Seattle Improvised Music presents Portland saxophonist Kelvin Pittman, playing improvised duets, quartets, and sextets with saxophonists Paul Hoskin, Wilson Shook, and Tyler Wilcox and bassists Mark Collins and John Teske.

The Seattle Percussion Collective (SPC) presents its debut concert of adventurous music written for percussion instruments. Comprised of Becca Baggenstoss, Greg Campbell, Dale Speicher, Bonnie Whiting Smith and Denali Williams, SPC unites some of Seattle’s most diverse and exciting percussionists to present a program featuring music by Keiko Abe, John Cage, Mauricio Kagel, and Stuart Saunders Smith.

Saxophonist and composer Jacob Zimmerman is a graduate of Garfield High School in Seattle, and studied at the renowned New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He is currently a Masters Composition student at Mills College. Most recently he has been focused on a collection of solo pieces that highlight the various techniques and improvising strategies that have comprised his musical vocabulary over the years, hoping to refine his own language and improvising tendencies, while constantly seeking a balance between structure and the freedom to pursue (as Derek Bailey called it) “whatever is endlessly variable.”

Presented by Subtext Reading Series.

Norma Cole is a poet, painter and translator. Her most recent book is Where Shadows Will, Selected Poems 1988-2008 (City Lights). Canadian by birth, Cole migrated via France to San Francisco where she has lived since 1977. She has been the recipient of a Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation Award, Gertrude Stein Awards, as well as awards from The Fund for Poetry. Will Owen has published poems, translations, and collaborative reactions in Peaches and Bats, Slightly West and A Side, and Crawlspace’s Scrawl. Since last October, he has been enthusing a bleak landscape through Gallery 1412’s reading series and related evenings.

Two local pianists of diverse musical persuasions come together for an evening of varied music spanning the last century to the present moment. Adrienne Varner performs Henry Cowell’s Three Irish Legends (1912, 1919, 1922), Leo Ornstein’s Impressions of Notre Dame (part 1) (1914), Jarrad Powell’s Islands, Uluru Wild Fig Song, and Etude: Uncertain Descent (1981, 1986, 2001), and Lou Harrison’s Reel (Homage to Henry Cowell) (1982). Gust Burns presents the premiere performance of his own itlegy neshes (2009).

Presented by Earshot Jazz.

2nd Century Savage is saxophonist, flutist, and composer John C. Savage with electronica artist, Vusac (aka Isaac Peachin). Together they merge contemporary jazz improvisation with electronic instruments and live production techniques. Using interactive software sampling, effect processors, and virtuosic instrumental technique, they have the potential to suspend a single note in space, or to summon the power of an orchestral wall of sound. The results are haunting, transporting, and strikingly novel.

Presented by Nonsequitur.

Pioneering audio artist Richard Lerman performs works for home-made transducers and instruments with video and film, assisted by Eric Lanzillotta and members of the Eye Music ensemble. Seattle treasure and sound collector/instrument builder Susie Kozawa opens the show with an admiring throng of local artists joining her in a sonic celebration of her 60th birthday.

Presented by Seattle Improvised Music.

Jeffrey Allport (percussion, Vancouver) and Tyler Wilcox (soprano saxophone, formerly Bellingham, now Seattle) perform duo improvisations and in collaboration with Seattle improvisers Mara Sedlins (viola), Mark Collins (bass), and Gust Burns (inside piano).

Presented by Earshot Jazz.

The Seattle Phonographers Union is a collective of veteran sound artists who improvise using only their extensive personal libraries of field recordings made around the world. They forego processing the raw sound materials with software or hardware, and instead strive to create compelling juxtapositions of everyday and esoteric sounds, forming surreal multi-layered soundscapes in real time. While even within the group opinions vary as to whether or not they make “music,” they all agree that their unusual approach implicitly honors the core of jazz and all improvised music through its emphasis on empathic listening and spontaneous response.

Local electronic composer Matt Shoemaker gives this farewell performance before moving to the Bay Area. He is joined by multimedia artist Jesse Paul Miller, who will be working with field recordings made during his travels in SE Asia.