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

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.

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.

Trevor Eulau (guitar, singing bowls, voice), Beau Wood (bass), Jacob Lipp (saxophone), EJ Brannan (percussion/drum set), Matt Camgros (percussion/drum set) perform a ceremonial free improvisation that invites listeners to enter a space that is sacred, musical and performative.

The group started as an effort to clear heavy energies from a University of Washington music room. The room carried a lot of weight, and Matt, EJ, Trevor and Beau decided to hold a ceremony to help uplift the room and hopefully bring it some radiance and relief. The resulting music was the start of a magical gathering of friends, making music that is present and all encompassing. This will be the first sharing of this intimate kind of music making with others. 

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.

Veteran Seattle electronic music composer Marc Barreca performs electronic compositions with modular synth and audio processing. He has been making electronic music in Seattle since the mid-1970s, releasing a number of projects over the years on the Hawaii-based Palace of Lights label. His most recent releases include the solo CD Recordings of Failing Light, and a collaboration with K. Leimer, Drowning Guides.

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 beyond the furthest reaches of our imaginations. Extensive research into this vast uncharted world is conducted by the mysterious SYNPROV CORP, a pulsating throb of musicians, producers, sound designers, visual artists, pixel bandits, and B-movie chuds, based in Seattle, WA, USA, Earth, Solar System, and so on and so forth… Audiences are immersed in surreal audio/visual performances that blend cutting-edge ambient, experimental electronica, obscure cinema, DIY visuals, and general WTFness.

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.

Local percussionist and composer Aaron Michael Butler premieres two new works for solo percussion by composers Matt Sargent and Anthony Donofrio. 

Donofrio’s Until Then plays with narrative by interweaving six musical “stories” – related through texture, timbre, and/or musical material – in a non-linear arc that explores the effects that duration can have on memory and meaning. 

Of Bell Arcs, Sargent says:

Bell Arcs is a book of patterns, composed for Aaron Michael Butler. The piece began its life as a few pages of non-repeating, simple-yet-strange patterns that lived in the back of one of my notebooks for several years. When Aaron asked about a new piece and mentioned his instrument collection (including a collection of unusual orchestral chimes), the purpose for these patterns as a compositional idea suddenly came into focus. Each of the movements of “Bell Arcs” present the performer with questions of notation, physicality, and improvisation. The music is constructed throughout with slowly phasing/orbiting patterns, which reveal new variations with every pass. I hope that the listener feels drawn to dwell and meditate within this environment of ringing metal.

Matt Sargent will also perform his Fifth Illumination for solo electric guitar and electronics. 

Please join us for an evening of delicate, meditative experimentalism. Listeners are encouraged to bring yoga mats, blankets, etc. to enjoy the evening if they wish. No one turned away for lack of funds.

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.

Lara Grant (Portland) is a designer, educator, and fabricator of interactive works that often include e-textiles and wearable electronics. Her past adventures include being part of the Instructables Design Studio, teaching a studio class called Wearable and Soft Interactions at California College of Arts, and co-authoring a chapter on soft and musical circuit projects in the 3rd edition of Handmade Electronic Music, by Nicolas Collins. She is currently a co-organizer of the electronic textile camp. The sewing machine has been a chosen tool of Lara’s for many years, so it made sense to explore one sonically while looking for interesting ways to create sounds. During the night Lara will perform with some of her latest sewing machine instruments in conjunction with her modular synth setup.

Julia Santoli (Brooklyn) is a multi-disciplinary artist and experimental musician who creates immersive and precarious environments with voice, feedback, electronics, and installation. Her approach to vocalization integrates embodied practice with an attention to close listening and empathetic response, in electroacoustic compositions and structured improvisations often tipping the scales between resonant clarity and extreme sonic states. Currently, she is pursuing doctoral studies in music and social practices in the Ethnomusicology program at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She is also a part of the Feedback Ensemble alongside Luke Stewart, Leila Bordreuil, Chris Corsano, John McCowen, C. Spencer Yeh, and Nate Wooley. This evening, Julia will construct a system of feedback sources throughout the space, enacting a site of deep listening and improvisation. Songs will emerge from her current work traversing dream stages through frequency patterns.

Chari Glogovac-Smith (Seattle) is an Emmy-nominated composer, performer, and intermedia artist. Using an evolving mixture of traditional and experimental techniques, Chari is dynamically exploring and illustrating various counterpoints between the human experience and society. Chari’s recent works have posed questions about empathy, conflict, landscapes and cultural connections, the archive, social justice, healing, listening, and time.

Curated for Nonsequitur‘s NonSeq series by Afroditi Psarra.

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.

Schizophonia, from the Greek; schizo– to split / phonia– sound | the splitting of sound from its original source | The twentieth century development of sound reproduction and its cultural impact on society prompted Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer to coin the term schizophonia, writing that “…it was intended to be a nervous word… I intended it to convey…(a) sense of aberration and drama…” In his experimental theater work for harp, “The Crown of Ariadne”, Schafer employs schizophonia to mirror the trauma and violence of a Greek myth in the relationship between instrument and performer. Centered around that pivotal work, this program descends further into the labyrinth, exploring how the physical mechanism of the harp invites the use of schizophonic gestures to establish dislocated soundscapes. Each work is based on a unique choreography of sonic obfuscation where performative movement shapes new meaning and sounds, leaning into the aberration that Schafer spoke of. The harp is decontextualized, allowing it to evoke aching tenderness and brutal destruction simultaneously. Within this unsettling atmosphere, the instrument is transformed, taking the severance of sound and turning it into a ritual for understanding the ugliness and beauty of life. 

Melissa Achten is a Los Angeles based harpist focused on experimentation and immersive musical ritual. Her performances directly engage with the listener, blurring the relationship between bodies, instruments, and sound to destabilize and thereby reveal hidden meaning. Within carefully conjured atmospheres, she explores the nuances of surrealism, fantasy, mythology, and the occult and what these say about the human condition. In her hands, the harp is untangled from convention and remade as a divining tool for channeling work that is diaristic, intimate, and cathartic. Drawn to interdisciplinary form, Melissa frequently collaborates with performers, composers, and other artists to realize their work and her own.

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.

Trio de Bois presents an evening of new music for reed trio (bassoon, oboe, clarinet) featuring an international roster of living composers and highlighting works commissioned for their groundbreaking Call for Scores commission project. Featured composers are Adrienne Albert, Reed Hanna, Jon Grier, and Adi Traar. This concert will also be streamed live here.

This recital represents the culmination of three years of work in commissioning and premiering 30 new pieces into the canon for bassoon, oboe, and clarinet ensemble. When this project began at the onset of the COVID lockdown in April of 2020, the ensemble learned to adapt rehearsals to an online format to make preparations from their isolated locations in three different states. The musicians of Trio de Bois have honed this process of rehearsing from Utah, Washington, and Texas, bringing in composers from around the world through Zoom to collaborate and create. After three years of virtual rehearsal and preparation, they are finally able to come together for the first time in person to perform selections from this project live and in concert.  

Lori Shepherd is a local freelance clarinetist and woodwind specialist based in Woodinville. In addition to performing chamber music on clarinet, she is often spotted doubling on sax and flute in musical pits at the Village and 5th Avenue theaters, or sitting in with local orchestras and jazz ensembles. 

Hailing from Houston, Texas, bassoonist Robyn Watson is a new addition to the Seattle music scene. Since her arrival last summer, she has been called to perform up and down the Pacific Northwest coast with the Village Theater, Auburn Symphony, Oregon Symphony, and Oregon Ballet Theater. She also continues jet set for performances with the Avant Chamber Ballet and East Texas Symphony in Dallas.

Nicole Marriott-Fullmer, oboist, resides in Pleasant Grove, Utah. She is an active freelance musician, performing on call with the Utah Symphony and Ballet West in Salt Lake City. Additionally, she plays in a contemporary fusion quartet called Chrome Street, alongside her guitarist husband and violin & cello colleagues.

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.

From graphic scores to broken instruments, Ensemble Unnamable presents an evening of acoustic music, led by writer and composer Ian Gwin. 

The term “Pure Land” in Buddhist discourse refers to fields of activity beyond transmigration, spaces of contemplation a practitioner visits on the way to enlightenment. As a plane of transition from the difficulties of earthly life, a pure land invites new worlds of sound and perception. 

Inspired by this iconography and its use in meditation practice, writer and composer Ian Gwin presents a set of experimental compositions prepared for particular performers. 

These include “Pure Lands,” a minimal graphic piece written for Moscow-born violinist Kirill Polyanskiy. A graduate of Cornish School of the Arts, Kirill is the Concertmaster of the WSU Symphony Orchestra and plays in the first violin section of the Washington Idaho Symphony.

“Winter into Spring,” for solo piano, features dancer Yarrow Grae, a Seattle-born visual artist whose art has been exhibited in Norway and featured in residence at Massia Art Collective in Estonia. 

“Suite for Broken Instruments” groups poet Eric Acosta with composer-performer Joey Largent. Known for his bimonthly poetry reading series, Eric has published in Concision, Clamor, NoMaterial, and performed music at Vermilion Gallery in Seattle. Focused on long-duration acoustic improvisations, Joey studied North Indian Classical Singing with disciples of Pandit Pran Nath, like Michael Harrison and Rose Okada.

“One Difference” also features Largent and writer/musician Meredith Davey. Former member of eclectic trio Supernowhere, Meredith composes and plays regularly, including with local group Masha.