The 32nd annual Seattle Improvised Music Festival concludes. Presented by Nonsequitur, with support of a Neighborhood & Community Arts grant from City of Seattle Office of Arts & Culture.

As in last year’s festival, three esteemed visiting artists and an array of Northwest musicians will meet in multiple duo, trio, and quartet configurations during the weekend, curated by organizers Greg Campbell, Kate Olson, and Steve Peters. Nearly all of this year’s artists are playing the festival for the first time.

Today’s events (start/end times approximate):

1:00-4:00 PM – Improvising Together: A Listening and Playing Workshop for Dancers and Musicians led by dancer Sheri Cohen and musician David Knott. We’ll use listening practices and interactive scores to illuminate the material shared between musicians and dancers and make our improvisations clearer and richer. ENROLLMENT IS FREE but limited to 12 musicians and 12 dancers. Please register by January 28. (Sorry, this workshop is for participants only and is not open to a general audience.)

Sheri Cohen has created dance with musicians for over 25 years, including improvisations with Stuart Dempster, Dave Knott, Eyvind Kang, Susie Kozawa, Andrew Drury, Pauline Oliveros, and many more. Her improvisation practice is influenced by Tuning, Contemplative Dance Practice, Skinner Releasing, and more. Dave Knott has collaborated with improvising musicians and dancers through projects such as the Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation, ROOM, 12 Hour Play and Here/Now and numerous artists including Sheri Cohen, Stuart Dempster, Joan Laage and Jeph Jerman. For the past 15 years, he has worked as a music therapist with a special emphasis on using improvisation to engage and facilitate therapeutic change with critically ill children.

5:00-7:00 – Potluck / Future Visioning Session: Improvising musicians and listeners are invited to bring food, drinks, and brilliant ideas to share about how SIMF might evolve going forward.

7:00 – Improvised Music Merch Mart – local artists and labels tabling improvisational music releases in a variety of formats.

8:10-8:30 – Mike Gamble (electric guitar; Portland) & Evan Woodle (drums)

8:35-8:55 – Steve Barsotti (home-mades/field recordings), James Falzone (clarinet), Arrington de Dionyso (woodwinds)

9:00-9:20 – Heather Bentley (viola/violin), Catherine Lee (oboe; Portland), Lisa Cay Miller (piano; Vancouver BC), Bonnie Whiting (percussion)

9:30-10:00 – Douglas Ewart (woodwinds; Minneapolis) w/ Steve Barsotti (home-mades/field recordings), Heather Bentley (viola/violin), Lori Goldston (cello)

Featured Visiting Artist: Douglas R. Ewart (photo by Frank Rubolino)

Douglas R. Ewart is a composer, improviser, sculptor and maker of masks and instruments, as well as an educator, lecturer, arts organization consultant and all around visionary. In projects done in diverse media throughout an award-winning and widely-acclaimed career, Mr. Ewart has woven his remarkably broad gifts into a single sensibility that encourages and celebrates – as an antidote to the divisions and compartmentalization afflicting modern life – the wholeness of individuals in culturally active communities.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1946, Ewart immigrated to Chicago in 1963. His travels throughout the world and interactions with diverse people since then has confirmed his view that the world is an interdependent entity. In America, his determination to spread his perspective is part of the inspiration behind his often multi-disciplinary works and their encouragement of artist-audience interactions. It is also the basis of the teaching philosophy with which he guides his classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he has taught since 1990. Mr. Ewart uses his past experience as chairman of the internationally renowned Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) to celebrate and build upon the history and achievements of the organization, and is from this perspective a natural extension of the activities he has been engaged in for the past four decades.

Ewart maintains several ensembles: the Nyahbingi Drum Choir, the Clarinet Choir, Douglas R. Ewart & Inventions, Douglas R. Ewart & Quasar and Douglas R. Ewart & Stringnets. Each performance or production by Ewart reflects time-tested structures, but also incorporates his most immediate experiences of America and the world, and taps his many creative engagements with collaborators such as Muhal Richard Abrams, Amina Myers, Beah Richards, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Anthony Braxton, Alvin Curran, Anthony Davis, Von Freeman, Fred Anderson, Joseph Jarman, Yusef Lateef, Roscoe Mitchell, Ajule Sonny Rutlin, Rita Warford, Dee Alexander, Robert Dick, George E. Lewis, James Newton, Cecil Taylor, Richard Teitelbaum and Henry Threadgill.

The 32nd annual Seattle Improvised Music Festival begins, presented by Nonsequitur, with support of a Neighborhood & Community Arts grant from City of Seattle Office of Arts & Culture.

Nearly all of this year’s artists are playing the festival for the first time. As in last year’s festival, three esteemed visiting artists and an array of Northwest musicians will meet in multiple duo, trio, and quartet configurations during the weekend, curated by organizers Greg Campbell, Kate Olson, and Steve Peters. However, instead of the usual three long sets per night, we’ve made them shorter (20 minutes) and added another longer (30 minutes) set featuring one of the visiting artists playing solo and/or with other musicians of their own choosing.

Another new feature will be a workshop for improvising dancers and musicians led by dancer Sheri Cohen and musician David Knott. This will occur on Saturday from 1-4 PM.

Check back here for yet more new developments, details forthcoming.

Tonight’s set list (start/end times approximate):

8:10-8:30 – James Falzone (clarinet) & Bonnie Whiting (percussion)

8:35-8:55 – Heather Bentley (viola/violin), Robin Holcomb (piano), Nicole Mitchell (flute; Chicago via SoCal)

9:00-9:20 – Heather Bentley (viola/violin), Brian Chin (trumpet), Michaud Savage (classical guitar), Bonnie Whiting (percussion)

9:30-10:00 – Lisa Cay Miller (piano; Vancouver BC) solo + duo with James Falzone (clarinet)

Featured Visiting Artist: Lisa Cay Miller (photo by Peter Gannushkin)

Vancouver, BC pianist Lisa Cay Miller has performed with international artists Audrey Chen, Nicole Mitchell, Butch Morris, John Zorn, Ig Henneman, Wilbert de Joode, Anne La Berge, Michael Moore, Jean Yves Evrard,Jaochim Badenhorst, Eyvind Kang and Jessika Kenney, and in Vancouver with Dylan van der Schyff, Peggy Lee, Jesse Zubot, François Houle, Ron Samworth, the NOW Orchestra, Orquestra Futura and ion zoo. Her compositions have been premiered by de Bijloke ensemble (Ghent) the Tetzepi Bigtet (Amsterdam), mmm… (Tokyo), the Quatuor Bozzini (Montreal), Vancouver New Music, Standing Wave, Turning Point Ensemble, The Vancouver Chinese Instrumental Music Society, and the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, The Left Coast Ensemble, and Earplay (San Francisco). She has also directed workshops (for the Now Orchestra and the Vancouver International Jazz Festival) and produced concerts and multimedia installations (Vancouver New Music, Coastal Jazz and Blues Society, Circus Maximus, Western Front Society).

Gift Tapes/DRAFT presents Jonathan Sielaff, Million Mists, and Norm Chambers for its first installment of its 2017 program at the Chapel Performance Space, in association with the Wayward Music Series.

Jonathan Sielaff (Portland, OR) plays bass clarinet. Because he likes to play with drummers and electronic instruments, he often amplifies the bass clarinet and processes it with guitar pedals. He cut his musical teeth in rock bands, new music ensembles and various schools of improvisation but most enjoys exploring the territory that exists between genres. His primary musical project is the duo Golden Retriever, with Matt Carlson on synth. They have a bunch of tapes and CDs out there as well as albums with Root Strata and Thrill Jockey.

Million Mists is the musical project of Jamie Potter (Portland). Utilizing a variety of consumer-level electronic instruments and outdated recording techniques, he has crafted a unique approach to experimental synthesizer music, referencing equally the subliminal atmospheres of new age and the rugged immediacy of 90’s hip hop production. Drawing inspiration from his visual and video art practice, he seeks primarily to create immersive, idiosyncratic sound worlds. In this performance Potter will create a live soundtrack to one of his video works. His musical efforts began with minimal Seattle drone group Bonus as well as involvement in free improvisation circles. He currently performs with Brother Raven and records solo work under the names Million Mists and Father Sound. His work can be found on Digitalis, Taped Sounds, Aguirre Records, Root Strata, JYRK and Gift Tapes.

Norm Chambers is a Seattle-based composer and synthesist. He has been active making music since the 1990s, however has gained more traction with his Panabrite project since 2010. Emerging from a love of early electronics, concrete/tape music, soundtracks and early new age, Chambers attempts to create worlds of sound that touch on many elements and moods, from more spatially motivated ambient to aspects of cosmic synth, minimalist composition and improvisation. Chambers utilizes an array of synthesizer equipment to achieve his sounds, in addition to field recordings and occasional acoustic elements. He has released numerous LPs, cassettes and CDs on such labels as Immune Recordings, Preservation (Australia), Aguirre (Belgium), Digitalis, VCO, Constellation Tatsu, Gift Tapes and many more. Chambers has recently retired the Panabrite moniker, yet continues to pursue new avenues of sound.

This tenor saxophone quartet weaves together complex and ethereal sonic landscapes. Their most recent album, Blade of Love, is a three-part composition devoted to the “physical and spiritual intersection of the saxophone and the human body,” with the quartet boldly experimenting with conventions to make their instruments extensions of their inner selves. Presented by Earshot Jazz.

The origin story for Battle Trance is one of obeying an insistent inclination. In 2012, Vermont/Brooklyn hornsmith Travis Laplante followed a mysterious feeling to get in touch with three wildly talented near-strangers – Patrick Breiner, Matt Nelson, and Jeremy Viner – to piece together an experimental saxophone band. The project launched with an exploration of circular breathing and a sonic connection surrounding the four players. Since, it has been the platform for two records and highly anticipated international concerts. Following in the footsteps of groundbreaking idiosyncratic saxophonists Evan Parker, Albert Ayler, Peter Brötzmann, Roscoe Mitchell, and John Butcher, Laplante and the band explore multiphonics and singing into their instruments while exhaling to result in shifted vocal timbres. Laplante explains that by integrating non-traditional methods, his instrument is allowed to act as a resonant chamber to imitate sounds, such as arrows flying through the air, singing in church, running water, and the sound of rage.

Ursula Sahagian, Melanie Voytovich and friends perform contemporary music for oboe, percussion, and fixed electronics featuring the world premiere of Tyler Kline’s Collapsing Geography, for oboe and marimba, as well as his Two Songs After Dylan Thomas. Other works on the program are om Empirischen Standpunkt, by Emily Koh; Soda Apple, by Viet Cuong; Flowerpot Music No. 1, by Elliot Cole; De La Madera, by Howard Buss. There will be a pre-concert talk at 7:30.

​O​boist Ursula Sahagian​ ​is dedicated to realizing the works of living composers. ​In large and chamber ensembles, she has premiered over twenty​-five​ works, and has been independently commissioning composers to write new solo and chamber works for oboe since 2015.​ She regularly performs with Seattle Modern Orchestra, Seattle Rock Orchestra, and Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra. This year, she is looking forward to performing with the Sound Ensemble at NUMUS Northwest, joining new music ensemble Cursive for their March performance, and premiering a new work for oboe and strings by Phil Salath​é​.​

​Percussionist Melanie ​Voytovich has performed with new music ensembles including the Universal Language Project, Seattle Modern Orchestra, Plexure Trio, and the Sound Ensemble. Dedicated to encouraging innovation and collaboration, she pioneered the Washington State New Works for Percussion project, focused on commissioning new repertoire for percussion. She is also the Chapter President of the Washington State Percussive Arts Society and is currently working to expand its reach and influence throughout the state.​ Melanie is​ currently pursuing her DMA at the University of Washington.

​Composer ​Tyler Kline​ of Tampa, FL​ writes music encompassing​ a wide variety of styles and mediums, including acoustic chamber and large ensemble works; solo and duo works; fixed and interactive electronic/electroacoustic music; and collaborative projects with dance, visual and literary arts. ​​Recent compositions​, including Collapsing Geography,​
focus on the use of extended sounds/techniques in order to create timbral similarities or differences, as well as textures, between instruments, voices and/or electronics. Tyler’s work is deeply influenced by the idea of Wabi-Sabi, a Japanese aesthetic and world view that values transience, imperfection, and impermanence. More broadly, his compositions draw influence from a variety of extra-musical sources, primarily from literature.

Composer/pianist Sumiko Sato premiers a series of pieces for sextet based on very old and historic recordings of Sakaya Uta (sake-brewing work songs), handed down by oral tradition from one generation to the next but now on the verge of extinction due to the mechanization in breweries.

In old-time Japan, it was common in farming communities for men to travel out of town during the agricultural off-season to work for sake breweries in the winter. Away from their families, they would only work for the brewery until the brewing process was completed in the spring. Singing while working helped them work together systematically, especially in time, counting and consistency. Singing was a way to keep track of time and to ease the pain of hard work, as well as have some fun. Beginners had to learn the songs quickly or their wages would be reduced by half.

For this new work, Sumiko Sato has selected eight songs and composed using some traditional melodies, harmonized, and adapted metrical beats for six performers. The recorded songs are sung by four local Sake masters who are of the last generation able to sing them. The show includes a sake-making film so the audience can see how the songs were sung in the brewing process.

Sato has been recording “Sakaya Uta” for a residency at Jack Straw Productions since 2015, and is set to complete it in January 2017.

The dynamic Deer Dance (Shishi-Odori) is widely recognized as the representative local performing art of Iwate, the Northeastern state of Japan, performed to pray for peace and drive away evil spirits. Each performer (of eight) dances while singing and beating a drum. It is suggestive of the kind of deer shamanism practiced in the northern hemisphere. The late Taro Okamoto, one of the most renowned Japanese artists, once saw a dynamic taiko shishi-odori performance, and compared its rhythm to “dry jazz.” Sumiko Sato’s work employs the singing phrase and the fundamental rhythmic patterns as motifs, based upon the Kasuga School.

The ensemble: Sumiko Sato, piano; Paul Taub, flute; Tari Nelson-Zagar, violin; Kevin Krentz, cello; Dennis Staskowski, contrabass; Paul Kikuchi, percussion.

Sumiko Sato is a Japanese musician who has received her education and training around the world. Her musical background began at the age of 4. In 1988, she was awarded a Rotary Foundation Scholarship to study music in the USA. In 1996, she finished her doctorate at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she studied composition with Ken Benshoof, piano with Patricia Michaelian, improvisation with Stuart Dempster, and jazz with Willian O. Smith. Her musical interests are far-ranging, from the classics to jazz, rock, improvisation and experimentation. She currently writes, arranges and performs with the Sumiko Sato Trio, Rasu Theatre Company, and numerous instrumentalists, choirs and vocalists.

Seattle Phonographers Union – a collective of artists improvising with unprocessed field recordings – perform one of their infrequent “ambient” sets, with group members dispersed around the space and playing through an array of individual sound systems. Even more unusual, tonight they break one of their own rules and are joined by instrumentalists Greg Kelley (trumpet) and Tom Varner (French horn).

“State of Mind”: the Skyos Quartet, Rose Gear, and Michaud Savage perform new works by Susan Maughlin Wood and Michaud Savage.

Susan Maughlin Wood premiers her Coastal Fire Suite which was conceived, composed and arranged post-November 8, 2016. “We live in a purple, bruised State of Mind, and the heartland is wherever the heart is.”

Susan Maughlin Wood is an independently contracting composer for media and concert music. She holds a Master of Music in Film Composition degree from Pacific NW Film Scoring Program and serves as President of the Seattle Composers Alliance. Constantly bridging the distance between conceiving, learning and doing, Susan has produced diverse, award-winning material from short film (Spectratta, awarded Best Music Video and Best Cinematography from wide ranging film festivals) to hybrid electronic atmospheric interludes (UW choral concert Embracing the Journey) to the award-winning string quartet Mirasteros, as well as casual video games and ever-present passion projects.

Michau Savage presents a continuation of the inquiry of his Departures Suite, meditations on elements once liminal and now fixed. “These pieces are composed and arranged from late-Summer 2016 to the end of year. This is my State of Mind, as of late.”

Composer, guitarist and performer Michaud Savage is a working musician based in Seattle, WA. As a solo and ensemble guitarist, Michaud is comfortable working in a wide spectrum of musical styles. As a composer, his work includes compositions for chamber ensembles, orchestra, electronics, Max/MSP, and performance art. In addition to solo performance, Michaud regularly plays in a tango duo with Mirta Wymerszberg, is half of Duo Michma, leads The Ancient Present- a chamber orchestra performing new works- and is an auxilary member of Correo Aereo. Michaud studied at the Cornish College of the Arts and at The Evergreen State College, which included an emphasis in Consciousness Studies and Music.

Further presents an evening of live electronic music featuring NYC artist Jonas Reinhardt and local synth maestro Norm Chambers (Panabrite) along with the visual talent of Leo Mayberry. We are excited to produce our first event in 2017 in conjunction with Wayward Music with a focus on live electronics. Pre-sale tickets include a download of Jonas Reinhardt’s 2015 album Palace Savant.

Inspired in equal measure by the throbbing urbanity of coastal cities, continental European art-rock experimentation, and improvised electronic minimalism, Jonas Reinhardt’s music transcends its influences into a wholly unique amalgam.

Norm Chambers creates worlds of sound that touch on many elements and moods, from more spatially motivated ambient to aspects of cosmic synth, minimalist composition and improvisation.

Leo Mayberry has been composing, coordinating and performing live video for the last 15 years as Killing Frenzy Visuals. Projects have varied from improvisational explorations with Steve Fisk to complicated theater performance with the Degenerate Art Ensemble.