LA-based composer Daniel Corral performs Diamond Pulses, a 32-minute aural experience that combines spacey electronic polyrhythms, intricate tuning systems, and noisy ambiance to open new sonic dimensions. Constantly evolving minimalist grooves recall Terry Riley, Cluster, Tangerine Dream, or Dawn of Midi. The microtonal tuning systems recall Harry Partch, James Tenney, LaMonte Young, or Arnold Dreyblatt. Meanwhile, the counterpoint of noisy washes recalls the sound of ocean waves on the shore. Diamond Pulses will be performed with live video feed of the piece’s colorful interactive score.

Casey Jones, AKA noisepoetnobody, is a sonic improviser, instrument builder, instrument destroyer, wave distorter, and analog synthesist. He will play a set of all analog modular synthesis.

Scrape! is an unconducted string ensemble performing the works of Jim Knapp and various guest composers. Our instrumentation is 15 bowed strings, with harp and electric guitar. Founded in 2010, we perform regularly and our first album has just been released on Origin Classical.

Tonight’s performance will feature compositions by Sumi Tanooka, Jarrad Powell and Jim Knapp. Soloists include guitarist Gregg Belisle-Chi, violinist Julian Smedley, and bassist Chris Symer. They are joined by guest pianist Gus Carns.

Portuguese artist Rafael Toral plays electronic music as a jazz musician would play his instrument, applying jazz discipline and working practices to his abstract electronics. The result is truly evolutionary music, once described as “a brand of electronic music far more visceral and emotive than that of his cerebral peers.” Melodic without notes, rhythmic without a beat, familiar but strange, meticulous but radically free, it is riddled with interesting paradox, full of clarity and space, articulating silence and sound in a thoughtful, yet physical way.

Formerly known for his drone/ambient work with guitar and electronics and acclaimed records such as Wave Field (1994) or Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance (2000), Rafael Toral has radically renewed his approach to music, launching the jazz-inspired and alien-sounding Space Program in 2004, using experimental electronic instruments. Past collaborators include Jim O’Rourke, Evan Parker, John Edwards, Joe Morris, Tatsuya Nakatani, Chris Corsano, Manuel Mota, David Toop, Alvin Lucier, John Zorn, Phill Niblock, Christian Marclay, Sonic Youth, João Paulo Feliciano, Rhys Chatham, Lee Ranaldo, C Spencer Yeh, and Dean Roberts. In 1998 he became a member of MIMEO electronic orchestra, which includes Keith Rowe, Thomas Lehn, Kaffe Matthews, Marcus Schmickler, Jérome Noetinger, Christian Fennesz, Peter Rehberg, Gert-Jan Prins, Cor Fuhler and Phil Durrant. Since 2008 he directs the Space Collective, a slowly developing orchestral group.

Seattle-based guitarist Bill Horist delivers an idiosyncratic and richly emotive take on the world’s most ubiquitous instrument. He has played on dozens of records and has performed throughout North and Central America, Europe and Japan; collaborating with numerous leading lights in a beguiling range of genres. Perhaps best known for his prepared guitar treatments, his work is widely regarded alongside masters like Fred Frith and Keith Rowe. He has cultivated a unique voice in a number of styles in the realms of, jazz, rock, folk, and experimental music. Horist is also becoming known as a masterful acoustic fingerstyle player in the tradition of Leo Kottke and John Fahey; additionally incorporating elements from Asia, India, the Middle-East and West Africa.

Rafael Toral’s tour is supported by:

Canções Profundas (Deep Songs) is a new evening-length work by Seattle composer Steve Peters. Inspired by research into his family history in the Azores, this evocative sonic poem explores themes of migration, diaspora, memory, identity and emotional/cultural ties to place.

A chain of nine volcanic islands in the mid-Atlantic, the Azores are an isolated region of Portugal and the western-most edge of Europe. American whaling ships began arriving in the 18th century, taking on Azorean men as crew; this began a long pattern of emigration and the establishment of Portuguese enclaves in New England, California, Hawaii, and Canada in which Azorean cultural traditions and contact with the archipelago have persisted. Caetano Freitas came to the US from the island of Flores on a whaler in 1865. He settled on California’s central coast and married Maria Isabel Avellar, also from Flores; one of their grandsons was Peters’ maternal grandfather. Peters visited the Azores briefly in 2011 and again for three weeks in 2014, and was profoundly moved by this place and culture that are largely forgotten within his own family.

Gradually taking shape over several years, Canções Profundas (Deep Songs) is an immersive soundscape of field recordings Peters made in the Azores and in California: bubbling geothermal pits, gurgling ocean waves, exotic birds, buzzing whales, religious ceremonies, community celebrations, and other sounds of daily life. Within this constantly evolving collage of environmental and human sounds, a small ensemble of musicians improvise live on abstracted traditional Azorean musical themes: Lesli Dalaba, trumpet; Beth Fleenor, clarinets; Paul Kikuchi, percussion; Naomi Siegel, trombone; Greg Sinibaldi, saxophone. With recorded contributions by Joshua Parmenter, additional electronic processing; and Rafael Carvalho, viola da terra.

A short Q&A session with the artists will follow the performance.

Presented by Nonsequitur. Made possible in part by a GAP grant from Artist Trust (2011) and an Artist Project grant from 4Culture (2014).

Canções Profundas (Deep Songs) is a new evening-length work by Seattle composer Steve Peters. Inspired by research into his family history in the Azores, this evocative sonic poem explores themes of migration, diaspora, memory, identity and emotional/cultural ties to place.

A chain of nine volcanic islands in the mid-Atlantic, the Azores are an isolated region of Portugal and the western-most edge of Europe. American whaling ships began arriving in the 18th century, taking on Azorean men as crew; this began a long pattern of emigration and the establishment of Portuguese enclaves in New England, California, Hawaii, and Canada in which Azorean cultural traditions and contact with the archipelago have persisted. Caetano Freitas came to the US from the island of Flores on a whaler in 1865. He settled on California’s central coast and married Maria Isabel Avellar, also from Flores; one of their grandsons was Peters’ maternal grandfather. Peters visited the Azores briefly in 2011 and again for three weeks in 2014, and was profoundly moved by this place and culture that are largely forgotten within his own family.

Gradually taking shape over several years, Canções Profundas (Deep Songs) is an immersive soundscape of field recordings Peters made in the Azores and in California: bubbling geothermal pits, gurgling ocean waves, exotic birds, buzzing whales, religious ceremonies, community celebrations, and other sounds of daily life. Within this constantly evolving collage of environmental and human sounds, a small ensemble of musicians improvise live on abstracted traditional Azorean musical themes: Lesli Dalaba, trumpet; Beth Fleenor, clarinets; Paul Kikuchi, percussion; Naomi Siegel, trombone; Greg Sinibaldi, saxophone. With recorded contributions by Joshua Parmenter, additional electronic processing; and Rafael Carvalho, viola da terra.

A short Q&A session with the artists will follow the performance.

Presented by Nonsequitur. Made possible in part by a GAP grant from Artist Trust (2011) and an Artist Project grant from 4Culture (2014).

Washington Composers Forum presents the Post-Haste Reed Duo performing music by Jacob Ter Veldhuis, Michael Johanson, Simon Hutchinson, Edward J. Hines, Ryan Hare, Ethan Wickman, and music chosen from a call for scores.

Coming together in 2009, The Post-Haste Reed Duo of Sean Fredenburg, saxophone, and Javier Rodriguez, bassoon, has commissioned acoustic and electroacoustic works by composers including Nansi Carroll, Stephen Coxe, Simon Hutchinson, Joshua Keeling, Michael Johanson, Lanier Sammons, John Steinmetz, Ethan Wickman, and Marc Yates.

Post-Haste has toured colleges and universities throughout the United States, performing and presenting master classes in woodwind performance, chamber music, and entrepreneurship. Additionally, they have appeared at national meetings of College Music Society, North American Saxophone Alliance, and the Society for Electro Acoustic Music in the United States. Post-Haste has been featured artists at the Jubilus Festival in Gainesville, FL, White Lake Chamber Music Festival in White Lake, MI, Friends of Rain New Music Ensemble of Portland, OR, and Future Music Oregon in Eugene, OR.

Serving as Ensemble-In-Residence for Classical Revolution PDX’s inaugural Outreach Series Program, Post-Haste presented concerts in the Portland metro area with specific emphasis on social outreach and education.

The Spite House Band blossomed out of weekly sessions of improvised music organized by composer/pianist/vocalist Stephen Fandrich with the Monktail Creative Music Concern. Fandrich now hosts these weekly events at his home, a long-time oasis for artists on Capitol Hill, in spite of manic high-rise development. Curated by a community of local musicians, the Spite House Series explores performer/artist intimacy and immediacy; music as energy, acoustic, kinetic, precise. Each week’s performance opens with an invocation by the Spite House Band featuring Stephen Fandrich (piano), Beth Fleenor (clarinets), and Bill Monto (saxophones). In celebration of Monktail’s 15th anniversary they will perform a special set in the acoustic womb that is the Good Shepherd Chapel.

Ask the Ages is a Seattle-based avant-jazz band. Formed in 2010, the group includes Greg Campbell (drums and percussion), Steven Bell (vibraphone), Brian Heaney (electric guitar), Kate Olson (saxophone/woodwinds), and John Seman (contrabass). The band has also collaborated with an international cast of stellar musicians including Stuart Dempster, Melissa Walsh, Archana Bennur, Bora Ju, and Dale Speicher. Among their influences are Sonny Sharrock, Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane, and Pharoah Sanders.

Fulfilling the need for an outlet for music that blends modern jazz, progressive rock, and the unclassifiable, Zero-G Concerts is a co-presentation of leading Seattle instrumentalists Jason Goessl, Dennis Rea, John Seman and Rik Wright. With a focus on forward-thinking instrumental music, Zero-G Concerts spotlights a multifarious selection of the region’s most adventurous instrumentalists from diverse scenes, from accomplished scene veterans to head-turning emerging artists. The first Zero-G event was held in October, 2010 at the venerable Mars Bar (RIP) in Seattle WA. The organization has since expanded to present events at numerous venues in the Seattle area, including the Comet Tavern, Egan’s Ballard Jam House, The Mix, Lucid Jazz Lounge, White Rabbit (RIP), Lo-Fi Performance Gallery, the Royal Room and the Chapel Performance Space.

Guitarist Chris Brokaw, known for his work with Codeine, Come, Thurston Moore, Wrekmeister Harmonies, Rhys Chatham, The Catamites (duo with Sephen O’malley) and many more, meets with cellist Lori Goldston (Black Cat Orchestra, Earth, Nirvana, etc.) and trumpet player Greg Kelley (Nmperign, etc.) for a first-time meeting: solos, duos, and a trio finale. Expect everything from quiet beginnings to savage conclusions.

Chris and Greg are both fairly recent transplants from Boston to Seattle; Lori has been a longtime fixture in the Seattle experimental music scene. East meets West; this is only the beginning.

Popstronauts is an improvisational duo that seeks to explore the chaos and reality that is life. As individual humans have little control over the events that take place in the world around us, we instead do what we can to fit in and create our own space within the world. The music is non-apologetic free improvisation taking influence from free jazz, Carribbean and African rhythmic forms, electronic noise, and popular music.

Clifford Kimbrel-Dunn is a specialist in extended wind instrument techniques. His musical life has been devoted to pushing the limits of the flute’s capabilities. He has performed throughout the USA, Canada, and Western Europe. His passions include Linux, balanced audio, vegan food, and his beautiful wife and daughter.

A Drummer, a person, a fool,
Dio, the man child.

That is all.
That is all

— Dio Jean-Baptiste

Three Pacific Northwest artists present an evening of exploratory solo electronic sound performances, ranging from the drifting phonic ecstasies of Portland’s Ant’lrd to Panabrite’s concrète-kosmische hybridizations and the fragmented computer synthesis of RM Francis.

Ant’lrd is the solo collage-ambient, loopidelic cloud of Portland-based multi-instrumentalist, Colin Blanton.

Panabrite is a solo project of Seattle-based Norm Chambers. Emerging from a love of early electronic, concrete and 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 minimalist composition and improvisation.

RM Francis is a computer musician living in Seattle. His work incorporates granular synthesis, spectral processing, algorithmic composition, graphical interfaces and image sonification. He has been performing solo since 2011. His most recent releases are Attributed Agency on DRAFT and Recycled Sleep on Agents of Chaos.

(Panabrite photo: Harmony Seiko Shenk)