Naeim Rahmani will present a selection of solo guitar pieces composed by living composers, featuring Sergio Assad, Carlos Rafael Rivera, Michael Finnisy, Atanas Ourkouzonov, Arthur Kampela and others.

Naeim Rahmani is a classical guitarist based in Seattle. Born in Iran, he immigrated to the United States as a refugee and has since made a name for himself as an accomplished performer, both nationally and internationally. His talent and dedication to his craft have earned him numerous accolades, including a 2022 Goethe-Institut Residency Award, and a 2023 CityArtist Award from the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, recognizing his contributions to the city’s cultural landscape.

Naeim is also the artistic director of the Seattle-Isfahan Project (SIP). This collaborative venture brings together musicians from Seattle and Iran to create a shared workspace where performers and composers can come together to create new works for the guitar repertoire. Recently Naeim presented his project SIP 33 as part of the UW Guest Artist Series at Meany Hall for the Performing Arts. The forthcoming installment, “Displaced Voices,” sponsored by the Seattle Symphony, is scheduled to premiere in the fall of 2024. Outside of his performance career, Naeim teaches at Bellevue College and directs the guitar program.

Radio Noise Collective transforms the airwaves into a framework of sonic exploration, where participant-performers decode the universe through a symphony of radio hacking, unraveling the hidden dance of electromagnetic waves and the raw essence of noise-clouds in a captivating live performance.

Based in Nantes, France, Radio Noise Collective is a project proposed by Apo33 to perform with radio receivers and everyday cracked electronics. This project is based on an open and accumulative performance. That is to say, we use public radio transmissions, extremely local pirate radio transmissions and the transmission of the art medium itself, its relation to the public or performance space. Radio Noise Collective was conceived as an evolutive open collective, which implies that anyone can bring along a radio device or just themselves and participate in the interpretation of the space through radio noise, interferences and relationship to others.

The performances often entail an introduction / instruction of a score and the transmission of ideas and techniques related to those specific contexts. But this transmission, rather than being understood as a technical or pedagogical device, we believe is akin to that of John Dewey’s concept of transmission, where transmission is not the repetition of learnt subjects but instead transmission of the Radio Noise collective is a negotiated transmission of ideas and re-interpretation or direct experimentation with the radios, electromagnetic interferences, and the space in which the performance takes place. This approach allows for the performance to integrate musicians, amateurs, public participants, and often children within the movement. And children, like adults, here embark on a discovery of the space, the noise, the technology and the waves that interact with their bodies and the audio transmission.

Maria Thrän lives and works in Berlin and Seattle. They are an interdisciplinary artist and documentary filmmaker who explores the intersection of art, research, and technology. Working with sound, including voice modulation, live piano, field recordings, and video, Maria creates immersive installations that delve into the intricate connections between sound, language, politics, and nature.

Hi, You’ve Reached The Mailbox of Maria. Thanks for Calling, Please Leave a Message and I Will Call You Back will feature a live grand piano improvisation accompanied by E-bows and a live synthesis granulation using Supercollider. This performance delves into my personal exploration of embodied memory and fragments through the dialogue between the piano, my body as an instrument, and the live digital instrument within the resonances of space and the audience. It explores the question of how we archive our unconscious experiences and access them through the embodiment of a performative act. This delves into how the “repertoire of embodied memory” is expressed through gestures, narrating and potentially speculating my story in the present moment.

Supported by DXARTS, the City of Nantes, and the French Institute.

05elantra is a Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary visual artist, musician, designer, technologist, and curator interrogating liminal spaces in modern life. Through intricate fusions of experimental electronic music, dance, and animation they construct mirage-like glimpses of a world just beneath the surface of perception. Through their curation and development of Sound P.U.S.H they create an intentional community for emerging artists at the intersection of electronics and performance art. They also lead S.Y.N.C, a free improv electronics ensemble. In an era where digital data has eclipsed the ritual and tactile, S.Y.N.C. plays with these often juxtaposing ideas to embrace playful sonic overload and collective expression. For this performance, they’ll utilize an expansive, genre-bending sound palette to construct a contemporary drama that delves into our relationship with one another, the digital worlds we consume and construct, and the natural environments to which we are inseparably connected.

augustina vail moore aka august V.M. is a trans songwriter, DJ, music producer, composer & sound designer living and working in Seattle. for this performance, august will present a collection of musical sketches composed in preparation for the writing and recording of her first album. this music is inspired by: the deep sea and ocean floor; the echoes, pulse, and sub-bass pressure of dub, techno, and other soundsystem musics; the discovery and sculpting of new textures, atmospheres, and sound worlds; american songwriting lineage; and a handful of childhood images in whose presence her heart first opened. the performance will consist of voice, processed electric guitar, and electronics (synthesizer, sampler, mixer, and reverb + delay units)

Arabella is an installation and video artist exploring themes and dreams of their Filipino culture and collective liberation. They have too many CRT tvs and are constantly rearranging their Eurorack case. In collaboration with august VM, they will be exploring the curiosities and openness of the deep sea, by creating an installation utilizing video synthesis and light as a material. 

Curated for Nonsequitur’s NonSeq series by Connie Fu.

To have, or last, for some duration: 

Clove features a close group of players and improvisers attending to the interplay of emptiness and form. Clove draws on their flowers and roots in the punk, metal, noise and diy scenes, for syzygies of song, sound, and silence. 

From Upstate New York via Vermont, Meredith Davey (cello, voice, electronics) crafted songs and played bass in the indie-rock group Supernowhere. Their solo work features hypnotic grooves, liquid cello harmonies and poetic lyrics.

Hanna Broback (guitar, voice synth) leads the baroque and dark folk group Masha. An enduring presence in Northwest music, they have played numerous roles in groups such as Hanna and the Goose, 129,600 and Ancient Forest. 

Ian Gwin plays synth with Hanna in the experimental drone duo current (formerly Glum Reaper). He leads the group Ensemble Unnamable and has performed with Joey Largent, Stephen Fandrich, and others.

Interdimensional Immersion for Torben Ulrich

Cellist Lori Goldston and drummer Jaison Scott improvise together, moving freely between ideas that spring from jazz, metal, chamber music and a long list of folk and popular idioms. They first met in 2005, playing in a band with their remarkable late friend Torben Ulrich. This concert is dedicated to his memory.

Jaison Scott has played with several rock and metal bands including SINDIOS, and Severhead, and in experimental improvised music groups including Instead Of.

Lori Goldston plays written and spontaneous work on cello, and works as a composer, producer, teacher, curator, and prolific, widely varied collaborator. Classically trained and rigorously de-trained, her voice as a cellist is deeply textured and original, investigating connections between far-flung modes of thought. Her long, varied history as a prolific collaborator and connector includes work with bands, orchestras, composers, film makers and choreographers: Earth, Nirvana, the BBC Scottish Symphony, Black Belt Eagle Scout, Trimpin, somesurprises, Helms Alee, Mirah, David Byrne, and many, many more.

Quarteto Nuevo merges Western classical, Eastern European folk, Latin and jazz with an organic feel that packs a wallop! The ensemble’s razor-sharp precision is enhanced by jazzy interludes, lightly rumbling percussion motifs and mesmerizing rhythms. They effectively meld the music of ancient worlds and faraway places with a contemporary groove that enchants audiences of all ages.

Winners of two South Arts Jazz Roads Touring Grants and a South Arts Jazz Roads Creative Residency Grant, Quarteto’s master musicians create emotionally charged soundscapes with instruments and sensibilities that represent very different world cultures. Their unique instrumentation – soprano saxophone (Damon Zick), cello (Jacob Szekely), guitar (Kenton Youngstrom) and percussion (Felipe Fraga) – richly colors their wide-ranging repertoire, from Chick Corea’s “Children’s Song No. 6” to Mark O’Connor’s “Appalachia Waltz” to Traditional Macedonian “Gadjarsko” and original works “Hector, Desmond and Titus”, “Rain Song” and “Dizer O Que”. This performance will feature works from their newest large-scale composition Jazz Road Suite: Western States.

Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, guitarist/composer Alex Anthony Faide has a decades-long international reputation for being the secret weapon in rock recordings, arrangements, and stage productions in Europe and Latin America. Now based in Seattle, Faide released his long-awaited solo record, Particles of the Infinite, a display of guitar pyrotechnics in nine parts, on Trey Gunn’s label 7d Media in 2022.

Faide is the co-founder of cherished 3rd wave surf rock band, Los Twang! Marvels, in addition to Los Gauchos Alemanes/Electric Gauchos. He has also worked with artists including Sylvia Massy, Money Mark, Marian Gold, Erik Macholl, Gary Lucas, Milo Froideval, Daniel Szlotnik, Bill Rieflin, Trey Gunn, Crystal Beth (Fleenor), Markus Reuter, Namgar, Willie Campins, TROOT, Kathy Moore, Tiny Orchestral Moments, Wayne Horvitz, Amy Denio, Geoff Harper, Los Primitivos, and Lutz Petersen, among countless others. Faide spent 2017-19 touring, songwriting, and arranging, with Mexican hard rock heroes Molotov on their MTV Unplugged Show El Desconecte and as a sideman for Molotov front man Tito Fuentes’ acclaimed solo record El Ocaso. Since 2021 he has been working on a new multimedia project with legendary German producer/songwriter Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen, founder and main composer for the band Nena.

About tonight’s concert, he says: “It is a privilege to have a time and a space, imbued with the sacred opportunity to connect with a sacred force we can only summon together, in the here and now. In today’s world, it is bold to approach Music outside of the ravenous cravings of the “music industry”, to invest yourself wholly in the power of the ephemeral. But I wish to do so tonight. This will present itself as an evening of continuous sound, of and through solo electric guitar, but it is a container for something else entirely. There won’t be any acrobatics nor stage theatrics, or any visual enhancement. Probably a good idea to just sit back and enjoy the ride. Still, if you feel compelled to dance, do! if you feel compelled to nap, please do! Snoring is entirely optional and at your own risk. Welcome and thanks for taking the leap!”

Curated by Beth Fleenor for Nonsequitur’s NonSeq series.

(photo: Karen Moskowitz)

Presented by Roman Numeral. Doors at 7:45 pm, concert at 8. This concert will be recorded and filmed live. Please be aware of equipment and keep noise levels to a minimum. Thank you.

An acoustic & multi-media concert celebrating the release of the new album Of Blood and Memory by To End It All, featuring: Joy Von Spain – voice, piano; Rachel LeBlanc – voice; Susana DuMett – voice; Jackie An – violin; Lori Goldston – cello; Masaaki Masao – sound collage; Vanessa Skantze, Kaoru Okumura, Douglas Ridings – Butoh dance + video projections; w/ opening solo percussion by Greg Campbell

Here we illuminate sorrow, grief, loss, and how losing one integral to our sense of place in the world expels us from the houses of confidence, confuses the mind, propels our hearts through places of knives, anger, nostalgia, fondness, flagellation, acute pain, smoldering anxiety, sunken affect, tension, blankness, bliss, relief, in no predictable or necessary order.

Rituals and traditions cannot offer all that’s needed as time races on. How can we continue once we’ve lost the physical presence of one so cherished? We meet these moments sometimes with fullness, or in retreat, in terror or in calm acceptance, each day both a whisper and a thousand hours, each night both meditation and curse. These songs are meant as temples of mourning, of fire, of blood, of memories, built upon the loss of mothers, of grandmothers, of every past and future beloved.

A wide-ranging evening of experimental and improvised music in a variety of settings: compositions for computer by Carl Stone; talking machines/tapes/percussion/lap steel from the improvisational trio of Robert Millis, Dave Abramson and AF Jones; and spectral acoustic drone by Portland’s Broken Crow.

A pioneer of live computer music, Carl Stone has been hailed by the Village Voice as “the king of sampling” and “one of the best composers living in (the USA) today.” He studied composition at CalArts with Morton Subotnick and James Tenney and has composed electro-acoustic music almost exclusively since 1972. Recordings of his music have been released on New Albion, CBS Sony, Toshiba-EMI, EAM Discs, Wizard Records, Trigram, t:me recordings, New Tone/Robi Droli, Unseen Worlds and various other labels. A winner of numerous awards for his compositions, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Foundation for Performance Arts he has toured all over the world and is based in Japan.

The trio of Millis, Abramson and Jones have toured and worked together in several projects, last year releasing Live at the Good Shepherd Chapel on the UK label Sound Holes. Robert Millis is a sound artist and guitar player, Fulbright Scholar, and Guggenheim recipient known for his work with the Sublime Frequencies record label and Climax Golden Twins, and his explorations of early recording through projects like Indian Talking Machine and Victrola Favorites. AF Jones is a composer, and sound designer, improvising with lap steel, guitar and electronics. Recent sound design work includes the acclaimed What Is Man and What Is Guitar?: Keith Rowe. He runs the Laminal mastering studio and curates the Marginal Frequency performance series and record label. Dave Abramson is a drummer and percussionist who has recorded, performed and/or toured with Eyvind Kang, Secret Chiefs 3, Wayne Horvitz, Climax Golden Twins, Lori Goldston, Wally Shoup, Greg Kelley, Boredoms, among many others. He is known particularly for his work with Diminished Men.

Broken Crow is the trio of Caspar Sonnet (lap steel, pump organ), Joel Nelson (crank synth), and Sam Klapper (violin). Drawing from a contemporary take on acoustic folk/drone music, the trio settles into arched landscapes of spectral sound, using extended/prepared techniques and altered tunings to blend interdependent vestiges of vaguely familiar timbre, texture, and noise.

Percussionist Bonnie Whiting (Seattle), pianist Lisa Cay Miller (Vancouver B.C.), and clarinetist James Falzone (Seattle), celebrate the release of Six Artifacts, a new recording on Falzone’s Allos Documents label. Recorded by Steve Peters at the Chapel in Seattle, Six Artifacts documents a series of raw, unedited improvisations between 3 distinct instrumentalists. 

Lisa Cay Miller (she/her) lives and makes music on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations. She has performed with many great musicians all over the world, including Ken Vandermark, Nicole Mitchell, Butch Morris, Ingrid Laubrock, John Dikeman, Ig Henneman, Michael Moore, Wilbert de Joode, Jasper Stadhouders, Vicky Mettler, Kenton Loewen, Dylan van der Schyff, Peggy Lee, Joshua Zubot, NOW Orchestra, NOW Ensemble and many more (Vancouver). Miller is the Artistic Director of the New Orchestra Workshop Society (NOW), proudly presenting Vancouver improvisers in regular concerts and workshops. She has released recordings on the greenideas (Sleep Furiously, Q, waterwall) and Trytone (682/281) record labels. Miller’s compositions have been premiered internationally by mmm…(Tokyo), L’Ensemble SuperMusique, le GGRIL, Quatuor Bozzini (Montreal), Vancouver New Music, Standing Wave, Turning Point Ensemble, Rachel Iwaasa, and Hard Rubber Orchestra, among others.

Bonnie Whiting (she/her) performs, improvises, and composes new music for percussion. Exploring intersections of storytelling and experimental music, her work is often cross-disciplinary, integrating text, music, movement, and technology. Her debut album, featuring a solo-simultaneous realization of John Cage’s “45′ for a speaker” and “27’10.554″ for a percussionist” was released by Mode Records in 2017, and her second album, Perishable Structures, launched on the New Focus Recordings label in 2020. Whiting is a core member of the Seattle Modern Orchestra and she has performed with the country’s leading new music groups: Ensemble Dal Niente, International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, and red fish blue fish percussion group. Bonnie uses Innovative Percussion sticks and mallets, and she is Chair of Percussion Studies and the Ruth Sutton Waters Associate Professor of Music at the University of Washington. 

Clarinetist, penny whistle player, composer, and improviser James Falzone is an acclaimed member of the international jazz and creative music scenes, a veteran contemporary music lecturer and clinician, and an award-winning composer who has been commissioned by chamber ensembles, dance companies, choirs, and symphony orchestras around the globe. He leads his own ensembles Allos Musica, Elaía Ensemble, Renga Ensemble, and the duo Wayfaring with Chicago bassist/vocalist Katie Ernst, and has released a series of critically acclaimed recordings on Allos Documents, the label he founded in 2000. James performs throughout North America and Europe, appears regularly on Downbeat  magazine’s Critics’ and Readers’ Polls, and was nominated as the Clarinetist of the Year by the Jazz Journalist Association. He has been profiled in the New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, New Music Box, and Point of Departure, among many other publications. Also a respected educator and scholar, James is the Dean of Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington. He is a Backun clarinet artist and plays penny whistles made by Chris Abell.