Two of Seattle’s leading improvisers offer an intimate concert of solo music. Tom Varner (French horn) and Eric Barber (saxophones) perform compositions and improvisations in the haunting acoustics of the Good Shepherd Chapel. Expect fresh ideas, new sounds, and two idiosyncratic musicians exploring the freedom and vulnerability of the solo set.

The Seattle Composers’ Salon is a semi-monthly, informal presentation of new music by Seattle composers. The salon features finished works, previews, and works-in-progress, and brings together composers, performers and audience members in a casual setting that allows for discussion and experimentation. This special salon includes the premiere of a new duo by Eric Flesher, winner of the 2nd Seattle Composers’ Salon Commissioning Project. Also, percussion duos by Tom Baker and Jesse Canterbury, performed by Dale Speicher, Greg Campbell, and Ben Thomas.

The ninety-minute contrabass clarinet performance is both a statement, and a refusal to engage with statement. What occurs is (or, as close to…) the strictly sonic. Multiple phonics, multiple (the complete array of…) dynamics. The musical range bears simply with limitations — all of ours.

Two of Seattle’s premiere avant-jazz ensembles explore the territory of the in-between. The Tom Baker Quartet brings together elements of jazz, modern classical, world music, and free improvisation to blur the boundaries between notated music and free improvisation. Sunship features guitarist Brian Heaney, saxophonist Michael Monhart, bassist Andrew Luthringer, and drummer David Revelli, along with the god-father of new music in Seattle, trombonist Stuart Dempster.

Seattle performance artist Vanessa Skantze presents a new interpretation of her harrowing, emotionally charged piece, Lucifer. Based on Skantze’s radical reading of Milton, the work combines movement, voice, and song with an improvised industrial/electronic soundscape created by In the Deep Museum.

Elevator Bath label founder Colin Andrew Sheffield (samples, processing) & his Texan compadre James Eck Rippie (turntables, processing); Seattle’s Phil Hendricks aka atlatl (voltage-controlled vacuum tube electronics, modular synthesizers); rebreather is Alex Keller and Chris DeLaurenti (sabotaged consumer electronics, homebrew circuits, etc.).

Butoh dance: Death Posture (Vanessa Skantze & Alex Haverfield), Ariel Denham, Douglas Ridings, Kaia Selene, Alan Sutherland. Musicians: In the Deep Museum (guitars, soundscapes), Dean Moore (percussion), Susan Dummet (voice), Noise Poet Nobody (stringboard)

SUBTEXT is pleased to present a special evening of SOUND/VISUAL/DIGITAL/ POETRIES at the future home of the Subtext reading series, which is moving from Hugo House to the Chapel Performance Space in June. Performers for the evening are Jim Andrews (Victoria, BC), Crag Hill (Moscow, ID), Geof Huth (Schenectady, NY), & Nico Vassilakis (Seattle).

The Microscore Project is an ongoing collaboration between violinist Johnny Chang and cellist Jessica Catron. Since 2001 the duo has commissioned and performed over 225 miniature works from artists around the world. Each piece is approximately 30-seconds in duration, and they are performed back-to-back to create a larger “work” that is unique to each concert. This program includes several works by Seattle composers, and selections from James Tenney’s “Postal Pieces,” as well as his “Just Another Bagatelle,” composed for the Microscore Project in 2004.

Arizona-based improviser Jeph Jerman founded animist orchestra in 1999 while living in Seattle. Using only unamplified natural objects as instruments – rocks, shells, feathers, seeds, twigs, etc. – the group’s aim is to create a listening environment that is not based on traditional musical notions such as the sharing of emotion or the demonstration of instrumental prowess. Rather, they make sound to listen to, intuitively and with the simplest of means.