One of our favorite pursuits at The Sound Ensemble is the melding of different artistic mediums. One of the most long standing collaborations in the arts is between music and literature. This concert will explore that long relationship with each piece being inspired by a text from a different authors.
Anthony Plog: Animal Ditties VII
Tom Baker: Three Songs
Kevin Clark: Burial of the Dead
Christopher Gainey: No Sleep for the Wicked
An evening of music and discussion with Seattle composers:
Ivan Arteaga, Thaumaturgy (music, dance, technology)
Sheila Bristow
Blake Degraw, Electronic Quartet for Humans
S. Eric Scribner, Tree and Stone
The Seattle Composers’ Salon fosters the development, performance and appreciation of new music by regional composers and performers. At bi-monthly, informal presentations, the Salon features finished works, previews, and works in progress. Composers, performers, and audience members gather in a casual setting that allows for experimentation and discussion. Everyone is welcome!
Clarinetist James Falzone (Chair of Music at Cornish College of the Arts) and Bonnie Whiting (Chair of Percussion Studies and Artist in Residence at University of Washington) present Utterances: a seamless evening of original, composed, and improvised music based on text, spoken word, and translation. Included in the program will be works by Richard Logan-Greene, Susan Parenti, Bonnie Whiting, and James Falzone with guest artists Neil Welch, Beth Fleenor, Greg Sinibaldi, Ivan Arteaga, and Steve Tressler.
New works from local composers Noel Kennon and Austin Larkin presented by two Seattle-based ensembles.
You Are Fire You Are Dressed In Black You Are Fire You Are Dressed In Black You Are Fire You Are Dressed In Black is music for mirror, is music for screen, is music for string, is music for desperation, is music for voice, is music for quiet loud-speaker, is music for room, is music for dark, is music for floor, is music for basketball court, is music for glue.
The other ensemble has no title but it is simply a collection of musicians.
Trevor O’Loughlin – Double Bass
Jeremy Gonzales – Alto Saxophone
Ryan Tilley – Clarinet
Jacob Neenan – Tenor Saxophone
Jack Burgess – Vibraphone
Noel Kennon – Piano
They will be presenting a new work written specifically for the group by Noel Kennon. This quiet piece of music focuses on the idea of indeterminacy and collaborative creation of music.
Freely roaming Seattle cellist and composer Lori Goldston performs new work, solo and otherwise, including:
The debut of solo cello songs commissioned by Entre Rios Books, in response to a forthcoming collection of poems by Melissa Mueller, Mary’s Dust, which reflects on austere, raunchy, obscure, infamous and celebrated lives lived by people named Mary.
A duo with Mark Hilliard Wilson, Apple Blossoms and Jupiter, which dwells in the feeling of a fragrant evening
LISTEN to an album recorded at this show.
Percussionist Melanie Voytovich and friends bring you a night of new work with premiers Bradley Hawkins and Ella Maher/Melanie Voytovich. Featuring Storm Benjamin, Scott Langdon, and Maggie Brown (percussion), Brad Hawkins (cello), and Ella Maher (dance).
Full Program:
Bodies of Water, In Italics – Benjamin Marx
Socket – Bradley Hawkins
Music for Flowerpots No. 1 – Elliot Cole
Untitled for Dance and Percussion – Ella Maher & Melanie Voytovich
Hold Fast – Ivan Trevino
Buzzed – David Molk
Inverted Space Ensemble presents its 5th Annual Composers Concert. This concert is dedicated to presenting newly composed works alongside a diverse mix of contemporary and experimental music. Featured composers are Charles Corey, Jacob Sundstrom, Ania Stachurska, Clint McCallum, Sergej Newski, Beat Furrer and John Cage.
Noisegasm is Brad Anderson (keyboard, electronics) and Greg Weber (guitar, electronics). Using abstract sound textures with distorted keyboard and guitar lines, they combine elements of Industrial, Ambient, Rock and Soundtracks styles to create Weapons Grade Electronica.
In addition to his classical and electronic keyboard music, Brad Anderson also composes abstract soundscapes that not so gently unmoor the listener from reality.
Goldenrod is Noisegasm guitarist Greg Weber. He plays ambient drones highlighted with occasional melodic touches on guitar, synthesizer and harmonica. Influenced by Derek Bailey, Alvin Lucier, Carla Bley and Brian Eno, his recent music has been compared to Explosions in the Sky and Echelon Effect.
Unser Verhängnis is the latest project from Seattle-based experimental musician Peter Keller. Active since the mid-1990’s while living in Ohio with his influential harsh-noise act Bacillus, he has expanded his reach in the past 5 years with numerous other projects and collaborations. Other current acts include Dosenöffner, Condo Horro, Dirac Sea, and Kōan-Din, spanning the realms of dark experimental electronic music, from the noisy and chaotic to the subtle and serene. As Unser Verhängnis, using custom-built sound generators, he builds minimal walls of textural ambiance, creating an unsettling space with dark sparseness for the contemplation of our undoing. A double-cassette of new material released by Altar of Waste Records will be available at the show.
Doors open at 7:30.
Suzy Poling/Pod Blotz is a multi-media artist working with sound, video, film, photography installation, sculpture, painting, collage and performance art. She researches the multi- dimensional interferences between optics, mirrors, sonic resonance, electrical synthesis, video experiments, human/alien identities and photographic studies of geological anomalies. She is from Michigan, studied at Columbia College in Chicago, lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for almost a decade and now resides in Los Angeles.
Visually, her work has been exhibited at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure, Disjecta, Cal Polytechnic University, Chicago Cultural Center, Australian Center for Photography, Aperture Foundation, Cult Exhibitions/Aimee Friberg and Zg Gallery. Her images have been published in The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, Dazed Digital and a Metropolitan Museum of Art Book. She has lectured at Cal Poly University, de Young Museum, Headland Center for the Arts, Columbia College of Chicago. Poling is a recipient of the Mike Kelley Foundation Grant and was a nominee for the SECA Award at the SFMOMA.
Sonically, her project Pod Blotz has performed at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Colour out of Space Festival, Yerba Beuna Center for the Arts, Berkeley Art Museum, Human Resources, The LAB and Bemis Center for the Contemporary Arts. Pod Blotz has made releases with Chocolate Monk (UK), Nostilevo (LA), Conjunto Vacio (Spain), Clan Destine Records (UK) and Dungeon Taxis (NZ/NYC).
Poling will be supported by local acts, Bloom Offering (industrial electronic solo project of Nicole Carr) and Cruel Diagonals (vocalist and field recordist, Megan Mitchell) + DJ sets from Hall ov Mirrors (Ambient cassette jockey HOM Ashley Svn of Motor & Katabatik) playing/spinning entirely original environmental music composed especially for the Chapel’s beautiful/unique resonances.
Loscil is the ambient/electronic project of Vancouver-based composer Scott Morgan. With Loscil, Morgan explores the marriage of electronic production and acoustic instrumentation to create “stark landscapes that are evocative, earthly, anything but abstract, and so much more than merely ‘ambient’” (The Quietus, UK). Monument Builders is the eighth full-length Loscil release on Kranky. The album was composed during a period in which the life-and-death battles of close friends and family forced Morgan to examine his own feelings on mortality. In the course of that introspection, Morgan says he found himself “buoyed by a feeling of celebration and a stubborn sense of survival – an acknowledgement of what it means to be able to breathe and create amidst the clash of love and chaos.” Ultimately, Morgan hopes the music on Monument Builders can offer listeners solace while leaving room for exploration and surprise.
Since a young age, Thomas Meluch (aka Benoît Pioulard) has been fascinated by natural sounds and the textures of decay. He played piano before his feet could reach the pedals and for more than a decade has sought to create a unique sonic environment influenced by pop song structures and the unpredictability of field recordings. An avid collector of instruments and analog devices, Meluch relies on guitar and voice as the bases for his body of work, which now includes six full-lengths for the beloved Kranky label (including 2015’s “Sonnet”) as well as collaborations with Rafael Anton Irisarri (aka The Sight Below) and Kyle Bobby Dunn.
Bardo:Basho composes primarily loop-based music designed to create a sense of stasis and a state of hypnosis in the listener. She combines field recordings and disorienting sound design with ethereal and often pretty melodies and harmonies using software synths and her own voice. Bardo:Basho’s compositional structures often fall between long-form, slow-evolving compositions commonly found in free jazz, raga, and dance music traditions, and more immediate, rigidly structured changes commonly found in pop and classical music. Her music embraces the timbral qualities of new age, techno, art pop, drone, and software-based noise music. Her debut self-titled album was released in March of 2015. Thom is also the co-founder of Elevator, a production company in Seattle, WA that hosts an event series in addition to an annual winter festival called Corridor.