An evening of (mostly) string improvisations and abstractions, featuring (mostly) ukulele and banjo. But also expect electro-acoustic/found sound/collage/drone explorations and deconstructions. Robert Millis and Dave Knott (Messenger Girls Trio) just released a cassette on Seattle’s Eiderdown Records. Millis has a new LP out on Discrepant. They will perform together and separately and be joined by Alan F Jones (Marginal Frequency, Laminal Audio) for a trio set. Kelby Clark is a composer, improviser, and banjo player from South Georgia, currently living and working in Los Angeles, and is inspired by the old-time music of his home state as well as drone, free improvisation, raga, noise, and many other forms of both experimental and traditional music from around the world. Expect Sir Richard Bishop meets Roscoe Holcomb in a darkened alleyway in Tangiers. His most recent record is Language of the Torch “The way Clark attacks his instrument, allowing songs to unspool in tumbling, organized chaos is magnetic and feels distinctly his own” – The Quietus 

Leanna Keith’s last show in Seattle for some time, come bid her farewell as she prepares to move to San Diego.

Flutist Leanna Keith found her improvisational voice thanks to the Seattle improvised music scene, and as a send off she’d like to do one more show with some of her favorite improvisers in town making a tribute to her favorite venue. Guest musicians include: Kaley Lane Eaton (vocals), Bonnie Whiting (percussion), Christian Pincock (trombone), Mark Wilson (guitar), John-Carlos Perea (cedar flutes, bass), Greg Campbell (percussion), and Wayne Horvitz (piano). 

Austin Larkin is a composer primarily working with violin, bells, and sirens. His performance and practice is informed by research into dimensions of vibrating bodies. Larkin’s solo violin performance situates the violin as an instrument to accentuate space, rather than to fill space. Within this space, the violin renders a continuously unfolding structure of interlocking harmonic shapes and temporal patterns. With his custom bell instruments, the experience of ringing is expanded to energize the resonance of architecture and the cochlea. Through these instruments, we hear sound is not separate from space, sound is space.

Susie Kozawa is a Seattle-based sound artist, composer, and performer who works with sound collages and site-specific installations in which the gathering of sounds is a primary activity. She explores different acoustic spaces using musical instruments that she makes out of found objects (kelp, modified toys, cardboard rolls, jars, etc.). Creating live sound design and soundscapes for dance, theater, and film productions, Kozawa has participated in a “live spectacle performance” of Guy Madden’s silent film Brand Upon The Brain! that performed in Seattle, Portland, Sao Paulo, and Winnipeg. She has also contributed to sound and sound effects in the films Torrey Pines (Petersen 2016), By the Salish Sea (Gregory 2012), and When Herons Dream (2009). She was a founding member of Aono Jikken Ensemble, an experimental group that specializes in bringing live performance to silent films, and is a member of the Seattle Phonographers Union. She has received awards from the Seattle Arts Commission, Artist Trust, Washington State Arts Commission, and the Ford Foundation.

Unfortunately, flutist Leanna Keith is unable to play as originally planned. Instead, Susie’s duo partner will be harpist Carol J Levin. Levin has established a niche as Seattle’s improvising electric/acoustic harpist. Returning to the harp after classical training in her youth, she has been embraced by jazz and free improvisation communities for her creative voice and for extending the capabilities of the harp beyond its expected style. Carol plays in duos, trios and large ensembles including Trio/Impro, CHA, Levitation, The Likes Of, Christian Pincock’s Scrambler, Beth Fleenor’s Blindfold Ensemble, Rain City Jazz Orchestra, and Game Symphony Workshop. In addition to harp, she plays multiple percussive instruments and, recently, theremin! 

An evening of music. Featuring a new ensemble consisting of Gust Burns (piano), Troy Schiefelbien (voice), Aaron Michael Butler (vibraphone), Gregg Miller (clarinet), Justin Lazar (clarinet), Hanna Broback (violin), John Teske (contrabass ), and Noel Kennon (viola , clarinet).

This ensemble will present a new piece “11 scenes lit by sunset,” written by Noel Kennon and realized by the ensemble. 

Environmental Studies is a group of Los Angeles musicians that blends unusual electronics, left-field rhythms, and warped brass instruments. Their newest record, Planet!, will be released on August 1st on their label Drifting Boat.

Nathan Ho is a Bay Area-based electronic musician combining contemporary classical music with brutal, percussive sound design drawing from breakcore, glitch, and bass music. His debut album Haywire Frontier was released on tokinogake in September 2023. He creates his music ex nihilo using only sounds synthesized in SuperCollider, and documents his process extensively in his technical resources on synthesis and digital signal processing.

MouseMan is a Washington-based electronic experimental musician. He tries to make music intuitively while taking in many influences from the gamut of sound and patterns. As of recently he has been working on extreme midi music.

Sean Gaskell and Chet Corpt have both studied the kora in the traditional manner with the late great Malamini Jobarteh in his compound in Gambia, West Africa. A former minister of culture for that country, in addition to being a renowned international performer of kora music, he once said “Kora is an ocean.” Very deep, wide, and touching many shores. Seeking to avoid the pitfalls of cultural appropriation and mere mimicry, Chet and Sean experiment with the means that Mande sound art provides, tight and highly abstract rhythms and melodies, to express their own personal narratives.

Guitar Worship Service is playful in name, however not to mislead the importance of the creative possibilities of a guitar, GWS presentations select musicians and sound sculptors to freely interpret what a guitar is. While there are physically different types of guitars (electric, acoustic, steel, bass, etc.), GWS also encourages a conceptual nature for examining how to approach a guitar even by non-physical interaction with the instrument. For example, performance art would be a medium to this interpretive approach even if a single note or a sound is produced from a guitar. With the freedom and encouragement for artists to apply themselves (or with collaborators) as they creatively see fit, the GWS series has but one requisite for every live set: A guitar, in whatever capacity, is integrated with non-traditional application.  

On this evening, GWS # 8 proudly presents four incredibly diverse solo artists: 

PINK VOID
By combining exploratory tapestry drone and (sub)liminal audio samples, a listener could sublimely abandon conceptions on how to extract sounds from a guitar. Adding to the unique technique is that not one guitar string may be strummed. The aural directive is motioned by this artist’s gradual emergence from a long hiatus that has avoided recording and performing. Consider this a rare chance to be a passenger on an immersive cruise. 

BLUES WEAVE
A melting pot of coolly askew though woven with brevities of straight ahead music but all the while shifting electronic beats jump cut the listeners attention created by this far reaching guitarist that effortlessly opens passageways into auditory environments that inventively reshape the out-jazz to come tinged with even outer-blues if it’s even suitable to reference such genres.

SANDESH NAGARAJ
The profile photo on Sandesh’s Bandcamp (link below) captures a single person posed with a guitar. The image is a misnomer. To hear the application of just one guitar will not be received by your ears. An array of instruments and sound generating objects are put into place on a foundation that does not support phonic prenotions. Sandesh is a composer that successfully avoids giving pulse to the humdrum. “Charred” sounds akin to an erratic Conlon Nancarrow piano… and then sets fire to what you thought you just heard. The proof is evident through all of Sandeshe’s Bandcamp offerings. Know that we’re going to witness an audio architect constructing compositions of astounding heights.

MONED
A conduit for channeling multiple guitars to deliver seismic walls of purely warm, sculptive Larsen effects (i.e. producing palatable feedback while utilizing no loop pedals). The strong dose of meditative listening is prescribed to absorb the subtle shifting of frequencies and moaning of tones dispense a sensory experience. MONED is a psychedelic guitarist not of that musical genre but of psychotomimetic science.

These four performances will be collaboratively washed by improvisational projectionist COLORBARD VISUAL. The white wall behind the stage will be this artist’s blank canvas. This audio-visual dynamic is intended for the audience’s enjoyment while enhancing each artist’s presentations. 

Note that Guitar Worship Service has no religious affiliation, rather the series title is a good-natured description to celebrate one of the most diverse instruments created. Doors open at 6:30.

Young Scientist was formed in Seattle in the mid-1970’s by James Husted, Roland Barker and Marc Barreca, performing for several years with analog synths, tape loops and keyboards. Following re-releases of 1970s material on the German labels Bureau B and Vinyl on Demand, Husted and Barreca sporadically reunite for live performances of YS’s immersive blend of pulsating electronics and soundscapes.

Monster Planet is a place that lies just around the corner of our imaginations. Discovered accidentally in April of 2010, extensive research into this vast uncharted anomaly is conducted by a clandestine organization known as SYNPROV CORP, a sprawling collective of musicians, producers, designers, pixel bandits, video specialists, and B-movie chuds. Exploring Monster planet is an immersion of surreal improvised audio/visual performance that blends cutting-edge ambient / experimental / kosmische electronica, obscure cinema, DIY visuals, and general WTFness.

Video artist ACVilla and keyboardist/vocalist Thollem McDonas are touring with stories they have collected over years of travel, including ones from just the other day, retelling them through miniature films and live music. These are audio/visual sneak peeks into otherwise unobserved events that are unfolding at the same time as ours, creating seconds- or minutes-long bonds that change our day whether we notice them or not. With an eye on these connections, ACVilla highlights the moments with an analog sensibility using digital equipment that fits into her nomadic lifestyle. Thollem’s live soundtrack draws on his infinite influences to create a sonic soundscape that is as equally enlightening as it is entertaining. Stories About People & Everyone Else is exactly that, told through two artists at the center of a world on the edge.

Thollem will also play a short “Infinite-Sum Game” (solo piano) set.

Thollem and ACVilla have been performing their multimedia collaborations over the last 15 years throughout N. America and Europe. In 2025 the duo will be touring ‘Stories About People & Everyone Else’, a 60-minute series of new shorts as well as selections from older projects including Obstacle Illusion, Worlds In A Life, and Who Are U.S. Thollem’s original live music draws from these soundtracks as well as his recent releases: Worlds In A Life and Infinite-Sum Game on ESP-Disk’, Obstacle Illusion on Astral Spirits, and Hot Pursuit Of Happiness on PA Tapes.

Presented by Nonsequitur.

NOTE: Audience for this event is limited to 85 people!

Jeff Schroeder (Los Angeles) was a member of the Smashing Pumpkins from 2007 to 2023. During this period, Jeff performed on numerous recordings and traveled the world performing live with the band. In October 2023, Jeff left the Smashing Pumpkins to pursue a solo career. He released his first album, Metanoia, in August of 2024. Metanoia is a solo ambient guitar album and explores the themes of loss, fragmentation and spiritual transformation. 

Adam Miller (Los Angeles) is the founder of the acclaimed electronic pop group Chromatics, as well as one of the band’s primary songwriters, lyricists, and visual artists. Miller’s songs have been used in a variety of film, television, fashion shows and sporting events including Twin Peaks, Mr. Robot, Riverdale, American Horror Stories, Chanel, Gucci, Jil Sander, & the NBA. In 2022 Miller released an album of instrumental ambient guitar meditations titled Gateway. For this event Miller will be performing songs from Gateway as well as pieces from his forthcoming album.

Ilyas Ahmed (Portland) has been releasing records as a solo & collaborative artist for almost 20 years. His most recent solo album is A Dream of Another. He is also a member of the experimental rock band Grails with whom they recently released the album Miracle Music. He has also collaborated with artists such as Liz Harris (Grouper) and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma.