A meditation on the frailty and resilience of the human spirit. Directed by Joan Laage/Kogut Butoh in collaboration with Kaoru Okumura & Helen Thorsen (butoh), Randy Shay (piano) & Aaron Harmonson (bass).

A world in chaos, multitudes of people displaced, frozen in place or constantly moving. Refugee is the latest in Joan’s body of work inspired by the aftermath of war and the urge to find a safer, saner place to live. Earlier works are The Suitcases Project (Snoqualmie Depot and Issaquah Depot), Stations (solo), Black Angels (Dappin’ Butoh Troupe) and Nothing Lasts But Memory (solo). All the travel journeys, especially in Europe over many years, the waiting in stations – train, ship, air. Where have all these travelers come from and where are they going and even more so – why?

Known as Kogut Butoh, Joan Laage has been performing and teaching butoh and collaborating with area and international performers since she settled in Seattle in 1990 after studying butoh with masters in Tokyo. Collaborations include Rob Angus, noisepoetnobody, Stephen Fandrich, Jeff Greinke, Scott Adams and Seattle Kokon Taiko. Her group Dappin’ Butoh was well-known in the Seattle Fringe Theater Festival for 10 years. Joan is a co-founder of DAIPANbutoh Collective (since 2010), which produces an annual butoh festival. Joan directs Wandering & Wondering, an annual site-specific event at the Seattle Japanese and Kubota Gardens and organizes performances in the summer at her Green Lake home. Her work is influenced by her years of practicing Tai Chi and her profession as a gardener.

(photo: Brian Liesse)

Bay Area improvised music stalwarts Phillip Greenlief (saxophone) and Scott Amendola (drums) bring their long running duo to town. Local clarinetist James Falzone offers a short opening set.

Scott Amendola and Phillip Greenlief celebrate 30 years of collaboration with the release of STAY WITH IT on clean feed records. They began playing together when Greenlief moved back to the SF Bay Area in 1993. They experimented with a variety of approaches, but soon dedicated their work in the tradition of free improvisation for drums and saxophone. Their first release on 9 Winds Records, COLLECT MY THOUGHTS (1995), garnered international acclaim and offered the push they needed to begin touring and deepening their musical relationship. 30 years later, the sound of the duo has changed. Greenlief’s sound palette has expanded to create a theater of the unexpected, and Amendola has integrated live electronics; the duo now moves easily between free jazz and electro-acoustic improvisation traditions with a fierce dedication to the moment that overrides allegiance to genre aesthetics.

Seattle composers BC Campbell, Paul Matthew Moore, and Krystal Barghelame join up again for the Invisible Composers Lab third installment  featuring new works for piano and cello. With the composers at the piano, they are teaming up with cellist Maria Scherer Wilson, to present new pieces exploring the composed and improvised boundaries of these two instruments.

Invisible Composers Lab brings composers and musicians together, across generations, to create luminous, new creative works. The laboratory’s mission is to collaborate, fuel curiosity, and experiment in a supportive, non-hierarchical environment that welcomes inspiration from new music, improvisation, jazz, film scoring, classical music, and the wide sonic world. Fueled by discussions and interactive workshops over many months, each ICL Session includes workshop performances to open the collaborative conversation to listening audiences.

The ICL members’ collective adventures in music have brought them to The Royal Room, The Moore Theater, Cannes, PBS’s American Masters, The Smithsonian, The Paramount, The Seattle Symphony Youth Workshop, KEXP, and Sasquatch Music Festival to name just a few. They are thrilled to be joining forces to create new possibilities at the Good Shepherd Chapel.

Threshold is an all-star band comprised of Seattle improvised music scene veterans. Organized by Don Berman, the group assembled for a free-ranging recording session in 2023, and their self-titled first album together is the result.

This project is the manifestation of a musical vision Berman has held for years. His late father, William Berman, was a master violist who performed extensively in symphonic and string quartet settings. Having listened to so much of his chamber music playing, Don decided he would would form a 21st century string quartet. In his words: “I took the liberty of choosing cello, two guitarists, percussion, and creative electronics, as opposed to the classical two violins, viola, and cello format. Heather, Simon, Dennis, and I decided this would be an exciting musical adventure.”

Drummer Don Berman has performed with a long list of Seattle’s top jazz artists and improvisers since migrating there after college percussion studies. His most recent previous recording credit is Ascension Northwest, a large ensemble work he composed in honor of John Coltrane.

Heather Bentley is among the Pacific Northwest’s most active improvising musicians. She’s also a classically trained violist and cellist, one-third of Right Brain Records artist CHA, and co-founder of Kin of the Moon, a nonprofit organization which fosters collaboration between artists in service of creating unique art.

Guitarist Dennis Rea has performed internationally with his own groups like Moraine, as well as such trailblazing musicians such as Hector Zazou and Hawkwind members Nik Turner and Michael Moorcock, and many others. He has appeared on over 50 recordings. 

Guitarist Simon Henneman has made a name for himself as an improvisor and experimentalist in Seattle’s creative music scene.

Here to Play is a hard-charging trio featuring Kelsey Mines on upright bass + vocals, Neil Welch on saxophone + electronics, and Gregg Keplinger on drums + handmade percussion. Their work explores original songwriting and fully improvised sonic creations. Flowing from an avant spirit fit for astral traveling, they are currently performing works from their new album Cosmic Moments.

Contemporary classical pianist and composer Thomas Abrahamson will debut his new Piano Sonata as well as a select number of preludes complemented by a piece by local composer Jesse Myers. His style blends classical form with modern freedom, exploring new yet familiar soundscapes.

It’s the year 2048 and an unseen beast is terrorizing the land. In this near-future re-telling of the legend of the Wawel Dragon, Dragonslayer invites audiences to join Our Majesty Krak’s Republic so they may benefit from the protection and knowledge this body provides.

SHOWTIMES:

Thursday Feb. 8, 6-7:30 PM (BUY TICKETS)
Thursday Feb. 8, 8-9:30 PM (BUY TICKETS)
Friday Feb. 9, 6-7:30 PM (BUY TICKETS)
Friday Feb. 9, 8-9:30 PM (BUY TICKETS)

AnA Collaborations Directors, Audrey Rachelle, former Sleep No More cast, and Alex Oliva bring their experience performing and choreographing immersive productions to Dragonslayer, a 90-minute immersive experience with live original composition by Maciej Lewandowski, called an “electronics specialist” (Seth Colter Walls, The New York Times). Inside the medieval architecture of Good Shepherd Chapel, this experimental score accompanies a cast of eight dancers, highly-detailed costumes by Atelier Abene, and dynamic lighting design by cinematographer Blake Horn to transport audiences into a post-apocalyptic dystopian future.

Performers guide audience members around the Chapel, encouraging them to explore and choose which 13 of the 36 scenes they wish to experience. Audience members may be selected for intimate one-on-one encounters, and will be given the chance to actively participate. They might find themselves whispering with a member of the Resistance, witnessing a woman sacrificed to save them, or asked to carry Our Majesty’s burden.

It’s the year 2048 and an unseen beast is terrorizing the land. In this near-future re-telling of the legend of the Wawel Dragon, Dragonslayer invites audiences to join Our Majesty Krak’s Republic so they may benefit from the protection and knowledge this body provides.

SHOWTIMES:

Thursday Feb. 8, 6-7:30 PM (BUY TICKETS)
Thursday Feb. 8, 8-9:30 PM (BUY TICKETS)
Friday Feb. 9, 6-7:30 PM (BUY TICKETS)
Friday Feb. 9, 8-9:30 PM (BUY TICKETS)

AnA Collaborations Directors, Audrey Rachelle, former Sleep No More cast, and Alex Oliva bring their experience performing and choreographing immersive productions to Dragonslayer, a 90-minute immersive experience with live original composition by Maciej Lewandowski, called an “electronics specialist” (Seth Colter Walls, The New York Times). Inside the medieval architecture of Good Shepherd Chapel, this experimental score accompanies a cast of eight dancers, highly-detailed costumes by Atelier Abene, and dynamic lighting design by cinematographer Blake Horn to transport audiences into a post-apocalyptic dystopian future.

Performers guide audience members around the Chapel, encouraging them to explore and choose which 13 of the 36 scenes they wish to experience. Audience members may be selected for intimate one-on-one encounters, and will be given the chance to actively participate. They might find themselves whispering with a member of the Resistance, witnessing a woman sacrificed to save them, or asked to carry Our Majesty’s burden.

Master percussionist and innovator Chris Corsano performs solo, with local support from Hound Dog Taylor’s Hand and an electro-acoustic collaboration of Alan Jones, Kole Galbraith and Casey Adams.

For over 20 years Chris Corsano has pushed, pulled and reconsructed the possibilities of the drum set, both as sideman and soloist. An unrelenting innovator, he will perform works for solo drum set. Based in Upstate New York, Chris is in the midst of a North American tour.

Uncompromising free-blues stompers and “purveyors of the Avant-Primitive,” Hound Dog Taylor’s Hand return after a four-year hiatus. 

A.F Jones – Kole Galbraith – Casey Adams: an improvised electric-acoustic confrontation: unfolding collages, skittering noises, collapsing percussion.

A Flawed Contraption (Greg Campbell, percussion, and Jesse Canterbury, clarinets) is the duo incarnation of a pair of musicians who have worked together for years in other situations. They share an affinity for careful and responsive listening and an appreciation of space in improvisation. The sonorities employed — percussion, vibes, clarinets — are particularly well-suited to the large and warm space of the Chapel. For this performance, they’ll present a mixture of improvisations and loosely structured compositions.  

(Photo: Jesse Canterbury, La Push, WA)

“Modern jazz history is rife with strong duos, but Wayfaring stands out by channeling ideas from American folk tradition or the church into music that extends well beyond the language of jazz. Stunning.” – Peter Margasak, The Chicago Reader

Taking its name from a beloved American folk song, Wayfaring is a duo project between bassist/vocalist Katie Ernst and clarinetist James Falzone. What began as a casual meeting between like-minded players has formed into a collective of unusual nuance and depth, drawing on source material from the jazz tradition, hymns, folk songs, and original compositions from Ernst and Falzone. Wayfaring has toured extensively in the US and Canada and has been featured at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival in Chicago and the Earshot Jazz Festival in Seattle. Their debut recording, I Move, You Move, was released in Fall 2017 on the Allos Documents label to much critical acclaim. Their follow up record, Intermezzo, is released January 23rd, 2024 and is celebrated tonight at the Chapel. 

(photo: Shaya Lyon)