Lori Goldston and Aaron Michael Butler present Sarah Hennies’ concert-length work The Reinvention of Romance.

The Reinvention of Romance “for cello and percussion comprises some 90 minutes of spare, economical gestures, played not quite in sync… [resulting in] an extended sequence of simple figures arranged in succinct packets, each repeated at length until a timer prompts moving on to the next… Weaving together the kinds of fragmentary figurations with which Morton Feldman might have evoked twirling mobiles or intricate tapestries, Ms. Hennies instead evokes the slightly akimbo biorhythms of lives intimately conjoined.” – Steve Smith (The New York Times)

Sarah Hennies (b. 1979, Louisville, KY) is a composer based in Upstate NY whose work is concerned with a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including queer & trans identity, psychoacoustics, and the social and neurological conditions underlying creative thought. 

Lori Goldston and Aaron Michael Butler are composer/performer/improvisers based in Seattle. 

Audience members are invited to bring yoga mats or blankets to settle into this immersive sonic landscape, or to explore and navigate the resonant pockets of the wonderfully reverberant chapel space throughout this 90’ performance. 

Gregory Allison creates with a single violin a sound that travels across great landscapes. He has toured the world with violin in hand and is endlessly inspired by the instrument’s journey around the globe, especially it’s use in South Indian Classical music. His live performance blends the Indian Classical melodic improvisation with his classical sensibility as a film composer, offering the listener a sonic journey through time and space. He will performing his 2021 debut album Portal in its entirety, along with new compositions for amplified violin and string quartet.

Slow Meadow, lead by Houston-based multi-instrumentalist Matt Kidd, provides ambient melodies that serve as the perfect soundtrack for moments of reflection and mindfulness in today’s fast-paced world. With a foundation of piano, string orchestration, and an ever-evolving electronic palette, Slow Meadow has traversed the borders of neoclassical and minimalist electronics and delivers a deeply personal and transportive experience that speaks directly to the ebbs and flows and mundanity and marvels of life. With sublime patience, understated elegance, and surreal atmosphere, Slow Meadow savors the present, remembers the past, and imagines what could be.

Eyvind Kang and Jessika Kenney are a duo interested in geomusicalities. Their albums include Azure (Ideologic Organ 2023), Cypress Dance (Ed. Mariana Calo & Francisco Queimadela), the face of the earth, Aestuarium (2012, 2011 Ideologic Organ/Endless), Reverse Tree (Black Truffle), Seva/Fixiones (self-released cassette). As a duo they have worked with poet Anne Carson and randomizer Bob Currie, and the bands Sun City Girls, Sunn O))), and Animal Collective. Together they composed Concealed Unity and Siheung Tablatures for orchestra, choir, and soloists for the Tectonics festivals in Reykjavik, Athens and Glasgow. Their most recent collaboration was the installation Spokane River Sound Action, shown at the Gonzaga University Urban Arts Center (GUAAC) in 2022.

Kenney was the singer for punk bands Cause and Ex Nihilo, and later for ASVA. She has recorded the music of Alvin Lucier and Jarrad Powell, and has collaborated with Niloufar Shiri, Lori Goldston, Holland Andrews, Trimpin, Simone Forti, and Mulati Suryodarmo. Her compositions include the solo album Atria (Sige), and vocal music for the film Midsommar (dir. Ari Aster). She has made several sound and video installations including Anchor Zero, filling five rooms at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle (2015). Kang is a violist and composer who has released many albums, including Sonic Gnostic (2020, Aspen Edities) and Ajaeng Ajaeng (2020, Ideologic Organ). He has worked with a wide range of musicians including Bill Frisell, Laurie Anderson, Skuli Sverrison, Hildur Guðnadóttir, and many others. He is a disciple of spiritual jazz violinist Michael White, and a lifelong student of North Indian “classical” music with Padma Bhushan Dr. N Rajam. Since 2020 he has focused on the viola d’amore.

Faith Coloccia is an artist and composer based in Vashon, WA. Her work is focused on time deconstruction, inherited memory, indexical archives, and how sound affects the body in space. Using voice, field recordings, visual scores and traditional instrumentation, she unites composition, spirituality and installation acoustics into a cohesive whole. She performs under the names of Mamiffer and Mára and has been commissioned by and performed at festivals such as Big Ears (US), Hopscotch (US) and Sacrum Profanum (PL). She has performed in Europe, North America and Japan, and has collaborated with artists such as Daniel Menche, Philip Jeck, Aaron Turner, Circle, and Eyvind Kang. Her work has been released on SIGE Records, Karlrecords, Room40 and Touch. Tonight Faith will present a piano and vocal song that has been developed over a three-year period. The composition is based on isolated time fragments of field recordings, concentrating on the strange emotional clarity that comes with sleep deprivation and constant thought interruption.

Casey Adams is a Seattle-based drummer, builder and creator of electro-acoustic noise. In his work and research he is interested in the de/construction of sound and space, and the exploration of the ambience that exists between. As a performer, Casey attempts to fuse disparate and peripheral sounds while exploring movement, tension, intensity and the materiality of auditory experience; pursuant of a moment that never arrives. They will be presenting work for solo percussion.

Curated by Kole Galbraith for Nonsequitur‘s NonSeq series.

Since 2023, improvising artists Heather Bentley, Leanna Keith, and Haruko Crow Nishimura have been meeting regularly to work with Time, Matter, and Questions about the nature of process, ritual, female empowerment, playfulness, movement, invisible connection, and the intersection of movement and sound. Crow, (Director of the Degenerate Art Ensemble), pairs her singular dance output with drumming and vocals. Leanna (Kin of the Moon) brings her taiko and martial arts practice together with her exquisite flute playing and unique voice. Heather (Kin of the Moon) plays cello and brings prompts and questions to the ensemble’s explorations (as does each member). Influences range from ancient pentatonic flute melodies to percussion-driven rituals to Schoenberg and his Pierrot Lunaire moon worship. This evening marks the first public invitation into this practice that the three artists have come to cherish.

Celebrate the arrival of spring with an evening of live electronic ambience in support of Patchwerks‘ community space and educational programs, with live performances by Nick Bigelow, Cindy Reichel and Gel-Sol. (Can’t attend? Donate here.)

Nick Bigelow is a Seattle-based audio-visual artist who often-times is just as surprised as the audience about what will be seen or heard during his performances. When not performing as his moniker DJ Weak Acid, Nick Bigelow aims towards ethereal ambient compositions which employ improvisational melodic and rhythmic techniques to conjure hypnotic soundscapes.

Cindy Reichel is a longtime Seattle resident and co-founder of Patchwerks. Cindy uses a highly improvised approach to composition and enjoys performing live throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond. She most recently performed at the Wonderment festival in Victoria BC and Knobcon in Chicago, and also teaches music production workshops and classes to Seattle-area students. 

Gel-Sol is the solo project of Seattle-based producer/musician Andrew Reichel. His dichotomous sound spans from ambient soundscapes to complex, rhythmic electronica, creating a dynamic psychedelic universe with heavy emphasis on improvisation.

The Willamette University Chamber Choir from Salem, OR, performs an eclectic program of choral music that explores the full range of human emotion. Selections include ancient songs as well as contemporary works featuring body percussion, microtones, and aleatoric elements.

The Willamette Chamber Choir, led by Dr. Anna Song, is a highly select mixed vocal ensemble that performs a wide range of choral literature drawn from all historical periods and in a variety of styles. Throughout its history, the Chamber Choir has toured and performed at local and national festivals, workshops, and conventions, regularly serving as ambassadors for the university. We are honored to perform on the Wayward Music Series, one of several concerts on the choir’s 2024 tour to Seattle.

Dr. Anna Song is the Director of Choral Music at Willamette University, where she directs Chamber Choir, Voce, and Vox. Having joined the faculty in 2022, she also teaches courses in musicianship and aural skills. Her professional work outside WU involves leading the all professional women’s vocal ensemble, In Mulieribus, as its co-founding artistic director. The group champions new repertoire by women composers and for women’s voices. 

Julie Slick is a virtuoso bassist and composer known for her wide array of unique tones and substantial melodic invention. Throughout her career, she has developed a distinctive voice through international performances and recordings with acclaimed first class musicians in both the progressive rock and jazz communities. She currently tours and makes albums with the Adrian Belew Power Trio and her own bass duo-fronted band, EchoTest.

For her solo performance for NonSeq at the Chapel she will be inviting listeners into her world of space bass exploration, creating driving rhythms and unexpected sounds while maintaining a catchy, song-like quality which can be unexpected in improvised music. 

Curated by Beth Fleenor for Nonsequitur’s NonSeq series.

This March our community celebrates the centenary of the legendary Seattle-based composer, pianist,
teacher, publisher, Guggenheim Fellow, and sometime steam calliopist, Lockrem Johnson (1924-1977)
with a recital featuring Keith Eisenbrey, piano, Susan Payne O’Brien, soprano, and Peter Nelson-King,
trumpet.

For those too young to remember, Lockrem’s presence in the local scene from the 1940s to the 70s cannot be overstated. He taught at both the University of Washington and Cornish, where he instituted the baccalaureate degree program, and was a pianist for the Seattle Symphony under Manuel Rosenthal. He penned what may be the first opera composed in Seattle – A Letter to Emily (1950) – which has been staged nearly 100 times in the United States and Europe, including a performance in Paris in early March of this year. Further information on Lockrem and his legacy, including scores and historical recordings, can be found here.

The recital will feature the world premiere of his Last Two Songs (1973) and the first performance of the
complete cycle of 24 Preludes (1967). Also on the program are his lively Sonatina for Trumpet and Piano (1950), Chaconne (1948), 2 Songs to a Child (1948), and the devestating Fifth Sonata (1953) which Keith will perform from the score given to him by Lockrem himself just a few months before his untimely passing.

Avante-garde classical composer, freak-folk singer-songwriter and postmodern jazz interloper Kaley Lane Eaton performs her sophomore album, Lookout, live with an all-star orchestra of Seattle’s most beloved genre-bending musicians.

For artists like Kaley Lane Eaton who paint outside the lines, there are seemingly endless boxes to check, but few name-brand comparisons. Joni Mitchell, Björk, Kate Bush, Laurie Anderson. 

On her latest album Lookout, Eaton regularly makes pressure-testing trips from the vast cosmos down to the particular details of home in the Pacific Northwest. In her words, “It’s a behemoth.” From the ever-expanding space of jazz cymbals, flute, and harp, down to the folksy pluck of her banjo — a prized recent acquisition — and the grounding chords of her great-great-great grandmother’s piano, which shipped up the Missouri River to the family homestead in Montana. 

There are no electronic instruments to be found here, but many trees. The sequoia on the hillside, aspens quaking, cedar, and Jeffrey pine.

With her experience in electronic music, Eaton’s choice to exclude digital instruments from the palette is immediately felt. It’s not that technology doesn’t exist here. It’s a conscious focus on human beings with time-tested tools. Ancient technology.

Eaton composes with the full command of her four music degrees and classical training, but there’s an American-ness that can’t be shaken on Lookout. A sorrow, wildness, and expansiveness, not of the European classical tradition, but of jazz, blues and folk. Kaley Lane Eaton is all of these things and more. And none of them precisely.

Eaton (on vocals, banjo, and piano), is joined on this live performance of Lookout by Chris Icasiano (drums), Kayce Guthmiller (voice and viola), Moe Weisner (bass), Samantha Boshnack (trumpet), Heather Bentley (viola), Leanna Keith (flute), Neil Welch (saxophone), Rian Souleles (guitar, bouzouki, and baglama), Lily Press (harp), Simon Linn-Gerstein (cello), Alina To (violin), Maria Scherer-Wilson (cello), and Aleida Gehrels (viola), Ray Larsen (trumpet).

The Seattle Guitar Orchestra expands the live concert experience with solo, orchestral, and cinematic presentations of the music of close collaborations with composers from the Ukraine, Nigeria, Kenya and more. This concert blends the intimacy of live performance with the spectacular cinematography of the movies. Come experience and evening of solo guitar, guitar orchestra, and the best in music movie making as we celebrate the work of Ukrainian composer Oleg Boyko, a composer from whom Seattle Guitar Orchestra has commissioned The Secret Life Of Trees. 

The Seattle Guitar Orchestra stands in solidarity with the people of Ukraine.