Seattle composer John Teske presents an evening of music about navigating space. Local musicians will premier topographies, a new series of graphic scores which requires performers to navigate through contour maps composed of musical symbols. The pieces are a study on individual and group intention. Each player creates a narrative as they traverse the score, sometimes carving their own path and at other times traveling to reunite with the ensemble. With Neil Welch and Ivan Arteaga, saxophones; Natalie Mai Hall, violoncello; John Teske, double bass; Greg Campbell, percussion.

Andrew C. Smith‘s Topology (A/∀), for ambulatory violist and four electric guitars, is about the connections between pitches. Four electric guitars, in the four corners of the room, either sustain pitches with e-bows or pick polyrhythms based on the harmonic relationships of their detuned strings. The violist moves around the room, playing fragments of music that take their tunings from the guitars in proximity. He mostly plays to himself, almost privately, so that he can be heard primarily by those near him. Performed by Luke Fitzpatrick, viola; Matthew Benham, Jeff Bowen, Michaud Savage, and Andrew C. Smith, guitars

Presented by Zero-G Concerts.

Moraine returns from a recording hiatus with a set tailored to the Chapel’s exquisite acoustics. Led by veteran guitarist Dennis Rea and rounded out by ace instrumentalists Alicia DeJoie (violin), James DeJoie (woodwinds), Kevin Millard (bass), and Tom Zgonc (drums), Moraine is a shape-shifting quintet that has built a reputation as one of the most electrifying and original instrumental rock bands anywhere, winning over listeners around the globe with its unique amalgam of art rock, forward-thinking jazz, Asian-inspired music, and more. With a distinctive repertoire balancing rigorously composed passages with exploratory improvisation, Moraine has delighted audiences ranging from progressive rock partisans to jazz aficionados to metalheads.

The Michael Owcharuk Trio concludes the evening, performing original instrumental music (prog-jazz? jazz-prog?) that bombastically moves through genre and style with healthy doses of improv. Michael Owcharuk (keyboards), Nate Omdal (bass), Jacques Willis (drums).

Presented by Hollow Earth Radio and the Harry Smith Archives.

I’m glad to say that my dreams came true. I saw America changed through music. – Harry Smith

Celebrating the passions, obsessions, and  creations of the Northwests’s own “seminal experimental animator, trickster anthropologist, psychedelic pioneer, self-taught scholar in a dozen fields, editor of the most important recorded collection of American folk music ever, occult master, legendary parasite, curatorial genius, shaman, [and] Skid Row drunkard.” (LA Weekly)

Harry Everett Smith should probably be Hollow Earth’s patron saint. He believed in the power of music and stories and bringing previously unheard voices into the light. He was a Northwest native. He lived on the Lummi reservation as a young man, he collected records obsessively, he made ground-breaking experimental films, and he had no money. So we are pleased to be able to present this tribute to Smith and his legacy, not just the Anthology of American Folk Music, but his films, his Lummi connections, and his adventurous, open-hearted spirit.

This evening feature the sonic investigations and archival manipulations of Climax Golden Twins; extraordinary vocalizations of Jessika Kenney; live scoring of Harry’s experimental films by Susie Kozawa & Dean Moore; the solo guitar folk interpretations of Michael Wohl; Lummi songs and stories by Swil Kanim.

Music For A While is Concert Imaginaire‘s second in a series of three concerts in the chapel for the 2013-14 season. The theme of tonight’s music is taken from first line of Purcell’s song which we are performing tonight: “Music For A While, may all your cares beguile.” Music can be a soothing balm for a distracted world. Music by Henry Purcell, David Hahn, and poetry by Sylvia Plath. Visuals by Leo Mayberry.

Hollow Earth Radio‘s sprawling (and aptly named) annual Magma Festival returns to the Chapel with four acts: 3-year-old percussion monster Moon Joe; the duo of grown-up percussionist Dan Sasaki & Olympia multimedia artist Jean Nagai; the swampy psych improv of Knot Pine Box; and Low Yo Yo Stuff is veteran sax improviser Wally Shoup taking on a trio of bassists: Simon Henneman, PK, John Seman.

Neal Kosaly-Meyer performs John Cage’s Empty Words IV. Simultaneously, vocalist Jessika Kenney will sing three songs from Cage’s Song Books, as well as a new composition-in-progress of her own, Complete Human for voice and electronics, using classical Persian texts.

Composer Tom Baker premiers three recent chamber works: Invisible Cities (2011), loosely based on stories by Italo Calvino, performed by the Corigliano Quartet. Songs of Sleep & Dreams (2013), based on the poetry of Fernando Pessoa, with soprano Cherie Hugues, trumpeter Brian Chin and percussionist Ben Thomas. Deeply Lodged (2014), premiered by pianist Cristina Valdes, a meditation on memory with Paul Taub on flute and Jesse Canterbury on clarinet. Presented by Nonsequitur.

Only Trio is a chamber jazz ensemble composed of trumpet, trombone, and saxophone. Music is written and arranged by trumpeter Steve O’Brien, with Kate Olson (soprano sax), Jacob Herring (trombone). The TKO Super Secret Saxophone Project is Kate Olson, soprano; Ivan Arteaga, alto; Chris Credit, tenor; Peter Danie, baritone. Kate’s written a four-movement suite of minimalist-inspired music to commemorate her 31st birthday.