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.

Jonah Parzen-Johnson makes music for baritone saxophone & flute that challenges listeners with experimental textures & forms while embracing them with warm approachable melodies. A Chicago native and longtime Brooklyn resident, Jonah has performed solo in more than a dozen countries across four continents. You might find him at jazz festivals in Berlin, Helsinki and Seattle, concert halls in Istanbul and Bruges, rock clubs in Rotterdam, Montreal and Rome, or jazz clubs in New York and Chicago. His solo performances are a deeply intimate experience, as he endeavors to share who he is, how he sees our world, and the temporary moments of community that we can all embrace together.

Bassist Kelsey Mines resides in Seattle, performing and teaching while touring nationally and internationally with groups including ings, NYGASP, and the Hollywood Concert Orchestra. Kelsey currently works for the Yakima Symphony, Symphony Tacoma and the Paramount Orchestra, while freelancing in numerous settings reaching from chamber music to Latin jazz. She released her debut album in 2018 February of entirely original music and currently co-leads the bands EarthToneSkyTone and Here to Play. Kelsey was the recipient of Earshot Jazz’s Emerging Artist Award in 2019 and continually creates inspired work as a solo artist and collaborator.

Saxophonist Neil Welch is a Seattle-based acoustic and electronic artist. Drawing artistic guidance from the abundant wildernesses of the Pacific Northwest, his sonic formations, whether prepared composition or purely improvised, are all firmly linked to the natural world. Neil’s recorded works span contemporary and avant-garde jazz, modern classical, soundpainting, solo acoustic saxophone, electronic sound processing, indie rock, and other current musical forms. Tonight he brings a trio featuring Abbey Blackwell on bass and Greg Campbell on drums/percussion/horn. The ensemble will interpret several of Welch’s most recent original compositions, including works with more fiery free-music stylings, microtonal improvisation, multiphonics, and intervallic melodies that span well beyond the expected range of the saxophone. 

Victoria Shen (aka Evicshen) is a sound artist, experimental music performer, and instrument-maker based in San Francisco. Shen’s sound practice is concerned with the spatiality/physicality of sound and its relationship to the human body. Her music features analog modular synthesizers, vinyl/resin records, and self-built electronics. Her multimedia practice extends beyond musical composition and performance to include installation and non-traditional methods of distribution. Her personal identity, her body, is the space her work utilizes to restructure sonic meaning. In her live performances, she proposes an exploration between meaning and non-meaning through the physical activation of noise tropes. Her probing into these melodic voids interrogate the ways we perceive value within aural experiences. The appendage-like instruments and objects she makes, exemplify Shen’s ability to embody through sound her interest in the tension created by opposition: control and chaos, the unique and the mass produced, the practical and the absurd.

Reylinn is a Vancouver-based audio/visual artist, DJ, and radio host. They’re a founding member of Acceleration Radio, an open format FM radio, live stream and events collective with a focus on audio/visual experimentation. Attracted to the contrasting aesthetics of the natural and synthetic, their live performances recontextualize audio and video recordings captured in daily life for spaces of catharsis. Tonight Reylinn presents an audio/visual piece performed live through Ableton and Resolume. The base material consists of field recordings and videos taken in daily life and during travels over the past year, heavily distorted and experimented with for an immersive experience. 

Curated for Nonsequitur’s NonSeq series by Connie Fu.

Presented by the Vera Project. Doors open 7 PM.

Nadah El Shazly is a producer, vocalist and sound artist from Cairo, Egypt. Her music combines expressive 19th century musical concepts from her homeland with contemporary, borderless forays into electronic and improvisational idioms. She has toured the world extensively, featuring at festivals including Le Guess Who?, REWIRE, Irtijal, and FIMAV, among many others. Her debut album, Ahwar, landed at #12 on The Wire’s ‘Best Albums of 2017’. Beyond her own music, El Shazly is an inspired collaborator, working closely with like-minded Egyptian musicians Maurice Louca and Sam Shalabi (Land of Kush). Recently, she’s been making brain-scrambling, beat-driven music as Pollution Opera, a newly minted duo with irreverent Welsh sound artist Elvin Brandhi. El Shazly has also spent time on-screen, starring in the feature length film About Her (2020) and appearing in the Netflix original series Love, Life & Everything In Between (2022). Currently, she is wrapping production on a pair of film scores and preparing to release her sophomore album, due in spring of 2024.

Seattle artists Natasha El-Sergany and Josh Medina of somesurprises perform music from their new serious dreams project.

The Xyloboyz (Aaron Michael Butler and Jonathan Rodriguez) present: MUSIC FOR BASS DRUMS

This program will include classic works like John Zorn’s Dark River and Gerard Grisey’s Stèle for bass drum duo, as well as newly composed works featuring guest musicians by the duo. 

Of Pillars (featuring Casey Adams), Jonathan Rodriguez writes: 

“In the intricate dance of familial symbolism, este enigmático cornerstone of lineage stands veiled, su esencia obscured by el shroud of convolución temporal. Whispers of ancestry waltz dentro de los labyrinthine corridors of obfuscated epochs, no dimes nor energy ¿can el clandestine pilar of kinship be deciphered? Un cipher entwined con los echoes de ancestral murmurs, concealing los riddles of enigma familial. Diamond drear.“

Fiddle/synth droners Glum Reaper will open the show.

Please join us for an evening of immersive, deep, and meditative experimentalism. Listeners are encouraged to bring yoga mats, blankets, etc. to enjoy the evening if they wish.