The Tom Baker Quartet shares an intimate, acoustic set with flutist Anne La Berge from the Netherlands and violist Christian Asplund, exploring the edges of jazz/chamber/improvised music. Radiosonde is a performance group that integrates dance and music through structured improvisations. Consisting of 9 performers, the group is led by musician Tom Baker and dancer Beth Graczyk. Together they develop unified scores that often contain a set of events or rules coupled with potent poetic images. The musicians include Jesse Canterbury, Greg Campbell, Brian Cobb, and Tom Baker and dancers including Alia Swersky, Corrie Befort, Ezra Dickenson, Sean Ryan, and Beth Graczyk.

Seattle pianist Tiffany Lin performs Piano Racket: Music for the Unconventional Piano, a concert featuring solo music for prepared piano, string piano, re-tuned piano, and toy pianos. The program features premieres of Byron Au Yong’s Flirt and Kraig Grady’s Corroded Communes. Also: John Cage’s Daughters of the Lonesome Isle, Lois V. Vierk’s To Stare Astonished at the Sea, Miracle Ear by David Lang, We Want Production by Zach Watkins, and A Little Christmas Suite by George Crumb. There will also be a special guest appearance by the toy band, The Toy Boats.

8:00 PM; $5-15 donation at the door.

The Seattle Composers’ Salon is an informal presentation of new music by regional composers. The salon meets the last Friday of every other month, and features finished works, previews, and works-in-progress. It brings together composers, performers and audience members in a casual setting that allows for discussion and experimentation. This month’s composers are Marcus Oldham,
Keith Eisenbrey, PLUS this year’s student composition 1st Place Winners for the Simon Fiset competition: William Zhang, Connor Jensen, Benjamin Davis, and Robert Yaman.

Subtext Reading Series presents: Laura Moriarty’s most recent books are A Semblance: Selected & New Poetry 1975-2007 and An Air Force. Other recent books are Ultravioleta, a novel, and Self-Destruction. She has taught at Mills College and Naropa and is currently Deputy Director of Small Press Distribution. She is findable on-line at A Tonalist Notes and related blogs. J. W. Marshall is co-owner of Open Books, Seattle’s poetry-only bookstore. He won the 2007 Field Poetry Prize and Oberlin College Press published Meaning A Cloud, his first full-length collection, in 2008. His poetry has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Field, Golden Handcuffs, LitRag, Raven Chronicles, Talisman, and other magazines.

Seattle’s Son of Rose (Kamran Sadeghi), Wyndel Hunt, and Morgan Henderson perform electro-acoustic music.

Seattle Improvised Music and Nonsequitur present the 24th annual Seattle Improvised Music Festival.

Friday, February 20: Michael Thieke/Kai Fagaschinski duo; Rachel Thompson/Jonathan Zorn duo; Lê Quan Ninh/Michel Doneda duo. Saturday, February 21: Lê Quan Ninh solo; Andrew Drury/Tari Nelson-Zagar/Michel Doneda trio; Lê Quan Ninh/Gust Burns/Michael Thieke trio; Michel Doneda solo; Lê Quan Ninh/Michel Doneda/Jonathan Zorn/Rachel Thompson/Michael Thieke/Kai Fagaschinski sextet.

Seattle Improvised Music and Nonsequitur present the 24th annual Seattle Improvised Music Festival.

Friday, February 13: Greg Kelley/Doug Theriault/Kelvin Pittman trio; Liz Tonne solo; Greg Kelley/Gust Burns/Mara Sedlins/Mark Collins/Wilson Shook quintet; Andrew Drury solo; Christine Sehnaoui solo; large ensemble. Saturday, February 14: Greg Kelley solo; Christine Sehnaoui/Liz Tonne duo; Kelvin Pittman solo; Wally Shoup/Greg Kelley/Andrew Drury trio; Doug Theriault solo; large ensemble.

Nonsequitur presents US-Mexican pianist Ana Cervantes in her Seattle debut, performing commissioned works by eight composers from five countries: Georgina Derbez Roque, Marcela Rodríguez and Hilda Paredes (México); Zulema de la Cruz (Spain); Anne LeBaron and Alex Shapiro (USA); Silvia Berg (Brazil), and Stephen McNeff (UK).

Inside the Music explores the world of sound through paint. Pianist Ann Cummings performs contemporary classics while artist Yael Zahavy-Mittelman paints live to the music. In 2008 the duo created a black and white canvas that expressed the shape, form and relationships of the music; they will continue with this same canvas, adding color into the process. Special guest composers for this program are Richard Karpen, Ken Benshoof and Gavin Borchert.

Presented by Subtext Reading Series.

Laynie Browne is author of seven full-length collections of poetry, a novel, and many chapbooks. Her most recent collections are The Scented Fox (Wave, 2007), Daily Sonnets (Counterpath Press, 2007), and Drawing a Swan Before Memory, which won the Contemporary Poetry Series in 2005 (University of Georgia Press). She has taught as a visiting poet in New York City and Seattle, and has taught creative writing at UW Bothell, Mills College and at the Poetry Center at University of Arizona. She currently lives in Tucson.

Michael Cross edited Involuntary Vision: after Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (Avenue B, 2003), and is currently editing an anthology of the George Oppen Memorial Lectures at San Francisco State University. He publishes Atticus/Finch Chapbooks, and his first book, in felt treeling, is forthcoming from Chax Press. He is a doctoral candidate at SUNY Buffalo.