass to Balkan, Whimsical Jazz to Nocturnal Funk. All these diverse styles are unified by the Tiptons’ solid instrumental and vocal talent, forged from 20 years of collaboration.

Malcolm Goldstein: Alone & Together

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale at the door or in advance online. Presented by Nonsequitur and Earshot Jazz Festival. Interview here.

Known for radically expanding the sonic, tonal, and expressive possibilities of the violin, Malcolm Goldstein has been a key figure of the American avant garde since the 1960s. As a co-founder of the seminal Tone Roads Ensemble with composers Philip Corner and James Tenney, he helped champion important American composers such as Ives, Ruggles, Cowell, Varèse, Cage, etc., as well as composers of their own generation. As a regular participant in Judson Dance Theater, Goldstein helped forge new developments in interdisciplinary post-modern performance, and continues to collaborate with dancers. He has also pioneered the use of improvisational structures via graphic notation and verbal scores. These visually beautiful calligraphic works have a conceptual and structural integrity while allowing for spontaneity and the unique qualities and abilities of each musician to come through. Far from being a free-for-all, his open-ended compositions allow tremendous freedom while demanding a high degree of focus, intention, presence, and discipline.

This concert features Malcolm's breathtaking improvisations (Soundings) and compositions for solo violin, as well as two ensemble works, Configurations in Darkness and Two Silences, performed by an all-star group of Seattle musicians including Eric Barber (saxophones), Stuart Dempster (trombone), Beth Fleenor (clarinet), Lori Goldston (cello), and Esther Sugai (flute).

Craig Taborn & Gust Burns: Two Pianos

8:00 PM; UW Brechemin Auditorium; FREE ADMISSION! Co-presented by Nonsequitur and Earshot Jazz as part of the 2011 Earshot Jazz Festival.

Two leaders of East and West coast piano innovation debut their new collaborative 2 pianos project. Craig Taborn & Gust Burns each contribute compositions and combine their respective approaches to post-jazz virtuosity and musicality, supplying a contemporary voice to the tradition of 2-piano jazz improvisation.

Born in Minnesota, Craig Taborn has been performing piano and electronic music in the jazz, improvisational, and creative music scenes for 20 years. He has played and recorded with many luminaries including Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Tim Berne, Steve Coleman, David Torn, Susie Ibarra, Carl Craig, Dave Douglas, Meat Beat Manifesto, and Rudresh Manhathappa. He is a member of Chris Potter’s Underground, Roscoe Mitchell’s Note Factory and Quintet, Tim Berne’s Hard Cell and Science Friction ensembles, and Farmer's By Nature with William Parker and Gerald Cleaver. Taborn currently leads the Craig Taborn Trio, Junk Magic, and the Ancients and Moderns ensemble, and is a member of progressive noise/punk band The Gang Font and the instrumental pop group Golden Valley. In addition, he has lectured at the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, The New School for Social research, New York University, School for Improvisational Music, the AMR in Geneva, the Rhythmic Conservatory in Copenhagen, Antwerp Conservatory, and other institutions.

Gust Burns is a pianist, improviser, and composer based in Seattle. He is foremost an improvising pianist, and continues to develop new routes into improvisation working with diverse areas of music such as silence, density, structure and alternative narrative approaches, extending traditional piano technique, and developing new techniques for inside the piano. Burns performs on both traditional piano - playing the keyboard - and ‘inside piano’ or re-assembled and altered piano soundboard and strings, with or without electronics. Burns counts diverse perspectives and lines of tradition as influences: both jazz and classical traditions, the avant-garde lineages in Europe and America, the traditions of improvised music over the last 40 years, traditional musics from around the world, the hip-hop and grunge he grew up with... He has long-standing collaborations with NW improvisers Wally Shoup, Jeff Johnson, Tim DuRoche, and many others, and has performed and recorded with musicians and artists from North America and abroad, including Keith Rowe, Radu Malfatti, Andrea Neumann, Tetuzi Akiyama, Stéphane Rives, Jason Kahn, Michael Pisaro, John Edwards, Caroline Kraabel, Lori Freedman, Wade Matthews, rapper Adam ‘Dose One’ Drucker, Jack Wright, and many others. Burns was Director of the Seattle Improvised Music Festival from 2003 - 2011, and co-founder of Gallery 1412, a venue dedicated to experimental music.

Jarrad Powell: Instrumental & Vocal Music

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only).

Acoustic chamber music by beloved Seattle composer Jarrad Powell, accompanied by a host of outstanding Northwest musicians. Vocal works will feature Jessika Kenney and include three premieres. Powell’s collaboration with Kenney extends over many years and has produced a large body of unique vocal music that defies stylistic categories. Also on the concert will be instrumental pieces, including works for solo alto flute, solo piano, piano and vibraphone, and string trio. Featured musicians include Paul Taub, flute, Matthew Kocmieroski, percussion, Adrienne Varner, piano, Jamie Maschler, accordion, and Brad Hawkins, cello. Also featured will be the premiere of a new work for voice with chamber gamelan, featuring Jesse Snyder, rebab, and Stephanie Helm, gender.

Jarrad Powell's compositions include pieces for voice, gamelan, various western and non-western instruments, electro-acoustic music, music for theater, dance and experimental film. His work also includes numerous cross-cultural collaborations, particularly with Indonesian artists. Since the early 80’s he has directed the group Gamelan Pacifica, one of the most active and adventurous gamelan ensembles in the U.S. He created music for numerous pieces of contemporary dance with noted choreographer Molly Scott. Recent projects also include music for the short films of Robert Campbell. He has received a host of commissions, fellowships, and awards, and has been a professor at Cornish College of the Arts for more than 25 years.

Eric Barber + Trio Commando

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only).

(photo: Daniel Sheehan) Saxophonist Eric Barber is an innovative saxophonist and composer in the world of jazz, world, and improvised music. Complex, emotional, and spontaneous, his boundless musical energy and creativity have made him a favorite collaborator with master musicians from the United States, India, Iran, and the Balkans. Exploring the full sonic capabilities of his instruments, Barber fuses complex rhythmic structures and multiphonics with a keen ear and compositional sensibility. For this concert Eric will perform acoustic solo saxophone compositions and improvisations, as well as works with electronics. Sonic, metric, rhythmic, and melodic concepts are unified into cohesive pieces that have compositional structure yet allow for deep improvisatory exploration from performance to performance.

Trio Commando make their public debut, performing improvisations, excavations and conversations through a high powered trio configuration featuring Wayne Horvitz (piano), Samantha Boshnack (trumpets), and Beth Fleenor (clarinets/voice).

Since arriving in Seattle in 1998, clarinetist/vocal percussionist/ composer Beth Fleenor has carved a place for herself as an energetic multi-instrumentalist and dynamic generative artist. Her robust sound, organic approach, and openness to experimentation in all forms, actively fuels a long and varied list of collaborations. Ranging from shows in nightclubs, festivals, schools and galleries, to prisons, parties and concert halls, Fleenor's work has been featured in live music, theater, performance art, recordings, modern dance, film, sound art and art installations.

Samantha Boshnack has composed and performed with a plethora of Seattle-based musicians and groups since arriving from New York in 2003. The Bard College graduate uses a broad palette in her compositions, including jazz, rock, hip-hop, Balkan, and contemporary classical music influences. Her work has received acclaim from music critics around the world, and has received support from 4Culture, Jack Straw Productions, ASCAPlus, and the Seattle Mayor’s Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs.

Wayne Horvitz is a composer, pianist, electronic musician, and producer. He has toured widely, and has collaborated with musicians such as Bill Frisell, Butch Morris, John Zorn, Robin Holcomb, Fred Frith, Julian Priester, Michael Shrieve, Bobby Previte, Marty Ehrlich, William Parker, Ron Miles, Sara Schoenbeck, Peggy Lee, Briggan Krauss, and many others. A recipient of numerous commissions and awards, his various ensembles include The President, Pigpen, Zony Mash, The HMP Trio, The New York Composers Orchestra, The 4 Plus 1 Ensemble, Sweeter Than the Day and The Gravitas Quartet.

Jim Haynes, Brendan Murray, Steven M. Miller

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale donation at the door (cash or check only).

An evening of diverse electro-acoustic music featuring recent work by Jim Haynes (San Francisco), Brendan Murray (Boston), and Steven M. Miller (Singapore). All three of these artists bring a very distinctive approach to the electronic manipulation of acoustic sound sources, whether they be instruments, environmental sounds, or found objects.

Steven M. Miller is a composer currently based in Singapore where he is Associate Professor of Sonic Arts at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music of the National University of Singapore. His creative activity and background includes: electroacoustic, instrumental, and vocal music; collaborative intermedia projects with photographers, film/video artists, dancers/choreographers, and actors; live performance, gallery installations, compositions for recorded media, and music and sound design for video/film/new media; audio recording and production; traditional musics of Java, Bali, the Balkans, Middle East, and North Africa. He performs regularly in a variety of solo and ensemble contexts throughout the USA and Asia. Performances and radio broadcasts of his music occur in North & South America, Asia, Europe, and Australia. For this evening's performance, Miller will present structured improvisations for field recordings, signal processing, and live electronics.

Brendan Murray is a self-taught musician living in Somerville, MA. He has actively recorded and performed with electronics since 1999. He regards his music as a balance between spontaneous sound making and compositional rigor, with an emphasis on drones and repetition. He records and processes instruments and tapes until all traces of instrumentality are blurred, leaving only large blocks of pure sound. He has recorded four full-length CDs, four CD-Rs, and two cassettes for various labels in the US and Europe. Murray has also toured extensively throughout the US as a solo performer and as a member of various improvising ensembles. He is actively involved with long distance collaborations with musicians and sound artists such as Seth Nehil, Richard Garet and Chuck Bettis. This is Murray's debut performance in Seattle, presenting his signature minimalist compositions for reflective vibrations, sympathetic sub-harmonics, and rich tonal frequencies.

"I rust things," is the pithy phrase that Jim Haynes employs when describing his work. Using shortwave radio static, electric field disturbances, controlled feedback, and textural scrapings, Haynes’ sound installations and performances manifest a broken minimalism in which magnetic drone convey the impression of timelessness within an active environment. He has exhibited and performed internationally at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Berkeley Art Museum, Electric Works (San Francisco), The Exploratorium (San Francisco), WestSpace (Melbourne, Australia), Jack Straw Productions (Seattle), Eyedrum (Atlanta), and Diapason (New York). He has published his work through the Helen Scarsdale Agency, 23five Incorporated, Intransitive, and Elevator Bath. Haynes returns to the Chapel Performance Space for the third time, offering work partially sourced from recordings of thermal vents and geysers.

Nonseq at The Stone (NYC)

Nonsequitur was invited to curate the first half of May 2011 at The Stone, the East Village avant music venue founded by John Zorn. We have scheduled two weeks of concerts featuring a wide range of artist friends from around the country, including many with strong Seattle connections. Very few of them live in NYC or have an established audience there, and almost none have ever played at The Stone before. So if you plan to be in New York May 1 - 15, please go and support them! There are two different shows each night, starting at 8 and 10 PM. Admission is generally $10 per set, although there are some exceptions. Full details here.

Sunday, May 1
8 PM - Matt Marble w/ Alex Waterman, Katherine Young, Tucker Dulin
10 PM - Steve Barsotti

Tuesday, May 3
8 PM - Nurit Tilles plays piano music by David Mahler
10 PM - Nurit Tilles plays newer piano music of David Mahler

Wednesday, May 4
8 PM - Steve Gorn & Ralph Samuelson, music by Teiji Ito and others
10 PM - Jeph Jerman

Thursday, May 5
8 PM - Lyn Goeringer
10 PM - Matthew Ostrowski, Jen Baker, Reuben Radding

Friday, May 6
8 PM - Tiffany Lin & Ranjit Bhatnagar
10 PM - Paul Kikuchi w/ Reuben Radding, Jason Stein, Nate Wooley

Saturday, May 7
8 PM - Crosstalk (Jesse Canterbury, Tiffany Lin, Brian Cobb, Paul Kikuchi)
10 PM - Triptet (Tom Baker, Michael Monhart, Greg Campbell)

Sunday, May 8
8 PM - Tom Swafford & friends
10 PM - Reptet (Samantha Boshnak, Chris Credit, Izaak Mills, Nelson Bell, Tim Carey, John Ewing)

Tuesday, May 10
8 PM - Lori Goldston
10 PM - Rob Millis & Steve Roden

Wednesday, May 11
8 PM - Peter Garland plays piano music by himself and Terry Jennings
10 PM - Peter Garland plays other piano music by himself and Michael Byron

Thursday, May 12
8 PM - Ellen Band & David Sholl
10 PM - Stephen Vitiello & Taylor Deupree

Friday, May 13
8 PM - Garrett Fisher Ensemble
10 PM - Chris Stover w/ Steve Swell, Alan Ferber, Chris Washburn

Saturday, May 14
8 PM - Yann Novak & Robert Crouch
10 PM - Kamran Sadeghi

Sunday, May 15
8 PM - Lou Cohen, Tim Feeney, Vic Rawlings
10 PM - Steven M. Miller

Steve Barsotti, with Paul Kikuchi

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only).

Steve Barsotti presents an evening of reduced listening, performing a work in three parts featuring improvisation with invented instruments and field recordings collected around the world over the past twenty years. Barsotti will play his Spring Frame, a home-built instrument consisting of springs, strings, and other objects amplified through contact microphones. Joining him for a portion of the evening will be instrument inventor and percussionist Paul Kikuchi.

Steve Barsotti is a Seattle-based improviser, sound artist, instrument inventor and educator. His work explores notions of reduced listening through close examinations of easily bypassed sonic details – sounds that can only be heard through contact microphones and amplification or the sonic qualities of materials and objects found in everyday life. He invites the listener to forgo an attempt at literal connections with the sounds and to focus on the sounds in and of themselves.

His two solo CDs - Along These Lines and Say “tin-tah-pee-mic” - contain improvisations with object recordings, location recordings, phonography, and electro-acoustic processing. He also has an album with fellow instrument inventor Eric Leonardson, Rarebit, that features improvisations on invented instruments. His work has been described as “quite cinematic and unsettling,” and as “ushering the listener across an ambient divide”.

He is an original member of the Seattle Phonographers Union, a group of improvising field recordists, and has been responsible for many of the group's activities. The Union is described as "moving beyond habitual experience of sound and uncover what is foreign in the familiar and familiar about the foreign; to explore what we hear and relearn what we know." They have been performing together for eight years.

Frances-Marie Uitti

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only). Presented by Nonsequitur.

The remarkable cellist, composer and improviser Frances-Marie Uitti performs works by Salvatore Sciarrino, Jonathan Harvey, Huang Ruo, Lisa Bielawa, Annie Gosfield, György Kurtág, and her own Rap't.

Frances-Marie Uitti has pioneered a revolutionary dimension to the cello by transforming it for the first time into a polyphonic instrument capable of sustained chordal (two, three, and four-part) and intricate multi-voiced writing. Using two bows in one hand, this invention permits contemporaneous cross accents, multiple timbres, contrasting 4-voiced dynamics, simultaneous legato/articulated playing, that her previous work with a curved bow couldn't attain. György Kurtág, Luigi Nono, Giacinto Scelsi, Louis Andriessen, Jonathan Harvey, and Richard Barrett are among those who have used this technique in their compositions dedicated to her. She has also worked closely with John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, Elliott Carter, Brian Ferneyhough and countless composers from the new generation. As an improviser, she plays in duos and trios with Mark Dresser, Evan Parker, Joel Ryan, Elliott Sharp, Paul Griffiths, Wilbert de Joode, Mischa Mengelberg and others, and also collaborates with various filmmakers, DJs, and video artists.

Based in Amdsterdam, Ms. Uitti performs regularly in festivals around the world, and has recorded for labels such as ECM, Wergo, CRI, BVHaast, Mode, and HatHut, and Cryptogramophone. She has written for the Cambridge Companion to the Cello, Contemporary Music Review, Musik Texte, and Tempo magazine, and given lectures and master classes at practically all of the major European conservatories and universities in the USA.

26th annual Seattle Improvised Music Festival

February 9, 10, 11, 12; all shows 8:00 PM, $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only). Presented by Seattle Improvised Music and Nonsequitur.

The longest running festival of its kind in North America, the annual Seattle Improvised Music Festival is your opportunity to witness innovative experimental improvisation in music and sound by a host of international artists representing a sampling of the world’s major players/scenes/movements. This year’s line up includes: Jeffrey Allport percussion (Vancouver), Gill Arno radios (NYC), Gust Burns piano, inside piano (Seattle), Lou Cohen laptop/Csound (Boston), James Coleman theremin (Boston), Mark Collins bass (Seattle), Paul Hoskin contrabass clarinet (Seattle), Andrew Lafkas bass (NYC), Radu Malfatti trombone (Vienna), Mara Sedlins viola (Seattle), Wilson Shook alto saxophone (Seattle), Tyler Wilcox soprano saxophone (Seattle), John Teske bass (Seattle)

Wednesday, February 9
Andrew Lafkas solo
James Coleman solo
Gill Arno, Mara Sedlins, Wilson Shook trio
Gust Burns, Jeffrey Allport, Tyler Wilcox trio

Thursday, February 10
Andrew Lafkas, Jeffrey Allport duo
Lou Cohen, Paul Hoskin duo
Radu Malfatti, Tyler Wilcox, Gust Burns, Andrew Lafkas quartet

Friday, February 11
Radu Malfatti, James Coleman, Mark Collins trio
Lou Cohen solo
Gill Arno, James Coleman, Lou Cohen, Jeffrey Allport, Andrew Lafkas, Gust Burns sextet

Saturday, February 12
Andrew Lafkas, Gill Arno duo
Andrew Lafkas, Radu Malfatti, Gill Arno, Lou Cohen, James Coleman, Jeffrey Allport, Tyler Wilcox, Wilson Shook, Mara Sedlins, Gust Burns, John Teske eleven
Radu Malfatti solo

Is That Jazz?: Operation ID + Dana Reason

8:00 PM (doors open 7:15); $15 general, $10 student/senior suggested donation at the door. Presented by Seattle Composers' Salon and Nonsequitur.

IS THAT JAZZ? is a festival dedicated to daring and exploratory artists who are redrawing the boundaries of jazz, and infusing the genre with new forms, new sounds, and renewed sense of immediacy. Some want to limit jazz to a specific and narrow definition; IS THAT JAZZ? embraces jazz as a living, breathing art-form, one that must change and grow.

The second night of the festival features the young Seattle group Operation ID and Canadian pianist Dana Reason.

Seattle’s only minimalist, avant-garde, electro-pop, noise-cluster, synth-rock, free-jazz, experimental, dance-prog band, Operation ID is a five-piece band with a propensity to combine enormous pop energy with free improvisation. Originally interested in the spontaneity of free-jazz, Operation ID’s open-mindedness has guided them to embrace a position of willingness when experimenting with new sounds and musical approaches.

Dana Reason is one of the few pianists able to seamlessly intertwine pure mastery of classical, jazz, American music and the avant-garde on the concert stage. Reason is a Canadian-born pianist/composer currently splitting her time between teaching at Oregon State University, composing, and touring with the Dana Reason Trio (Dana Reason, Glen Moore, and Peter Valsamis) for Wild Rose Artists.

Is That Jazz?: Empty Cage + Sun Ra Tribute

8:00 PM (doors open 7:15); $15 general, $10 student/senior suggested donation at the door. Presented by Seattle Composers' Salon and Nonsequitur.

IS THAT JAZZ? is a festival dedicated to daring and exploratory artists who are redrawing the boundaries of jazz, and infusing the genre with new forms, new sounds, and renewed sense of immediacy. Some want to limit jazz to a specific and narrow definition; IS THAT JAZZ? embraces jazz as a living, breathing art-form, one that must change and grow.

The festival's opening night concert features the Empty Cage Quartet and the Sun Ra Tribute Band.

The all-star ten-piece Sun Ra Tribute Band returns to open the festival and honor the inspirational iconoclast Sun Ra by playing many of his compositions from the late 1950's and early 1960's. Expect sparkly robes, processions, group vocals, flying objects and planetary realignment. The cast of characters includes Seattle new-music godfathers Stuart Dempster and William O. Smith.

The Empty Cage Quartet (Jason Mears, reeds; Kris Tiner, trumpets/flugelhorn; Paul Kikuchi, drums/percussion; Ivan Johnson, bass) has been consistently praised by critics as one of the most interesting and original new jazz groups to emerge from the American West Coast. For over eight years the group has explored new ways to integrate a diverse mix of musical influences, utilizing a unique system that blurs the lines between composition and improvisation.

Julian Priester Quartet

8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale suggested donation at the door (cash/checks only).

Julian Priester is the most distinctive solo voice on the trombone in jazz today. Enhancing the colors and textures of his instrument with varied timbre and definitive style, he truly plays music his way. In a career spanning five decades, he's been part of some of the most groundbreaking and important contemporary music to date. He started out in Chicago's thriving blues and R&B scene, playing with Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Lionel Hampton, and Dinah Washington, as well as with Sun Ra’s early groups in the mid 50’s. Moving to New York in 1958, he appeared as a sideman on many Blue Note recordings with notables such as Max Roach, Ray Charles, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, McCoy Tyner, and Art Blakey. He recorded his first two records as a leader in 1960: Keep Swingin’, and Spiritsville. Always involved with adventurous, boundary-pushing music, Julian also worked with Sam Rivers and played in John Coltrane's Africa/Brass ensemble, and in the 70’s with Duke Ellington’s Big Band and Herbie Hancock's Sextet. Julian moved to San Francisco in 1973, soon recording two more albums as a leader for ECM, Love, Love and Polarization. In the '80s, Julian joined Dave Holland's acclaimed quintet, with whom he recorded and toured extensively. In the 90’s, Julian continued to be a vital voice in jazz, working with Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, Wayne Horvitz’s 4+1 ensemble, Jane Ira Bloom, Jerry Granelli, and Reggie Workman. He also co-led (with Sam Rivers) another session of his own, Hints on Light and Shadow. Today, Julian continues to push forward as the leader of a new quartet with pianist Dawn Clement, drummer Byron Vannoy, and bassist Geoff Harper. The group's loose and adventuresome spirit is evident on their 2002 CD, In Deep End Dance (Conduit Records), Julian’s first release as a leader in over 25 years. The music is heartfelt and intensely emotional. Adding to the spiritual weight of the record is Julian’s appreciation for his second chance at life and at music that he was given by the organ transplant he received in March of 2000.