FLOOM is Maxx Katz‘s solo experiment in embodied improvisation, using flute, downtuned doom guitar, and extreme vocals. Maxx Katz is an artist, composer, and performer based in Portland, Oregon, whose work draws on vocabulary from performance art, free improvisation, jazz, contemporary classical, and heavy metal. A classically trained flutist with an M.A. in Music from the University of Virginia, Katz uses flute, electric guitar, voice, and movement as instruments of radical transformation.

The Northwest Experimental Guitar Orchestra is an ensemble of musicians from diverse performative backgrounds, spanning Seattle, Bremerton, Portland, and surrounding regions. They perform new works that explore alternative methods of scoring, conducting, and technology integration, favoring methods that avoid traditional Western music notation, making participation accessible to everyone, regardless of background, training, or education.

Blessed Blood is an electronics-based project by Seattle’s Rachel LeBlanc. Utilizing hardware effects to expand upon the natural resonances of singing, she processes harmonies into ecstatic hymns, wherein ethereal vocals glide above pulsations and sharp angles. The sound is informed by the PNW, traditional world music, and the exploration of history both personal and cultural.

Judith Berkson is a vocalist, pianist and composer living in Los Angeles, California. Her multi-disciplinary work explores tuning by navigating the small differences in pitch that alter perception and activate memory. She received her undergraduate from New England Conservatory, a masters in composition from Wesleyan University and a doctorate from California Institute of the Arts. Judith has collaborated with Kronos Quartet, Wet Ink, Yarn/Wire and City Opera and has presented work at Picasso Museum Malaga, Roulette, Le Poisson Rouge, Joe’s Pub, Roulette, Barbès and the 92 Street Y. She has received a Six Points Fellowship, a Jerome Foundation grant, Meet The Composer grant, New Music USA funding and support from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has released a record on ECM and has written two operas. Her latest opera Partial Memories premiered at the NODO Festival in Ostrava in 2022. It was dedicated to forgotten female artists Janet Sobel and Mary Gartside and featured the Ostravská Banda.

“For this performance I will explore sixthtone tunings using my voice. I have a pre-recorded track of my voice in equal temperament and will be singing the altered tunings live with the fixed media alternating between through-composed and improvised sections along with electronics. I am exploring the fringes of vocal performance, and dealing with the issue of how to hold such small intervals that can be heard within a critical bandwidth while also positing the idea that many more gradations of tone have the potential to be heard, perceived, and felt.”

Described by the Irish Times as “a musician at one with his instrument and his music,” Cleek Schrey is a fiddler, composer, and filmmaker from Virginia, now based in NYC. He plays a range of instruments including the hardanger d’amore, a violin with sympathetic strings, and the daxophone, a wooden idiophone designed by Hans Reichel. Recent engagements include the Big Ears Festival (TN), the Kilkenny Arts Festival (IR), SuperSense Festival of the Ecstatic (Aus) and Issue Project Room (NYC). Frequent collaborators include electronic music pioneer David Behrman, the viol da gamba player Liam Byrne, traditional fiddle icon Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, and composer Alvin Lucier. The journal Sound Post has noted that Schrey “possesses a rare combination of traits: deep respect for traditional music and the people who make it, and an unbounded curiosity about new directions for sound.” Tonight, Cleek will explore melodies and harmonies inspired by different scordatura (re-tunings) of his 10-stringed Hardanger D’amore, a violin with sympathetic strings. 

Curated by Ha-Yang Kim for Nonsequitur’s NonSeq series.

The Force Of Listening #4 presents nine sonic and visual works presented by artists from across the US to create an evening of experimental ambience, music, and sound art coming on the heels of this year’s Campbient session, organized by REALMOREREAL. Artists include Violet Palace (Olympia, WA), Leora Malka (Los Angeles, CA), Julia Edith Rigby (Santa Ana, CA), BC Welsh (Seattle, WA), Mary Edwards (Brooklyn, NY), Jak McKool (Seattle, WA), Perri Lynch Howard (Twisp, WA), Cheyenne Hendrickson (Everett, WA), Theo Krantz (Sante Fe, NM), and Jenn Howd (Cincinnati, OH).

Ground Hum presents a night of deep listening and sonic exploration with Jake Muir and Raica. 

Jake Muir is a Berlin based sound artist, DJ, and field recordist. He approaches his practice as a listener first, carefully curating, layering and processing sounds that help him deconstruct and contextualize his lived experiences and influences. Using investigative software methodologies, DJ techniques, and dextrous engineering, Muir makes deeply personal sonic art that fluidly traverses genre, encouraging reflection, and sometimes prompting psychedelic states.

Chloe Harris (aka Raica) has been an integral and influential figure in the Pacific Northwest music community for over three decades. Her contributions as a musical artist, producer, DJ, mentor, record label owner (Further), and record shop owner have helped lay the groundwork and build the foundation upon which rests the current success of Seattle’s underground electronic music scene. 

“…let the colors inside your eyelids take musical form for 19 glorious minutes of modular synth majesty.” (AnEarful on River of Life)

Tracing arcs from crystalline to the hypnotic and back, Mario Diaz de Leon performs a set of works for Buchla synthesizer, including the newly released “RIver of Life,” a prismatic meditation on a 32-note melody that draws inspiration from Revelation 22:1-2.

Mario Diaz de Leon is a NYC-based composer, producer, and instrumentalist. Spanning the worlds of modern classical and electronic music, his works have been acclaimed for their “remarkable textures and vivid atmosphere” (New Yorker), “crystalline attacks” (Groove), and “snarling exuberance” (Pitchfork). Diaz de Leon’s chamber music can be heard across four albums performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea, and TAK, and his solo performances have been featured at CTM (Berlin), Donaufestival (Austria), Roulette, The Kitchen, and Nowadays. He is currently Assistant Professor of Music and Technology at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ.

Curated by Ha-Yang Kim for Nonsequitur’s NonSeq series.

Since January 2024, In Series has been working at a lofty goal: bringing composed music to a scene with more than its fair share of noise-niks, improvisers, nooks, and crannies. Having found a stable home at Capitol Hill’s Vermillion, series organizers Peter Tracy (cello) and Aaron Michael Butler (percussion) have curated concerts centered around works and performances by local composers, enlisting relevant deep cuts from the contemporary composed landscape to fill the gaps.

For their second appearance at the Chapel, In Series hopes to address an uncertain future with premiers and reprises of works by Anthony Donofrio and Peter Tracy. Donofrio’s “8 pieces for Vibraphone and ‘Cello” ranges from fragile melodic interplay in near-traditional notation to sparse text scores. Tracy’s “Munin” for solo glockenspiel will see its second performance, with a new trio by the same, “Errata”, to be premiered by Tracy, Butler, and series veteran Carlos Cotallo Solares (violin). 

Thomas Abrahamson will premiere new compositions for solo piano including a new piece for violin and piano ensemble (Libby Phelps on violin), all in the style of contemporary classical…ish. Also included in the program are OLD works composed in 2023. The night will include caffeine, refreshments, chocolate, caramel, and of course, notes, music, and crescendos that will make you feel. Coughing during the quiet part is welcome, and in fact encouraged.

Composer, producer, and performer Hahn Rowe has developed a uniquely personal sonic language, traversing a vast array of musical terrains and weaving them into ever-shifting, polymorphic soundscapes. At home in the studio as well as in the performance arena, he has worked to break down the barriers between traditional musical performance, sound art, and physical theater.

As an engineer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist (violin, guitar, electronics) he has worked with Hugo Largo (two albums on Brian Eno’s “LAND/OPAL” imprint), David Byrne, Anohni (Anohni and the Johnsons), Glenn Branca, Swans, R.E.M., and Yoko Ono, among many others. 

A recipient of three New York Dance and Performance Awards (aka the Bessie), Hahn Rowe has a long history of scoring music and performing for dance and theater. He has been involved in over 30 evening-length dance/theater productions, working globally with the likes of Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods, Benoît Lachambre, Louise Lecavalier, Bebe Miller, John Jasperse, Simone Aughterlony, and Antonija Livingstone. 

Hahn Rowe is active as a composer for film and television, having created scores for films such as Clean, Shaven by Lodge Kerrigan, Spring Forward and The Cold Land, by Tom Gilroy, Married in America by Michael Apted, and Sing Your Song by Susanne Rostock.

Recently, Rowe’s music was featured as a major component in Adam Pendleton’s Who Is Queen? at MoMA (2021) and he has created the soundscore for Pendleton’s latest video work, Toy Soldier (Notes of Robert E. Lee, Richmond, Virginia/Strobe), as part of his exhibition, Toy Soldier (Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich 2022).

Curated by Ha-Yang Kim for Nonsequitur’s NonSeq series.

(photo: Rob Davidson)

Kin of the Moon plays music of Tom Baker and Neil Welch

Tom Baker has composed a substantial yet delicate musical exploration of our shifting climate. “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Glacier” is based on poetry by Craig Santos Perez. Scored for mezzo-soprano, alto flute, viola, saxophone, and guitar, the chamber ensemble movements  are interspersed with solo guitar meditations. These chamber movements and solo commentaries reflect on the tragedy of our world’s melting ice. Featuring saxophonist Neil Welch and guitarist Michael Nicolella.

KOTM reprises its performance of Neil Welch‘s “No house on fire, no”. Its unique sonic landscape emulates the infinitely variable sound of wind passing through vast fields of grass, an experience that Neil had on a trip to Alaska. No house on fire, no. for improvising quintet, explores phonetic text painting, reflections on physical landscapes and the collaborative spirit of a regularly performing ensemble engaged in creative improvisation. The work is segmented into four sections (Introduction, I, II, III) and is intended to progress between sections without pause. All instrumentalists use extended techniques to create undulating sounds of air and wind through various means, such as: fingers sliding on the keyboard with plastic finger picks, flute and saxophone blowing directly into their instruments without engaging pitch, bows sliding on the body of the instrument or swiping against the air itself, feet and hands brushing against the floor, clothing, or instrument. Some passages are dichotomous in their pitch content, blending tempered and non-tempered tuning. No house on fire, no. includes themes using non-pitched breathing through phonetic text painting, with rhythms and phrasing taken from the poem Drawn Together, by Joan Naviyuk Kane. Featuring saxophonist Neil Welch and bassist Abbey Blackwell.

Percussionist Michael Jones (he/they)  presents new works for percussion by Matt Sargent and Scott Wollschleger that explore time, touch, and exteriority. Based in San Diego, California, his recordings can be heard on the Naxos, New Focus, Edition Wandelweiser, Cold Blue, Sawyer Editions, and New World labels.  Michael’s debut solo album, Between Time and After, is  available from Chen Li Music. They are joined by the University of Washington Graduate Percussion Group, performing John Cage’s iconic Credo in US, and Rick Burkhardt’s experimental work for voice and percussion Simulcast.