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Mutantrumpet composer/performer Ben Neill will perform Trove, a series of richly textured ambient pieces based on Fibonacci structures that emanate entirely from his instrument’s acoustic timbral improvisations.

Composer/performer Ben Neill is the inventor of the Mutantrumpet, a futuristic, electro-acoustic instrument, and is recognized as a musical innovator who creates “art music for the people” (Wired Magazine). Neill blends ambient, minimalist, and improvised musical elements to create otherworldly sonic and visual experiences that blur the lines between acoustic instrumentation and digital media.

The Mutantrumpet was originally developed with synthesizer inventor Robert Moog and the STEIM research lab for new instruments in Amsterdam. Neill’s extensive discography includes releases on the Verve/Universal, Thirsty Ear, and Astralwerks/EMI labels, as well as Six Degrees Records, which released his album Prana Cantos on their Soundbalm series in May 2023. His long international performance history includes major festivals, concert halls, clubs, and museums such as BAM Next Wave Festival, Lincoln Center, Whitney Museum, Getty Museum, Big Ears Festival, Moogfest, Spoleto Festival, Umbria Jazz, Bang On A Can Festival, ICA London, Vienna Jazz Festival, Bing Concert Hall at Stanford University, Edinburgh Festival, Ambient Church, and many others. Neill has been a close associate of La Monte Young since the early 1980’s, leading many international performances of Young’s music. He has worked closely with other innovative musicians and artists including David Behrman, John Cage, John Cale, Rhys Chatham, Nicolas Collins, DJ Spooky, Mimi Goese, King Britt, Pauline Oliveros, and David Wojnarowicz. Since 2008 he has been a Professor of Music at Ramapo College of New Jersey.

Presented by Nonsequitur.

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In her first public performance in three years, Crystal Beth (aka: Beth Fleenor) returns to the Chapel to start fresh and reignite the cauldrons. In this solo incarnation, she uses amplified clarinet, wailing vocals, and electronics to weave a sonic universe all her own. Known for crafting aural rituals that encompass industrial chants in her own invented language, alien disco breaks, heart gushings, and robot love songs, Crystal Beth redefines the possibilities of the voice and clarinet in tight experimental pop songs and undulating, cathartic noise cries.

Christopher Icasiano is a Filipinx-American percussionist and composer from Redmond, WA. Based now in Seattle, he has been performing and touring professionally for over 15 years. His specialization in free-improvisation and experimental music combined with his vast experience with pop and rock have made him a highly sought after collaborator in all genres of music. Tonight’s solo piece will be performed entirely on acoustic drum set.

Ahamefule J. Oluo (they/them) is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, writer, comedian, and creator of live performance and theater. A founding member of the award-winning experimental jazz quartet Industrial Revelation and a Mellon Creative Research Fellow, Oluo was a recipient of a Creative Capital Award, a the ArtistTrust Arts Innovators award, and a semi-finalist in NBC’s Stand Up for Diversity comedy competition. They have premiered two autobiographical music-based performances at The Public Theater’s prestigious Under the Radar Festival: Now I’m Fine (2016), and Susan (2020). Now I’m Fine was adapted into the film Thin Skin, starring Oluo, who also wrote the script and the score. Thin Skin won Best Director (Charles Mudede) at the Harlem Film Festival. Tonight Oluo will perform new pieces for their upcoming solo show The Things Around Us which features music for trumpet, clarinet and drums.

Curated for Nonsequitur’s NonSeq series by Michaud Savage.

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Composer/sound artist Breana Tavaglione utilizes composition as a means to paint with sound, creating an immersive sensory experience in which she deconstructs conceptual themes in order to convey a specific mood or aesthetic, transporting listeners to an alternative sonic landscape. She graduated from California Institute of the Arts in 2018 with an MFA Experimental Sound Practices, and from Mills College in 2016 BA Music Composition with an Emphasis in Media Technology and Electronic Music. She is a PhD candidate in Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) at the University of Washington. Tonight Breana will present a new work for electronics and live instrumentation, featuring percussionist Matt Camgros.

Laura Luna Castillo is a Mexican multimedia and new technologies artist and composer. Through convergences of time-based media, music, sculpture and generative storytelling Luna explores personal and collective identities shaped by political and intimate spaces. With a passion for machines, generative narratives, and the complexities of memory, she has developed audiovisual performances, installations and hybrid works for festivals such as MUTEK Montréal, CYNETART Festival, and EMPAC (Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center). For this performance, Luna Castillo will create an audiovisual exploration of mnemonic patterns against entropy combining sampling, algorithmic sound processing and synthesizers. Inspired by the mechanisms of the brain to identify, classify and recall patterns of familiarity, a series of audiovisual algorithms are used to extract data medians and averages, compressing and dilating personal, appropriated and imaginary memories.

Alissa Derubeis is an East Coast electronic musician who especially enjoys improvisation with synthesizers and collaborations. Quiet Eyes of Air, her duo project with fellow synthesist Yasi Perera, was born in the spring and tends to emerge in the spring. They will present Guard Less, a triple cancerian presentation based on allowing connection in all of its beautiful complications and consequences. Alissa and Yasi will play modular synths affected by the movements of Em Jones. 

Curated for Nonsequitur‘s NonSeq series by Afroditi Psarra.

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Pianist Ann DuHamel performs new and recently composed music — thought-provoking, imaginative, evocative music — about the climate crisis. 

Ann DuHamel’s performances have been praised as poetic and “… a delight for the ears and the soul” (Encuentro Universitario Internacional de Saxofón, Mexico City). She has performed in 18 countries, including concerts at Sala Verdi in Milan, Italy; the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland; Carnegie Weill Recital Hall in New York; and Trinity College in Oxford, England. Hailed as a “forward thinking classical pianist” (Midwest Record) for her debut album Rückblick: New Piano Music Inspired by Brahms (Furious Artisans, 2020), Ann actively champions contemporary composers. Ann can also be heard on the 2022 release Tyler Kline: Orchard (Neuma Records, 2022). Fanfare Magazine praised her performance as “alive … [played with] aching expression.”

Her latest project, Prayers for a Feverish Planet, responds to the climate crisis with 60 new works, from composers across the globe, for piano and piano/electronics. During the Fall of 2022, she was awarded artist residencies at Tofte Lake Center (MN) and Everwood Farmstead Foundation (WI) for this project, which has also received extensive support from the University of Minnesota (Institute for Advanced Study Residential Fellow, Fall 2021; Imagine Fund Special Events Grant; and Grant-In-Aid of Research, Artistry, and Scholarship). She has been interviewed about the project on Modern Notebook Radio (WSMR) and Minnesota Public Radio’s All Things Considered with Tom Crann.

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This evening, directed by Joan Laage/Kogut Butoh and composer Amy Denio, and co-created with the performers, celebrates the wayward girls who lived in the Good Shepherd Center, their lives real and imaginary. 

While attending a performance at the Chapel, which we do frequently, my husband exclaimed, “the house of the pregnant girls,” and I suddenly decided to create a piece inspired by the center’s history and occupants. The Sisters of the Good Shepherd order started in France, spread to the US and in 1890, a train brought five nuns through the forest and mountains to Seattle. The center provided shelter, education, and guidance to young girls so they could become caring, responsible, and moral young women. An emphasis on morality was most likely strongly linked to sexuality. Today’s increasing restrictions on sex education coupled with the denial of fluid gender identity are also burdened by what might be called the “moral imperative.” There is great political pressure on women concerning their rights as sexual beings, potential mothers, etc., with the self-determination of women’s bodies being eroded.  

Amy Denio: voice, clarinet, accordion
Randy Shay: guitar, piano
Greg Campbell: French horn, percussion
Joey Largent: accordion
Sheri Brown & Robyn Bjornson: butoh dance

Known as Kogut Butoh, Joan Laage has been performing and teaching butoh and collaborating with area and international performers since she settled in Seattle in 1990 after studying butoh with masters in Tokyo. Collaborations include Rob Angus, Noisepoetnobody, Stephen Fandrich, Jeff Greinke, Scott Adams and Seattle Kokon Taiko. Her group Dappin’ Butoh was well-known in the Seattle Fringe Theater Festival for 10 years. Joan is a co-founder of DAIPANbutoh Collective (since 2010), which produces an annual butoh festival. In past summers she has been performing free outdoor events with Michael Shannon, David Stanford, Joey Largent and others on area beaches and in public and private gardens. Her work is influenced by her years of practicing Tai Chi and her profession as a gardener.

Amy Denio is an award-winning composer, singer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist, record producer and recording engineer. Denio has completed dozens of commissions and grants to compose for modern dance, film and theater, multi-media performances, and television. To date, she has created over 600 works and has produced recordings in collaboration with artists all over the world. She operates Spoot Music, her record label, publishing company and recording studio.

Randy Shay is a versatile composer/singer/songwriter whose main instruments are piano and guitar, but also bass, mandolin, viol, and zither. He plays original solo compositions at art openings and meditation/dance events and has played in groups such as Spirit of Ojah (African music), Acoustic Snacks (folk & blues) with Jimmy Free, and Tones (multi-genre) with Kirk McNaught.

Greg Campbell plays drums, percussion, French horn, and other instruments. He works in the broader jazz and classical traditions, performing with groups ranging from the Seattle Modern Orchestra to Wayne Horvitz’s Electric Circus, and with artists such as steel pan virtuoso Ray Holman, Eyvind Kang, Ali Birra, Vinny Golia, Lori Goldston, Christian Asplund, Nels Cline, and James Falzone. His studies with Asante palmwine guitarist Koo Nimo led him to Ghana in 2017; he has worked with Koo Nimo’s son Yaw Amponsah in the traditional Asante drumming group Anokye Agofomma for more than twenty years. Greg teaches at the Cornish College of the Arts and at Cascadia College. 

Joey Largent’s work focuses on exploring long-duration compositions and improvisations for acoustic ensembles and solo performance. Beyond generating music alone, his goal is to offer a space for introspection, releasing from attachment, beauty, and connection. He has collaborated with numerous dancers, musicians, and interdisciplinary artists over the years, and has studied North Indian Classical singing with several disciples of Pandit Pran Nath, primarily Michael Harrison and Rose Okada. Joey’s contributions to the musical score include cello, voice, sheng, percussion, bowed cymbals and reed organ.

Sheri Brown is Artistic Director of DAIPANbutoh Collective, a choreographer, dance/math/science teacher, and dreamer. A renaissance woman with 20 years study and training in butoh from a wealth of masters including Joan Laage, Diego Pinon, Katsura Kan, Brown earned her BA in Theatre from Arizona State University and Masters in Teaching from University of Hawaii. Residing in the Tashiro Kaplan Artist Lofts, she directs big roaming butoh performances in the Pioneer Square area every year. Sheri traverses metaphysical bridges, mathematics, spirituality, and dance in a uniquely pioneering way of life.

Robyn Bjornson is a movement and dance facilitator, youth mentor and performing artist. She draws on her deep study of Yoga, contact improvisation, acrobatics, dance and butoh as the foundations for her unfolding practice and lifestyle. She began the study of butoh with Maureen Freehill in 2014 and performed in her first piece in 2015 choreographed by Alycia Scott. In 2016 she dove into butoh at The Evergreen State College with her friend and artistic collaborator Ivan Espinosa and studied with Diego Pinon and Sheri Brown in college while performing in several staged and public park performances.  

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The first annual Discordance Improv Summit, hosted by Portland artist Caspar Sonnet, is inspired by the performances of the Animist Orchestra and improv exercises LaDonna Smith and Davey Williams conducted in the early 1970’s in Birmingham, Alabama. This performance will feature improvisational artists from all over the Pacific Northwest. Each performer is asked to bring one to three non-musical objects that make interesting sounds and carefully improvise with them in small ensemble groupings. This is an event you will not want to miss.

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An evening of original new multi-instrumental works by Seattle Composers Alliance composers, performed by Lori Shepherd and Robyn Watson on clarinet, saxophone, bassoon, contrabassoon, oboe, and English horn.

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To celebrate the release of his first solo album, The Blue Hour, Seattle pianist Jack Ramsey will perform an hour of freely improvised piano music combining classical and jazz influences – an exploration of the artist’s subconscious and an attempt to capture the transformative journey of day into night.

The Blue Hour is Jack Ramsey’s first solo album, recorded on September 15th and 16th, 2022, at Sage Arts Recording Studio in Arlington, WA. For the recording, Ramsey performed six hours of improvised piano music over the course of two days, resulting in 78 short pieces. The 19 tracks in The Blue Hour were selected from these 78 improvised pieces, and arranged into four “suites:” Evening, Night, Dream, and The Blue Hour. This album release show will feature, not an exact recreation of the album material, but a new piano improvisation in the same mood and feeling, joined by NonSeq curator Paul Kikuchi on percussion. You can contribute to Jack’s Kickstarter campaign here.

Please note that our building’s elevator is now back in service!

Trevor Eulau is a composer, guitarist and educator based in Seattle. He is equally at home in the classical, jazz, and pop realms, writing music for string quartets, voice, jazz combos, rock/pop bands, dancers, and filmmakers, along with playing guitar for artists like High Pulp and Talaya. Above all else, Trevor looks to serve the music, and to support and uplift his collaborators and listeners. He’s joined by Jona Brown (keys), Ej Brannon (drums), and Tony Lefaive (bass).

Matt Camgros began playing drums at an early age and attended Sonoma State University, where he studied jazz and improvised music. Relocating to Los Angeles in 2015, Matt performed, recorded and toured with a wide range of musicians in the styles of jazz, improvised music, rock, singer-songwriter and electronic music. Currently, Matt is in Seattle finishing up an MM degree in Jazz and Improvised Music from the University of Washington, graduating June 2023. He’s joined by Jacob Linden (piano), Andrew Friedrich (guitar), and Beau Wood (bass).

Please note that our building’s only elevator is still out of service, so the only way to access the Chapel is via a couple flights of stairs. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Nic Masangkay is a Seattle-based community musician and poet. In addition to their solo work as a singer, songwriter, producer, and activist, Masangkay regularly collaborates with music, movement, and film artists, for remixing, scoring, production, and live sound. Moving to create more inter-generational and all-ages art, working with young people as a teaching artist is a budding focus of their practice. In their music, poetry, collaborations, teaching, and everyday life, Nic generously shares their perspective on the transformative potential of cultural work.

Tonight Nic will be debuting new songs with synthesizers and piano from their forthcoming project When the World Is Ending, I Listen, about Millennials coming of age during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

Doors, 7:30. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Curated for Nonsequitur’s NonSeq series by Paul Kikuchi.