Two Seattle musicians collaborate for a special concert celebrating love, the universe, and world peace.

Serena Tideman is a cellist and composer from the NW. The Seattle Weekly describes her music thus: “Tideman makes poetry of her own with the cello, her lines flowing with the lyricism, tension”. In Pop Matters magazine, she was included in a Top 12 list of best composers to introduce listeners to post-1950s classical music: “Perhaps it is because Tideman composes for an instrument she plays, but her command of just what the instrument is capable of is astounding, virtuosic but always in service of the piece.” Serena is also always known for her tone and use of tone colors as a cellist and composer. She has collaborated professionally as a solo cellist alongside many diverse groups locally as well as internationally, in Royal Theatres and art museums, for the groundbreaking concerts of organic farms, as well as in non traditional spaces. For the Wayward Music Series, in hopes of world peace, Serena has composed a new world premiere for cello and piano, dedicated to her friend Chiao-Yu Wu.

International prize-winning Taiwanese luminary Chiao–Yu Wu will be the featured performer on piano, in addition to being the muse of the new music by Serena. Known for her beautiful, poignant, virtuosic and passionate interpretations of great composers’ works for piano, Chiao-Yu also enjoys multidisciplinary arts cooperation. She has previously performed at prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall and Steinway Beijing, and is an active collaborator in the local Seattle classical music scene.

As well as the cello/piano music composed for the occasion, the evening will also include music by Arvo Pärt (significant for 2025 is his 90th birthday year) and the Seattle premiere of a work by the late Canadian composer Jocelyn Morelock.

Film and Audio Visual performances by indigenous artists, presented by COUSIN Collective:

Svetlana Romanova (Sakha/Even) is an artist, filmmaker, and activist born in Yakutsk, the capital city of the Sakha Republic, Russia, located south of the Arctic Circle. Her practice centers on the critical importance of Indigenous visual language and sovereignty to the sustainability of Indigenous identity, particularly in the Arctic regions, and how art can be used as a tool for Indigenous advocacy internationally.

al-yené is an artist born and raised in the Sakha republic. She works across different media, but mostly with video and poetry. Her practice is focused on continuity, displacement, gaps and absences within sakha cultural memory.  

Kole Galbraith is a multi-disciplinary artist who focuses on sound, audio-visual, and found-object installation. Based in both Seattle, Washington and Tartu, Estonia, Kole Galbraith has been active in the underground experimental music community for the past decade performing throughout the West Coast of the United States and Europe. Sonically his sonic studio compositions are informed by early 20th century French musique-concrète, metal, jazz and contemporary composition. Thematically, the compositions are influenced by interior Salish folklore, and contemporary indigenous experience.

Sonora Enjambre is a multi-undisciplinary artist and musician. A descendant of the Condor y la Aguila,  Sonora Enjambre currently lives on unceded Duwamish territory. Sonora has primarily, but not exclusively, performed and been featured in Washington State, earning an artist residency at the Nalanda West Buddhist temple and contributing a long-form composition to the Wayward in Limbo series curated by Nonsequitur in Si’ahl.

The Horse Thief (Diné) is coming.

Music and sounds for the koto, viola, electronics, ukulele and more featuring Robert Millis (Climax Golden Twins,Sublime Frequencies), Katherine Whatley and Noel Kennon who will all play solo and together in some as yet undetermined improvisatory arrangement. Whatley and Millis recently released a cassette of trio performances from Japan on the SoundHoles label. Millis has a new solo LP out on Discrepant. Noel Kennon continues to confound and impress with his multifaceted recordings, live shows, and beyond including his recent premier of the beautiful 11 Scenes Framed by a Sunset.

Katherine Whatley is a koto musician, composer and researcher. She plays both traditional and experimental koto, both improvised and composed. Her compositions have been performed by the Stanford New Ensemble and the Earplay Ensemble. She has toured Japan with noise ensembles, and performed in jazz and electroacoustic duos. She has also appeared as a presenter for the BBC and writer in the Japan Times. Born and raised in Japan, she is currently researching pre-modern Japanese literature and music at Stanford University. 

Solo performance by Marcin Pączkowski, followed a trio featuring Don Berman, Heather Bentley, and Ewa Trębacz in their first appearance together since their show last summer at the Olympia Free Jazz Festival. 

Marcin Pączkowski, a Seattle-based composer, conductor, digital artist, and violinist, holds the position of Music Director for the Evergreen Community Orchestra. He earned his PhD from the University of Washington’s Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) program. For this performance, Marcin will explore the relationship between sound and movement. In a piece shaped in real time, blending industrial field recordings with ambient synthesized textures. This is realized by utilizing his customized motion sensor system, combined with physical gestures to create a direct and expressive link between the body and sound.

Ewa Trębacz is a violinist, interdisciplinary artist, and composer. Her works have been presented, performed and broadcast in over 30 countries on four continents, and featured in Organised Sound, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, and many other music magazines. In 2009, her work things lost things invisible for Ambisonic space and orchestra, was recognized as work recommended by the 56th UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in Paris, representing 27 radio stations from around the world. In 2022 she was selected to be composer-in-residence at the 33rd Musica Polonica Nova Festival, National Forum of Music in Wrocław, Poland.

Seattle-based violist and composer Heather Bentley has trailblazed a career as one of the West Coast’s most visible improvisatory musicians, specializing in creating evocative atmospheres and textures. Classically trained, she has shifted to an unabashedly experimental artistic output. As a performer, she can be seen performing in numerous chamber ensembles that utilize improvisation, electronics, and often both. As a composer, her work for chamber ensembles and orchestras has been performed by organizations across the US. She is relentless in her creativity!

Don Berman is an established member of the Seattle jazz and improvised music scenes. A midwest transplant to Seattle after completing jazz and classical percussion studies at Oberlin and the University of Illinois, he is a highly eclectic drummer, composer, and percussionist. One of his major recorded works, Ascension Northwest, is a large ensemble composition that he wrote to celebrate John Coltrane’s 90th birthday. Inspired by one of his heroes and a fellow Gemini, Chick Corea, Don maintains a full schedule of widely varied musical projects. His feelings about tonight’s performance echo Ewa’s UW DXARTS Phd bio, which mentions “the unique interaction between human subjects and their acoustic environment.” Tonight, the Chapel space will catalyze an exciting, totally unpredictable trio performance, full of intuitive and thoughtful surprises. 

The Kora Dance Ensemble combines West African traditional songs and strategies,  jazz influences on upright bass and clarinets, and the silent music that is dance.

This ensemble consists of four members: Janelle Bel Isle (dance), Eric Likkel (clarinets), Brady Kish (upright bass) and Chet Corpt (kora). We draw on our experiences within many genres – jazz, blues, soul, Western classical, Turkish Ottoman classical, Balkan, tango, and West African – although the primary organizing principle leans towards the West African Mandinka tradition. In addition to what we’ve learned directly from our contemporaneous African teachers and performers, there are always intriguing traces in our music and dance of our undeserved inheritance, as Americans, of the culture and civilization of West Africa.

A live evening of free guitar improvisation by Carlos Cotallo Solares and Ryan Carraher, each unfolding a distinct approach to the instrument and its electronic extensions. Together, in duo and solo configurations, they engage the guitar’s uncanny versatility within a framework of spontaneous composition. Perussionist Aaron Michael Butler joins to present a new work for vibraphone and electronics by Jeff Herriott.

Carlos Cotallo Solares is a Spanish composer and improviser based in Seattle. His work deals with indeterminism, musical quotation, and the relationship between music and language. His pieces often focus on a single concept or technique that is interpreted in multiple ways. As an improviser, he performs on electric guitar and pedalboard, exploring effects not as a way to modify the guitar’s sound but as instruments on their own. He is a member of the free-improvisation trio Wombat, with Justin Comer (saxophone) and Will Yager (double bass). His music has been performed in festivals and conferences across the US and Europe and his audiovisual collaborations with the video artist Timothy David Orme have been shown at film festivals internationally. He studied composition at the University of Iowa, UDK Berlin, and the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg.

Ryan Carraher is a composer, guitarist, and improviser based in Seattle. His work is concerned with articulating the vulnerability of the human body, the role failure plays in identity expression, and composer-performer-audience relationships informed by kinesthetic empathy. His music has been presented at numerous leading festivals, including Darmstädter Ferienkurse, June in Buffalo, Either/Or’s Spring Festival, New Music on the Bayou, Oh My Ears, New Music on the Point, Charlotte New Music Festival, VIPA, and Etchings.

Aaron Michael Butler is a percussionist, composer, and educator based in Seattle, Washington. His work often deals in static textures, repetition, durational stamina, resonance, and psychoacoustic effects.

The Red Pants Collective, a movement and sound project formed by father/daughter duo Giordana and James Falzone, are joined by very special guests from NYC and Seattle. The evening will weave improvised moments with Klezmer music and lefty political songs in Yiddish.  

Tariq Mitri: movement
Alyza DelPan-Monley: movement
Giordana Falzone: movement
Bonnie Whiting: percussion
Hanz Araki: shakuhachi
Andrew Drury: drums and percussion
Michael Winograd: clarinet
Ira Temple: accordion
James Falzone: clarinet and piano

MICHIKO O (Michiko Ogawa) (Tokyo/Berlin/San Diego) is a researcher-composer touring work from her just-released album, Pancake Moon (Futura Resistenza, Belgium). These compositions are for shō and pre-recorded materials, her shō-playing “like a device that warps and expands time and space”.

Andrew Drury returns to Seattle from Brooklyn, NY, here to join the Seattle/Tracyton spontaneous composition duo known as ‘what‘ (A.F. Jones, steel guitars/electronics; Dave Abramson, percussion). For this performance Drury will use his ever-expanding techniques on the chosen apparatus of prepared floor tom.

Sid Samberg, a composer-pianist originally from Chicago (based in Seattle since 2020) is honored to perform in the Wayward Music Series for a third time, sharing a warm evening of music in the cold final days of autumn. He will perform his original works for piano solo, which explore meditations on dreams, nature, close personal relationships, and the global climate crisis.

Sid Samberg (b. 1989) is a composer-pianist, multi-instrumentalist, writer, and educator. His music flows from an inner voice which connects the emotional content of sound with deeply felt aspects of human experience. He has been described as “uncommonly talented” (John Von Rhein – Chicago Tribune).

Samberg has been called an “eco-pianist” as a result of his musical engagement with climate change. Several of his works, such as Larsen B (2004) and Harvest (2011) are inspired by or dedicated to our relationship with nature.

His recent collaborations include Zero Tolerance, a collaborative project with C. Eule Dance Company about a mother and daughter separated by ICE at the US-Mexico border; the release of LUDO, an EP recording of a modular graphic score written for him by composer Drew Corey, and a performance on piano and keyboards with the NYC experimental black metal band Liturgy in their opera Origin of the Alimonies, at REDCAT in LA. Samberg has a degree in composition from California Institute of the Arts.

Stephen Fandrich is a piano soloist, composer, builder of instruments and creator of interactive sound installation. The piano and piano prepared with various sound altering additions to the strings, combined with a physically modeled Fender Rhodes, will showcase his piano playing, improvisational talents and gifts for instrument making and sound design. Fandrich’s Improvisations are long in form, erase time and expectation, are dramatic to delicate, quiet and transcendent.

Stephen Fandrich has been a resident performing artist of Seattle for 35 years, and is strongly influenced by the music of Asia, particularly Russia, Tyva (Tuva) and Indonesia. Classical piano, jazz piano, prepared piano, gamelan, throat singing, just-intonation, tuning, instrument building, sound-based installation, composition, and improvisation are all current passions.