Veteran Seattle improviser and concert organizer Paul Hoskin is currently in the hospital with very serious ailments. He had planned to play a duo concert tonight with Arrington De Dionyso, so instead Nonsequitur is organizing a benefit concert to help him out, with many members of Seattle’s improvised music community participating. All artist fees and audience admissions will be donated to assist Paul in his recovery. Performers confirmed so far (stay tuned for new additions):

Arrington De Dionyso (contrabass clarinet)
Stuart Dempster (trombone)
Beth Fleenor (clarinets, voice)
Sue Ann Harkey (guitar)
Greg Kelley (trumpet)
Jim Knodle (trumpet)
Susie Kozawa (toys, objects, homemades)
Carol Levin (harp)
David Milford (violin)
Christian Pincock (trombone)
Monica Schley (harp)
Wilson Shook (alto sax)
Wally Shoup (alto sax)
China Star (soprano sax)
John Teske (bass)
Neil Welch (tenor sax)
Jenny Ziefel (clarinets)

Review: Now Music in New Albion

Earshot’s juried series, Jazz: The Second Century, presents Seattle artists, selected by a peer panel, performing original work, in a concert setting. From the core of this series – a question about the expansion of conventions of jazz – one might expect a tendency to grandiose re-invention. Instead, the series is a current, subtle, perhaps refreshing, un-sentimental look at our local engagement with this diffuse, vibrant art form.

Originally formed for a single performance during a Charlie Haden tribute concert in October 2014, the group received such enthusiastic reviews from the audience that they decided to continue gigging under the name Action Figure. The trio – Seth Alexander (alto), Dave Abramson (drums), and Birch Pereira (bass) – plays original music inspired by Ornette Coleman, Henry Threadgill, and Eric Dolphy. Unique compositions and arrangements with unexpected angles and jagged edges.

The Meridian Big Band is a fifteen-piece ensemble that brings together some of the Northwest’s finest creative musicians to play original compositions by Simon Henneman. The ensemble is Simon Henneman (director and guitar), Neil Welch, Kate Olson, Kenny Mandell, Dick Valentine, and Evan Smith (reeds), Robbie Beasley, Michael Van Bebber, Christian Pincock, and Bill Kautz (brass), Dave Abramson and Mark Ostrowski (drums), John Seman and Geoff Harper (bass), Jacques Willis (vibraphone). A program rooted in classic jazz and blues with elements of free jazz, swing, exotica, 20th century classical music, and hip hop.

Mike Gebhart’s Large Ensemble is debuting a piece mixing composition, improvisation, spoken word, noise, and folkloric drumming/ percussion. The inspiration for the piece comes from various Afro-Cuban and Afro-Colombian religio-magical belief systems. Mike Gebhart, a drummer in UW’s jazz studies program, has found great solace and strength studying various Santeria stories and beliefs. This inspired him to write semi-fictional scenes based on his life and Santeria stories,symbols,and practices. These stories are either explicitly spoken with musical accompaniment or described musically.

Specifically the piece focuses on a set of tenets learned over the last year from various books and experiences:

1) Sound is magic and other-wordly.

2) Folkloric music has survived because specific rhythms, songs, and chants have religious or magical meaning.

3) Stories are pathways of energy. Therefore stories from our family, ancestors, or heroes, fictional or not bring context and strength to our own lives.

4) Music has the ability to tell a story on multiple levels. Characters can have fluid gender, places in history, even relationships to each other all while conveying a message through time.

The ensemble features:
Raymond Larsen, Schuyler Asplin – Trumpet
Bryan Van Pelt – Tenor
Cameron Sharif – Piano
Eric Kegley – Guitar
Dune Butler – Acoustic Bass
John Haven – Electric Bass
Mike Gebhart – drum set, spoken word
Casey Adams – Percussion, Noise, electronics rig

Opening up the night will be an audience participation rhythmic Warm-up. Cowbells, shakers and woodblocks will be provided.

Earshot’s juried series, Jazz: The Second Century, presents Seattle artists, selected by a peer panel, performing original work, in a concert setting. From the core of this series – a question about the expansion of conventions of jazz – one might expect a tendency to grandiose re-invention. Instead, the series is a current, subtle, perhaps refreshing, un-sentimental look at our local engagement with this diffuse, vibrant art form.

Bad Luck – the duo of Neil Welch (saxophone/electronics), and Chris Icasiano (drums) – perform collaborative composition R.B.G. with dancer Lorraine Lau. Originally debuting as the Ballard Jazz Walk in April 2015, R.B.G. is a flexible work meant to fully interpret the room it is performed in, with some elements carefully choreographed, while others arise spontaneously through improvisation. A carefully constructed landscape where sound and physical motion ring in equal measure through a room.

Guitarist Frank Kohl, originally from New York State, learned music in his high school jazz band, got inspired at clubs in New York City, studied at Berklee in Boston, and returned to New York City as a professional, recording his first CD, Reform, with bassist Michael Moore in 1981. Kohl migrated to the Bay Area in 1983 and joined a band called Warmth, led by vibraphonist Don McCaslin. Then he met his Seattle-born wife, and they moved to the Pacific Northwest. After a 10-year hiatus, Kohl’s creative flame has been rekindled, and he is ready to ignite Seattle audiences with his incendiary guitar playing. Masterful technique, with solos filled with breath and emotion.

Citizens Band is Ivan Arteaga (reeds), Chris Icasiano (drums), and Jeff Johnson (bass). This new group focuses on playing original jazz pieces with room for lots of improvisation and spontaneity. Continuing the tradition of pushing improvisation forward.

WATCH Bad Luck’s performance with dancer Lorraine Lau.

Substrata 1.5 is the fifth (and possibly final?) edition of Seattle’s intimate sound & visual art weekend curated by composer Rafael Anton Irisarri and co-presented with Nonsequitur. Each showcase is curated to distinctly portray different takes of the potency of minimalism, varying between weighty combinations of tonalities used to sculpt atmospheric ambiance, or powerful dynamic structures made up of the subtlest filigree of sonic building materials.

Substrata’s third and final night will be another one of polychromous variations from the evolving field of electro-acoustic music in its intersection with chamber music, improvisation and non-rock forms. Dismantling the synthesizer & piano’s central role in popular music for larger, more expansive frontiers. Each of the evening’s performers taking on the binate role of explorer and cartographer to these territories referencing familiar purlieus, yet deviating into realms entirely their own. They will be our guides to spaces of pellucid composition and microscopic sound renderings, through passages of recondite timbral ambiguity, melodic rapture and buffeting tumult.

Will Call & Doors – 6:30 pm
Tiny Vipers – 7:00 pm
Panabrite – 7:30 pm
Rachel Grimes (featuring Loscil) – 8:30 pm
Shuttle358 + Paul Clipson – 9:20 pm

Continuous Music: A piano workshop by Lubomyr Melnyk
Saturday, July 18, 9:30 am – 12:30 pm

Composer/pianist Lubomyr Melnyk will conduct a 3-hour workshop for pianists at all levels of ability. During the workshop, you’ll learn to develop strength in your fingers and improve your agility and mental control. Afterward, Lubomyr will focus on his “continuous music” style. Here you will learn the art of playing different patterns simultaneously in each hand and discover the wonderful possibilities of this piano technique Lubomyr has pioneered since the 1970s.

Strictly limited to 15 participants. Tickets are $65 and available here. Non-refundable. Please do not purchase if you are not fully committed to attend. Workshop agenda and schedule to be communicated via email.

Substrata 1.5 is the fifth (and possibly final?) edition of Seattle’s intimate sound & visual art weekend curated by composer Rafael Anton Irisarri and co-presented with Nonsequitur. Each showcase is curated to distinctly portray different takes of the potency of minimalism, varying between weighty combinations of tonalities used to sculpt atmospheric ambiance, or powerful dynamic structures made up of the subtlest filigree of sonic building materials.

Substrata’s second night plays host to three artists as stylistically varied in their approaches as the sound sources and the materials used to construct them. Each of them internationally recognized in their own right, over decades of work all three composers have established themselves as masters working within their respective form. From the meditative electronic fringes of sound-art to the bewildering cascade of 20th-century Continuous Music to the re-purposing of classical instrumentation to the milieu of underground rock. Journeying the states of hypnotic untethered repetition, dynamic counterpoint and the exudation of tonalities and sympathetic resonances.

Will Call – 7:00 pm
Doors – 7:30 pm
Mary Lattimore – 7:45 pm
Lubomyr Melnyk – 8:30 pm
Taylor Deupree – 9:20 pm

Substrata 1.5 is the fifth (and possibly final?) edition of Seattle’s intimate sound & visual art weekend curated by composer Rafael Anton Irisarri and co-presented with Nonsequitur. Each showcase is curated to distinctly portray different takes of the potency of minimalism, varying between weighty combinations of tonalities used to sculpt atmospheric ambiance, or powerful dynamic structures made up of the subtlest filigree of sonic building materials.

The inaugural evening of this year’s Substrata is as far ranging in its forms as in the approaches employed in creating them. Spanning the spaces between software sound sculpting and acoustic fingerpicking, it is a night of great variance and broad stylistic references. From progressive branches of the songwriting continuance, to chamber music describing a formalistic dialog between natural patternwork and the piano, to tapestries of electro-acoustic sound design and rhythm structures. The three artists touching on multitudinous points throughout the last century of modern music, the only constant their transcending of collocation and the constraints of singular genre concerns.

Will Call – 7:00 pm
Doors – 7:30 pm
Tara Jane O’Neil – 7:45 pm
Rauelsson – 8:30 pm
bvdub + Leo Mayberry – 9:20 pm

A Consecutive Sequence is the pursuit of drummer Dio Jean-Baptiste and alto saxophonist Bryan Lineberry’s urge to combine their appetites for good feelings and destruction with a spiritual cleansing. Jean-Baptiste takes heavy influence from EDM, hip-hop, math metal, and the avant-garde to become, as one musician described, a “freaky drummer.” Lineberry draws from the likes of John Coltrane and Archie Shepp with an emphasis on evolving sonic textures to leave a deep emotional impression.

They inject simple and thoughtful musical ideas into loosely improvised formats to bridge the gap between the uncharted and the inescapably enjoyable. The ideas and inspiration range from drone to hardcore and whatever feels good in between. The constant through the group’s performances is a high level of energy and enthusiasm that shows no value for physical restraint.

Austin Larkin Austin Larkin is a sound organizer residing in and out of Seattle. His work includes violin exploration, physical medium manipulation, sound worlds, and calligraphic composing. Notable past performances include a cafe in Fes, beside a waterfall in the Rif Valley, a backyard in Ein Kerem, and under the Arco de Triunfo while a member of Barcelona’s homeless community.

An evening of music and discussion with Seattle composers:

Keith Eisenbrey
Kam Morrill
Nadya Kadrevis
S. Eric Scribner

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!

Earshot’s juried series, Jazz: The Second Century, presents Seattle artists, selected by a peer panel, performing original work, in a concert setting. From the core of this series – a question about the expansion of conventions of jazz – one might expect a tendency to grandiose re-invention. Instead, the series is a current, subtle, perhaps refreshing, un-sentimental look at our local engagement with this diffuse, vibrant art form.

Triptet features Tom Baker on guitar, Greg Campbell on drums, and Michael Monhart on saxophone. “In our music we seek to integrate interactive electronics into the continuity of the jazz tradition,” the trio says. “Our use of electronics and computer music programming came to us slowly and organically, growing naturally out of playing together on our respective instruments – guitar, percussion and saxophone.” Integrating interactive electronics into the continuity of the jazz tradition.

Bloom is a new, acoustic quartet led by trumpeter/composer Brennan Carter, with Levi Gillis on tenor sax, Mark Hunter on bass, and Jarred Katz on drums. Their aesthetic is characterized by rich and earthy timbres, playing off of and highlighting each individual’s musical personality. A program that is equally as dark and mysterious as it is lush and charming.