An evening of improvised music from Lu Evers (clarinet), Amy Denio (alto sax, voice), Lady Zade (cello), and Tom Scully (guitar). The joy of spontaneity, sharing in the moment of awareness, the scintillating particles in the diverse array of dimension.

An evening of ambient and electronic drone music, slow and calming. Come and relax for as long as you wish.

Ben Kaya is an American composer, producer and performer based in Belgium. His work primarily is concerned with simplicity, limitation and repetition, using long durations, repetitive motifs and a focus on texture in sound and visuals to bring a natural life to his vision. He will use hardware synthesizers in the trio to create a blanket and base layer of sound.

Last Train West is a Seattle-based producer and sound artist. His work blends sampling with generative melody. Using synthesizers and samplers, he will provide melodic reinforcement throughout the performance.

Aetheres is a Seattle-based composer and sound designer whose work blends ambient textures with dramatic, melodic expression. In this performance he will use various electronic devices to add texture to the ever present cloud.

Poetry and ambient engross the air in an evening built for the therians of the PNW.

Exploring the cacophonous silence of the desert with hypnotic percussion and animal calls, Bassariscus takes you on a trip through the therianthropic mind.

frrn is a Seattle-based ambient experimental musician. With both her records and improvised live performances her music is a blending of melodic, sweeping drones and fragments of tone and texture that build vast emotional landscapes that invite the listener to dive deep within and to drift and reflect as the river of sound pulls them along. Her music exists somewhere in-between, weaving through darkness and light.

Shimi is a storyteller, musician, and performance artist whose work moves between memoir, myth, and ritual. Her performances explore the thin boundary between what is human and animal, what is sacred and what is feral. Bringing Lykaeon to Seattle, she offers a forest-born performance of spoken word and music — part poetry, part monologue, all howl. Blending mythology, ancient stories, and sound art, she calls you back to the wild, inviting you to remember the instinct that still lives beneath the skin — the pull of something ancient and creaturely inside.

Accompanying the longer acts of the nights, we will also get to behold the works of 4 different poets. Rose Novick will read poems about centipedes. Nocki :3 will perform an oration of several extended monologues on its experiences since moving to Seattle, falling in love, finding community, and dealing with what comes after. Twig shares his story of an unexpected and profound shift. Trop will provide the results of her states of mental fluidity where she writes about feelings of inhumanity and the pains that come with human coexistence.

This event is hosted by Impact! Foundation, a trans-run nonprofit founded and doing live events in Seattle.

(Image above by netsui_prime)

Doors open 6:30.

Guitar Worship Service is playful in name but the intention praises the importance of the creative possibilities of a guitar. Since 2013, GWS presentations select musicians/sound sculptors/artists to examine what a guitar physically or conceptually is. While there are different types of guitars (electric, acoustic, steel, bass, homemade, video game, etc.), past performances have given audiences diverse solo sets and unique one-off collaborations. With encouragement to push creative boundaries, the GWS series has but one requisite for every live performance: At least one guitar, in whatever capacity, is applied with unrestricted interpretation. 

For this evening, the 10th Guitar Worship Service proudly presents five highly anticipated sets washed in improvised visual projections: 

Golden Counting resulted from a 1 + 1 + 1 = 3 happenstance to form an incomparable trio. 12-string prepared guitar (Sue Ann Harkey) + cello (Lori Goldston) + electronics (Tondiue) seems an unlikely equation, however this project has performed once and only at The Chapel in 2023. Each of these musicians stand as pillars when performing solo sets. But 2023’s performance interlaced these three unique artists who effortlessly loped toward aural achievement. To hear 2023’s performance and to read the backstory on Golden Counting’s formation, review the link and you’ll understand how the math adds up.

Daniel Menche is an iconic experimental musician from Portland, Oregon. His extensive history of recording and performance continues to span over three decades. Menche’s sonic abstractions manifest through intense noise, immersive drones, dense ambiance, acoustic instruments, and many other sources creating an absolute, abstract sonic world. For this evening’s performance, Daniel will apply proven acumen toward interpretations of what a guitar is or rather can be.

Dave Webb has been obsessed with every aspect of a guitar since 1993. While most known as a technically mind-blowing rock and metal player with regional and international groups, Dave has ventured into jazz, free improvisation, and outsider territories. This will be his first performance at the Chapel but he is no stranger to musicians who have been regular performers here. In fact, he’s been a collaborator with several of them, so this venue will be an acquainted forum. But given his dexterity, it’s a mystery what genre or blended styles Dave will display for us.

The Colour Out of Space was a prolific duo with plenty of performances left in the vapour trails of their eventual disappearance. It has been eight years since the last witness. Patrick Neill Gundran (electric guitar) and Blake DeGraw (various brass wind instruments) re-emerge from the darkness to shine upon us their motley destinations to auditory chaos. Past sets have arrayed dense clashes of instrumentation not unlike planets colliding to orbiting silent voids not unlike the vastness of outer space itself. TCOoS’s trip could lead us anywhere including uncharted expanses. Welcome back, audionauts.

Moned produces as a guitar conduit that, by sculpting seismic walls of warm feedback, manipulating frequencies, and layering volume-swelling tones, further explores this instrument’s endless possibilities to sound nothing like its traditional intention. However, this set will present a piece titled “Mating/Demating” which will involve the amplified dismantling of an electric guitar built on the foundation of a tempered Larsen Effect. Create to destroy. Destroy to create. A unique one-off experience to witness. 

Color Bard Visual projected eye-melting optics on the huge white wall behind the Chapel’s stage for the 8th Guitar Worship Service. Matthew Terry uses that wall as a canvas to improvise sound-triggered interactions with the performing musicians to create an audio/visual occurrence while transforming the Chapel into an ocular wonderland soundtracked by the strangest of guitar recitals.

Please join us for this exclusive experience.

Two Seattle musicians collaborate for a special concert celebrating love, the universe, and world peace.

Serena Tideman is a cellist and composer from the NW. The Seattle Weekly describes her music thus: “Tideman makes poetry of her own with the cello, her lines flowing with the lyricism, tension”. In Pop Matters magazine, she was included in a Top 12 list of best composers to introduce listeners to post-1950s classical music: “Perhaps it is because Tideman composes for an instrument she plays, but her command of just what the instrument is capable of is astounding, virtuosic but always in service of the piece.” Serena is also always known for her tone and use of tone colors as a cellist and composer. She has collaborated professionally as a solo cellist alongside many diverse groups locally as well as internationally, in Royal Theatres and art museums, for the groundbreaking concerts of organic farms, as well as in non traditional spaces. For the Wayward Music Series, in hopes of world peace, Serena has composed a new world premiere for cello and piano, dedicated to her friend Chiao-Yu Wu.

International prize-winning Taiwanese luminary Chiao–Yu Wu will be the featured performer on piano, in addition to being the muse of the new music by Serena. Known for her beautiful, poignant, virtuosic and passionate interpretations of great composers’ works for piano, Chiao-Yu also enjoys multidisciplinary arts cooperation. She has previously performed at prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall and Steinway Beijing, and is an active collaborator in the local Seattle classical music scene.

As well as the cello/piano music composed for the occasion, the evening will also include music by Arvo Pärt (significant for 2025 is his 90th birthday year) and the Seattle premiere of a work by the late Canadian composer Jocelyn Morelock.

Film and Audio Visual performances by indigenous artists, presented by COUSIN Collective:

Svetlana Romanova (Sakha/Even) is an artist, filmmaker, and activist born in Yakutsk, the capital city of the Sakha Republic, Russia, located south of the Arctic Circle. Her practice centers on the critical importance of Indigenous visual language and sovereignty to the sustainability of Indigenous identity, particularly in the Arctic regions, and how art can be used as a tool for Indigenous advocacy internationally.

al-yené is an artist born and raised in the Sakha republic. She works across different media, but mostly with video and poetry. Her practice is focused on continuity, displacement, gaps and absences within sakha cultural memory.  

Kole Galbraith is a multi-disciplinary artist who focuses on sound, audio-visual, and found-object installation. Based in both Seattle, Washington and Tartu, Estonia, Kole Galbraith has been active in the underground experimental music community for the past decade performing throughout the West Coast of the United States and Europe. Sonically his sonic studio compositions are informed by early 20th century French musique-concrète, metal, jazz and contemporary composition. Thematically, the compositions are influenced by interior Salish folklore, and contemporary indigenous experience.

Sonora Enjambre is a multi-undisciplinary artist and musician. A descendant of the Condor y la Aguila,  Sonora Enjambre currently lives on unceded Duwamish territory. Sonora has primarily, but not exclusively, performed and been featured in Washington State, earning an artist residency at the Nalanda West Buddhist temple and contributing a long-form composition to the Wayward in Limbo series curated by Nonsequitur in Si’ahl.

The Horse Thief (Diné) is coming.

Music and sounds for the koto, viola, electronics, ukulele and more featuring Robert Millis (Climax Golden Twins,Sublime Frequencies), Katherine Whatley and Noel Kennon who will all play solo and together in some as yet undetermined improvisatory arrangement. Whatley and Millis recently released a cassette of trio performances from Japan on the SoundHoles label. Millis has a new solo LP out on Discrepant. Noel Kennon continues to confound and impress with his multifaceted recordings, live shows, and beyond including his recent premier of the beautiful 11 Scenes Framed by a Sunset.

Katherine Whatley is a koto musician, composer and researcher. She plays both traditional and experimental koto, both improvised and composed. Her compositions have been performed by the Stanford New Ensemble and the Earplay Ensemble. She has toured Japan with noise ensembles, and performed in jazz and electroacoustic duos. She has also appeared as a presenter for the BBC and writer in the Japan Times. Born and raised in Japan, she is currently researching pre-modern Japanese literature and music at Stanford University. 

Solo performance by Marcin Pączkowski, followed a trio featuring Don Berman, Heather Bentley, and Ewa Trębacz in their first appearance together since their show last summer at the Olympia Free Jazz Festival. 

Marcin Pączkowski, a Seattle-based composer, conductor, digital artist, and violinist, holds the position of Music Director for the Evergreen Community Orchestra. He earned his PhD from the University of Washington’s Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) program. For this performance, Marcin will explore the relationship between sound and movement. In a piece shaped in real time, blending industrial field recordings with ambient synthesized textures. This is realized by utilizing his customized motion sensor system, combined with physical gestures to create a direct and expressive link between the body and sound.

Ewa Trębacz is a violinist, interdisciplinary artist, and composer. Her works have been presented, performed and broadcast in over 30 countries on four continents, and featured in Organised Sound, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, and many other music magazines. In 2009, her work things lost things invisible for Ambisonic space and orchestra, was recognized as work recommended by the 56th UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in Paris, representing 27 radio stations from around the world. In 2022 she was selected to be composer-in-residence at the 33rd Musica Polonica Nova Festival, National Forum of Music in Wrocław, Poland.

Seattle-based violist and composer Heather Bentley has trailblazed a career as one of the West Coast’s most visible improvisatory musicians, specializing in creating evocative atmospheres and textures. Classically trained, she has shifted to an unabashedly experimental artistic output. As a performer, she can be seen performing in numerous chamber ensembles that utilize improvisation, electronics, and often both. As a composer, her work for chamber ensembles and orchestras has been performed by organizations across the US. She is relentless in her creativity!

Don Berman is an established member of the Seattle jazz and improvised music scenes. A midwest transplant to Seattle after completing jazz and classical percussion studies at Oberlin and the University of Illinois, he is a highly eclectic drummer, composer, and percussionist. One of his major recorded works, Ascension Northwest, is a large ensemble composition that he wrote to celebrate John Coltrane’s 90th birthday. Inspired by one of his heroes and a fellow Gemini, Chick Corea, Don maintains a full schedule of widely varied musical projects. His feelings about tonight’s performance echo Ewa’s UW DXARTS Phd bio, which mentions “the unique interaction between human subjects and their acoustic environment.” Tonight, the Chapel space will catalyze an exciting, totally unpredictable trio performance, full of intuitive and thoughtful surprises. 

The Kora Dance Ensemble combines West African traditional songs and strategies,  jazz influences on upright bass and clarinets, and the silent music that is dance.

This ensemble consists of four members: Janelle Bel Isle (dance), Eric Likkel (clarinets), Brady Kish (upright bass) and Chet Corpt (kora). We draw on our experiences within many genres – jazz, blues, soul, Western classical, Turkish Ottoman classical, Balkan, tango, and West African – although the primary organizing principle leans towards the West African Mandinka tradition. In addition to what we’ve learned directly from our contemporaneous African teachers and performers, there are always intriguing traces in our music and dance of our undeserved inheritance, as Americans, of the culture and civilization of West Africa.

A live evening of free guitar improvisation by Carlos Cotallo Solares and Ryan Carraher, each unfolding a distinct approach to the instrument and its electronic extensions. Together, in duo and solo configurations, they engage the guitar’s uncanny versatility within a framework of spontaneous composition. Perussionist Aaron Michael Butler joins to present a new work for vibraphone and electronics by Jeff Herriott.

Carlos Cotallo Solares is a Spanish composer and improviser based in Seattle. His work deals with indeterminism, musical quotation, and the relationship between music and language. His pieces often focus on a single concept or technique that is interpreted in multiple ways. As an improviser, he performs on electric guitar and pedalboard, exploring effects not as a way to modify the guitar’s sound but as instruments on their own. He is a member of the free-improvisation trio Wombat, with Justin Comer (saxophone) and Will Yager (double bass). His music has been performed in festivals and conferences across the US and Europe and his audiovisual collaborations with the video artist Timothy David Orme have been shown at film festivals internationally. He studied composition at the University of Iowa, UDK Berlin, and the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg.

Ryan Carraher is a composer, guitarist, and improviser based in Seattle. His work is concerned with articulating the vulnerability of the human body, the role failure plays in identity expression, and composer-performer-audience relationships informed by kinesthetic empathy. His music has been presented at numerous leading festivals, including Darmstädter Ferienkurse, June in Buffalo, Either/Or’s Spring Festival, New Music on the Bayou, Oh My Ears, New Music on the Point, Charlotte New Music Festival, VIPA, and Etchings.

Aaron Michael Butler is a percussionist, composer, and educator based in Seattle, Washington. His work often deals in static textures, repetition, durational stamina, resonance, and psychoacoustic effects.