February 9 – 12. Presented by Seattle Improvised Music and Nonsequitur. The longest running festival of its kind in North America, the annual Seattle Improvised Music Festival presents a host of international improvisers representing a sampling of the world’s major players/scenes/movements. This year’s line up includes: Jeffrey Allport percussion (Vancouver), Gill Arno radios (NYC), Gust Burns piano, inside piano (Seattle), Lou Cohen laptop/Csound (Boston), James Coleman theremin (Boston), Mark Collins bass (Seattle), Paul Hoskin contrabass clarinet (Seattle), Andrew Lafkas bass (NYC), Radu Malfatti trombone (Vienna), Wilson Shook alto saxophone (Seattle), Jonathan Way field recordings (Seattle), Tyler Wilcox soprano saxophone (Seattle), John Teske bass (Seattle).

Pianist/composer Tricia Woods recently lost a long battle with breast cancer. She was an important contributor to the Seattle music scene before moving to New York, and was part of an influential group of young musicians that included Mike Stone, Briggan Krauss, Geoff Harper, Tari Nelson-Zagar, Andrew Drury, Craig Flory, Hans Teuber, Eyvind Kang, Reggie Watts and many more. As a celebration of Tricia’s life and artistic vitality, musicians from the Seattle community are putting together an event filled with music she would have been passionate about. Performers include Geoff Harper, Wayne Horvitz, Robin Holcomb, Craig Flory, Dawn Clement, Tom Varner, Mike Stone, Andy Roth, and others. All proceeds will be given to Tricia’s son.

S. Eric Scribner performs new, partially improvised works for environmental sound, piano, hammer dulcimer and found objects, including two pieces from his “SoundScrolls” cycle. Eric’s music is modal and/or microtonal, often contemplative, and explores guided improvisation within a fixed framework and the non-randomness inherent in “random” aesthetic events. Hexafone opens (Bruce Greeley, bass clarinet; Mike Sentkewitz, acoustic bass; Ryan Burt, drums/percussion).

Presented by Seattle Chamber Players. Armenian pianist/composer Artur Avanesov performs his own works, as well as music by his mentor, the great Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian, Ukrainian master Valentin Silvestrov, the SCP commission Linee e Contorni by the brilliant Lithuanian composer Onute Narbutaite, and music by Alban Berg.

Presented by Seattle Composers’ Salon and Nonsequitur. The IS THAT JAZZ? festival concludes with Seattle’s own Triptet and the Nels Cline Singers featuring Cibo Matto co-founder Yuka C. Honda.

Presented by Seattle Composers’ Salon and Nonsequitur. The second weekend of the IS THAT JAZZ? festival begins with the duo of Seattle multi-instrumentalist Amy Denio and New York guitarist/composer Lucio Menegone and the AnyWhen Ensemble, led by trumpeter Douglas Detrick with guest Wayne Horvitz.

C3 is a Seattle trio that plays adventurous, mostly-improvised songs and songscapes. Leader Steve Ball is best known for his decades of work with Robert Fripp & the League of Crafty Guitarists, a group who pioneered new forms of both composed and improvised music for guitar ensembles. Steve also founded the Seattle Guitar Circle in 1993. Their spin-off project, Tuning the Air, is now in its 11th season. C3 also features guitarists Ivan Lee and Paul O’Rear. They are joined for this show by Sockethead composer/keyboardist Nathan Grigg, Emma Durand (sweet & sour songs), Joel Palmer (group loops), and David LaVallee (group loops).

Presented by Seattle Composers’ Salon and Nonsequitur. The second night of the IS THAT JAZZ? festival features the young Seattle group Operation ID and Canadian pianist Dana Reason.

Presented by Seattle Composers’ Salon and Nonsequitur.

IS THAT JAZZ? is a festival dedicated to daring and exploratory artists who are redrawing the boundaries of jazz, and infusing the genre with new forms, new sounds, and renewed sense of immediacy. Some want to limit jazz to a specific and narrow definition; IS THAT JAZZ? embraces jazz as a living, breathing art-form, one that must change and grow. The festival’s opening night concert features the The Empty Cage Quartet (Jason Mears, reeds; Kris Tiner, trumpets/flugelhorn; Paul Kikuchi, drums/percussion; Ivan Johnson, bass) and the Sun Ra Tribute Band.

FASCINATING RHYTHMS OF NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA presents music from the US, Argentina and Brazil. The first half features the classically-based duo of pianist/accordionist Amy Rubin and clarinettist Mary Kantor performing new, original arrangements of music by Rubin, Guinga, Nazareth, Piazzolla and others. The second half welcomes Seattle based ChoroLoco, a quintet of musicians dedicated to bringing to life the music of Brazil from the early 1900s, the music that inspired it, and the music that it continues to inspire.