An evening of Butoh/sound improvisation with noisepoetnobody (modular analog synth) and Vanessa Skantze (Butoh) + special guests Thunder Grey Pilgrim

Celebrating nine years as frequent collaborators, noisepoetnobody and Vanessa Skantze return to the Chapel to further investigate the realm of Butoh/sound improvisation. Each has been deeply impacted in their respective disciplines by the others’ art form.

Vanessa’s early dance forays were with improvisational sound/movement ensemble Death Posture in New Orleans, and she has continued to work with improvisers such as Tatsuya Nakatani and Tom Swafford throughout her decade in Seattle. noisepoetnobody has created sound for nearly all of the Butoh artists in Seattle, both structured and improvisational works. In his journey of exploring sound for Butoh noisepoetnobody created the work The River, a vinyl-only release for which Vanessa wrote a choreography which accompanies the album. Her dance work Radiant Poison, which was commissioned by the Asheville Butoh community for their UWABE festival last fall, is scored to a recording of noisepoetnobody’s improvisational ensemble Epos Nemo Latrocinium.

Butoh/sound improvisation opens performer and audience to the multiple facets of deep listening: the sound draws one to listen and to feel one’s response and inner realm; the movement is a manifestation of the act of listening which in turn impacts the music. Ultimately the artists craft a space where one is, to quote Pauline Oliveros, “listening to listening itself” and witnessing the fruits of listening embodied.

CONCERT IMAGINAIRE, the award-winning music ensemble directed by David Hahn, are delighted to announce the only Seattle performance of their national tour! The program, entitled Another Day in Suck City, will include a setting of Emily Dickinson’s Massacre of Suns, a eulogy for an elderly dog, an exploration of God as a virus, and the premiere of JUST A KISS AWAY, a very short opera about love and war and peace. Featured performers included the lovely and talented Katie Weld, the handsome and powerful Sid Law, and our savior, Gabriel Tachell, amen.

Jakob Pek is a multi-instrumentalist improviser/composer currently based in Oakland, CA. His work is a conscious interweaving of multiple, far removed musical traditions with a living expression of contemporary experimentalism. An active innovator, Jakob seeks to recontextualize and redefine musics that our ears know all too well while liberating our traditional musical instruments by presenting them in tandem with pure sound, free form expressionism, and conscious silence.

Michaud Savage is a Seattle-based guitarist, composer, and performer. For this concert, he will be presenting original compositions for the classical guitar, as well as some arrangements and improvisations. These pieces draw on western musical idioms, various trance practices, and explorations between identities of composer and performer.

Percussion master Greg Campbell will play a set of solo improvisations.

Jason McGill’s Great Bliss pieces are solo guided sound meditations for intonation-deficient Fender guitars, concentration, intermittently crackly speakers, letting go, field recordings (the most important art of all centuries), percussion things, a trick saxophone, feeling the rhythm upside down the third time around, a microphone, chance mystery, and sometimes something else. McGill has been working within this clustered milieu for decades, primarily in Providence and San Francisco, and this is his first ever appearance in his new home of Seattle.

McGill got his first electric guitar in 1984, and thought maybe he could be the next Quarthon. Later he thought he could be the next Ignition bassist or something … and that gradually spun to alto saxophone worship via Jimmy Lyons mesmerization. Immersion in Javanese gamelan opened up entire new avenues, as did scoring for dance. He murdered all possibility of a conventional music career with his formation of Barnacled in 2000, an expansive group that has gone on to release many tiny records (for ESP’-Disk and others) and play in too many elaborately ridiculous configurations to list. For the past year or so, McGill has focused exclusively on the Great Bliss pieces, which will also take shape in coming months as written and visual work, in addition to obligatory recordings.

Bad Luck is a 10-year collaboration between Seattle drummer Chris Icasiano and saxophonist Neil Welch. With three albums under their belt, Bad Luck has created an incredibly diverse array of music — no small feat in the heavily trodden world of drum/saxophone duos. Their melodies, improvisations and compositions are constructed from the ground up and in many cases cannot be conventionally notated on a page.

Seattle native/woodwind virtuoso James DeJoie celebrates 25 years of writing, playing, and living music in Seaburg by presenting a number of his wide-ranging ensembles and projects: DeJoie 3, Dr.Jd., Quintet DeJoie, and a collaboration with master songsmith Eric Apoe.

DeJoie 3: Chamber music for flute, viola, and clarinet drawing inspiration from the writings of Morton Feldman, Steve Reich, and Tom Waits. With James DeJoie (clarinet), Maxxine Smith (flute), and Alicia DeJoie (violin).

Dr.Jd.: Guitarist extraordinaire and longtime musical cohort Dennis Rea joins James in his slightly off-kilter world of spoken word, poetry, and ruminations.

Quintet DeJoie: Jazz-Not-Jazz, composed music, free blowing, classical & rock. Joining James are Steve Kirk (trombone), Matt McCluskey (keyboards), Walter White (bass), and Greg Campbell (drums).

Presented by Zero-G Concerts.

ZE BIB! is a collaborative effort between cellist/electronic musician Shanna Sordahl and percussionist Robert Lopez. Debuted in the warm Oakland summer of 2013, ZE BIB!’s music grapples with the spastic intensity arising from explorations into sound worlds developed both collectively and independently. As active musicians for a variety of projects in the Bay Area, Lopez and Sordahl’s extreme musical interests converge with explosive force. A desire to continuously expand and reinterpret their relationships with their instruments leads to an ever exciting dynamic that will intrigue and entrance. Their music is tinged with influences ranging between noise, free improvisation, art rock, and heavy drone.

Greg Kelley has performed throughout North America, Europe, Japan, Argentina & Mexico at numerous festivals, in clubs, outdoors, in living rooms, in a bank, and at least once on a vibrating floor. He has collaborated with a number of musicians across the globe performing experimental music, free jazz and noise, releasing a number of recordings in the process. He constantly seeks to push the boundaries of the trumpet and of “music.”

Wally Shoup Sax Trio + One finds Shoup in a slightly unconventional configuration exploring infrequently charted terrain. Throughout, Shoup and company construct songs that may reference Rova Sax Quartet or Art Ensemble of Chicago zones but embellish and build upon these influences into bracing new territories…a truly unique sound. Shoup enlists some amazing young players on the Seattle free improv scene: Neil Welch (tenor sax, also a member of Bad Luck & King Tears Bat Trip), Jacob Zimmerman (alto sax) & Carmen Rothwell (double bass). The four pieces on Copaesthetics (Astral Spirits) cover a wide stylistic range, from the opening Ayler-esque crys into full blown Ascension-style fire music, eventually flowing into beautifully melodic passages and further into the dark sounds of “Dark Luminescence.” An enlightening experience where the group shows their collective experience fully and honestly.

An Evening of exploring the subtleties of sound

Coppice is a Chicago-based duo of bellows and electronics, performing Compound Form for prepared pump organ, tape processes, transmitters, and acoustic filters.

Mathieu Ruhlmann + Joda Clément (Vancouver, Canada) utilize analog and acoustic instruments, microphones, and found objects to investigate hidden properties of sound.

John Teske is a Seattle-based composer, improviser, and double bassist, interested in altering the experience of time through sound.

“Art is the sacred torch that must shed its merciful light into all life’s terrible depths.” – Thomas Mann

TORCH is Eric Likkel, clarinets; Brian Chin, trumpets; Brady Millard-Kish, bass; Ben Tomas, vibes and percussion. Poised between progressive jazz, post-rock, and contemporary classical music, the quartet’s original compositions are a playful juxtaposition amidst our heady intellects and our groove-craving souls.

Presented by Nonsequitur and Universal Language Project.

Come grab a drink, listen to adventurous music, hang with the artists, and support Seattle Modern Orchestra’s 2014-15 season in this special benefit concert.

Join the ensemble for an evening of drinks, bites, games, and a silent auction, while enjoying exciting, surround-sound performances of solo and chamber music from German composer Robert Platz, Polish composer Marcin Pączkowski, Luciano Berio, Elliott Carter and more.