Stillness, Concentrate – considerations of solo piano music by J. K. Randall and Keith Eisenbrey, performed by Keith Eisenbrey.

Music to be considered:

“…..such words as it were vain to close…..” (1977) ­ J. K. Randall (1929­-2014)

This astonishing piece entered my life in 1980 or so as the companion in score of Ben Boretz’s (“… my chart shines high where the blue milks upset …”). Although I have performed Ben’s piece many times, “such words” has always terrified me. Written entirely in pitch­-class and rhythmic unison, its transparence to every micro­gram of relative weight and to every twitch of metrical precision is so extreme that it wasn’t until a few years ago that I could bring myself to dive in. It is one of a handful of works whose influence I feel in everything I have done in music since. I look forward to sharing it with you.

J (2014), Another (2015), and “Welcome to my planet. I come in peace.” (2012)  Keith Eisenbrey

J was written in memory of J. K. Randall, Another to celebrate the 80th birthday of Ben Boretz.

Welcome to my planet. I come in peace. is for me to speak to you.

“Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice? So that all this chatter and praise and blame and meeting people who admired one and meeting people who did not admire one was as ill suited as could be to the thing itself ­ a voice answering a voice.” ­Virginia Woolf, from “Orlando”.

Seattle composer and vocalist Kaley Lane Eaton presents ANIMAL, the psychedelic, post-minimalist kaleidoscope of her recent work, dancing the tension lines between the body, the mind, the instrument, and the computer. From fixed-media tape pieces exploding into the physical world through choreography and video projection, to a fully acoustic, quasi-improvised piano trio outlining the structure of a mandala, to an electroacoustic monodrama duet between Eaton’s soprano voice and heartbeat, the program addresses both our ancient instincts and our modern conundrums.

Kaley Lane Eaton is an award-winning composer and vocalist currently based in Seattle, WA. Her work has been performed across the US and internationally, in venues ranging from Hong Kong concert halls, to the streets of Skid Row in Los Angeles. With a background as a multi-genre vocalist and instrumentalist, Eaton’s work is concerned with the physical generation of music and how context – both internal and external mental and physical – can influence real-time musical choices. Eaton is currently a DMA candidate in composition at the University of Washington, studying with Richard Karpen.

LISTEN HERE.

7:30 – Tempered Steel features Ffej, Frank Junk, and Dennis Rea playing amplified, electronically processed thumb pianos. The trio’s seamless improvisations conjure everything from phantom harpsichords and subaquatic percussion to as yet uninvented stringed instruments and vintage musique concrète. Recommended to partisans of Harry Partch and John Cage’s prepared piano music. “…a strange strain of otherworldly exotica, a metallic-insect symphony of disturbing beauty” – Dave Segal, The Stranger

8:15 p.m. – The point is not to create music, or to showcase instrument playing skills; more so it is a way to give a voice to the trees – all that they have survived to grow and exist and everything that has happened to a piece of wood before it became an object in Driftwood Orchestra. As one listens to the players struggle to find solutions to creating sound in a live improvised setting, imagine that the message could be simply: we all live and thrive together or we all suffer and die together. Driftwood Orchestra is not concerned with perfection or standards of artistic success, but in creating a way to communicate with the forest with the intent to somehow, someday apologize.

9 p.m. – Empty Boat is a quintet formed by drummer Don Berman and featuring Jim Knodle (trumpet), Dick Valentine (saxes, flutes), and for this performance, guitarists Simon Henneman and Rik Wright. Empty Boat presents original compositions by group members as well as pieces containing influences from contemporary jazz, world musics, new chamber music, and a healthy dose of improvisation. Owing to the variety of compositional concepts coming from each of these highly idiosyncratic players, an Empty Boat performance takes the listener to many different places, with sonic surprises and depth coming from the members’ years of relentless dedication to their art.

Presented by Zero-G Concerts.

Further Records presents their second show at Chapel with a focus on radio transmissions. Dispatch, shortwave and am/fm radio channels will be manipulated, sampled and processed, using reel to reel tape, and user designed hardware into probability derived static ambience.

Strategy
Timm Mason
Randy Jones

Empowering Silenced Voices
Chorosynthesis Singers
Wendy Moy and Jeremiah Selvey, Co-Artistic Directors

Chorosynthesis Singers presents Empowering Silenced Voices, a concert of new choral works on the theme of social justice. Believing that music has the ability to bring together communities, this concert will highlight voices that have been silenced throughout history by exploring topics such as child abuse, terrorism, war, non-heteronormative love, natural disaster, women’s rights, and civil disobedience.

The concert will present innovative choral works, featuring regional, U.S., and world premieres. One of the world premieres will be Eric Pazdziora‘s Canticles For the Holy Innocents, a three-movement work for mixed voices dedicated to the memory of Lydia Schatz—and by extension, to the thousands of children who die each year as a result of violence and abuse. These liturgical texts, taken from early Latin hymns and prayers, commemorate the martyrdom of these children. The concert will also feature Steven Serpa’s three-movement work, Like a Darling, based on the poetic triptych by Naomi Shihab Nye, a Palestinian-American poet. The text of the second movement of this work was written by Nye as a response to a bombing in Lebanon in the 1990s; Serpa was deeply moved by this text, and composed the music as his own personal response to the Boston Marathon Bombing in 2013. It is against the backdrop of the recent terrorist activity in Beirut and Paris that the remainder of the triptych was composed for Chorosynthesis Singers.

Other works on the program include Keane Southard’s Do You Hear How Many You Are? (2010), Andrew Rodriguez’ In Midnight Sleep (2014), Karen Thomas’ Over the City (1995), Kala Pierson’s Blue Phoenix (2009), José Luis Gómez Aleixandre’s Lux Aeterna (2011), Lansing McLoskey’s Zealot Canticle (2011), Thomas Schuttenhelm’s A Clear Midnight (2015), Rebekah Driscoll’s Out of Her Place (2010), and Alexander Campkin’s Unleash the Beauty (2014).

Composer and accordionist Kyle Hanson (aka The Murkies) innovated the extended technique described as ‘alternating transverse oscillation of the bellows’ by which he obtains a shimmering sound and immersive effects. His music ranges from live ambient performance to psychedelic pop with many stops in between.

Kyle Hanson led Seattle’s Black Cat Orchestra for years with partner Lori Goldston; other collaborators include Amy Johnson, Britta Johnston, Curtis Taylor, Eve Cohen, Bob Jenkins.

Part of this evening will feature Mik Quantius.

The German vocal artist Mik Quantius can, after being continuously abducted by aliens, only produce sounds from outer space. Originally Mik Quantius was involved in the metal scene of Koln, but in recent years he joined several avant-garde projects. For instance: he is a member of the legendary German Krautrockband EMBRYO and he took part in ‘Way of the Cross’, an improvisational project of Dave Nuss of the NO NECK BLUES BAND, with musicians like Kuupuu, The Skaters, Stellar Om Source and Kemialliset Yvsatat. Mik Quantius has an enormous vocal range and his diction is occasionally comparable to CAPTAIN BEEFHEART, but a little weirder. Reoccuring are the absurd sounds that fly out of his throat, often touching the treshold of pain. He is a scat maestro, who rather uses his body as an instrument than to sing. The thrilling sounds you will hear during performances of Mik Quantius will remain in your memory for a long time.

Multidisciplinary artist Serge Gubelman and his group Manna Presence offer prepared improvisations and wide spectrum soundscapes on acoustic and electronic instruments and spoken word.

Drew Cady is a sound designer and foley artist for ArenaNet. He also does recording, mixing and mastering engineering for music, film and virtual reality. At ArenaNet he works mainly on the foley library, voice processing, creatures and ambient sounds for Guild Wars 2. Drew has a driving need to push sound design and technology forward. He enjoys finding new ways of manipulating sounds and creating tools for a better product. Drew has lectured at the Berkeley College of Music, DigiPen, Experience America and Seattle Game Audio Group.

Focused on the intersection of music and technology where art meets science, Mark Fauver has applied his technical abilities to music composition and music production. He owns Subatomic Audiolab, where he creates soundscapes for other’s music as well as providing recording services. He also is a multi-instrumentalist (flute, windsynth, keys), combining acoustic musicianship with electronics and programming. Some of his solo work can be found here. His latest project is Atlanteans, with Rafe Pearlman and David Revelli.

Serge Gubelman loves acoustical instruments and how the Machine (electronics) becomes a driveable microscope to sounding. He has a background that includes hanging with the Baka Pygmies in Cameroon, making music for theater and dance, performing for children in hospitals, and working in film and video. Serge recently released a 3-CD set of music that supports his project Ark Of Sound.

Terrance Stearns has played just about every instrument known to man with every kind of ensemble possible in the Seattle area. Most notably with Spirit House (imaginary world folk band) and Superkali ( Afrobeat, funk and blue note jazz inspired). He currently plays in an Americana duo, Magic Thread. His solo ambient work can be found here.

Seattle cellist Lori Goldston presents an evening with stalwart improvising collaborators — Susie Kozawa (voice, found objects, etc.), Dan Sasaki (percussion), Dave Abramson (percussion) — and visiting dignitary Mik Quantius from Cologne, Germany, who sings with Embryo, Frankenstein’s Ballet, and Mikrokosmos.

Inverted Space presents Michael Pisaro‘s asleep, forest, melody, path. Written for musicians and field recordings, Inverted Space will explore this 60-minute piece using sounds gathered in Seattle. The performance will mix piano, violin, electric guitar and saxophone with melodies both superimposed with and separated from these field recordings.

In The Space Between Us, violinists, violists and cellists surround the audience while robotic percussion instruments created by renowned Seattle artist Trimpin are played remotely via the Radiodrum, a 3D percussive controller, performed by soloist Andrew Schloss. The music literally hangs in the air, activating 18 robotic orchestra chimes, along with robotic piano (Disklavier), xylophones and glockenspiel. The music for this menagerie was created by San Francisco composer David A. Jaffe, protégé of the late spatial music pioneer, Henry Brant, to whom the work is dedicated, and whose instruments Jaffe inherited from Brant to create this work. This is the Seattle premiere of the work, which was commissioned by the San Francisco Other Minds Festival.

Inter-continental space is traversed as well, with an American/Russian summit meeting in the form of Dimitri Shostakovich’s magnificent 9th quartet, performed by the Lafayette String Quartet, resident quartet at the University of Victoria.

The concert is rounded out by the bluegrass virtuosity of Jaffe’s Cluck Old Hen Variations and the eerie computerized-bird dialog of Jaffe’s Impossible Animals (both Seattle premieres), as well as the haunting Poem by the early 20th century English composer, Rebecca Clarke.

Performers: Andrew Schloss, David A. Jaffe, Ann Elliott-Goldschmid, Karen Bentley Pollick, Heather Bentley, Steve Creswell, Brian Wharton, and the Lafayette String Quartet.

Presented by Nonsequitur. Thanks to Yamaha USA. The Space Between Us, for 8 strings, and robotic percussion instruments was supported by New Music USA. To follow the project as it unfolds, visit my project page.

Preview at Second Inversion.