Neal Kosaly-Meyer presents his ongoing work for solo piano, Gradus: For Fux, Tesla and Milo the Wrestler. A large, mixed ensemble will perform John Teske’s novelty generator, a new improvisation framework for durational performance. Both works will be performed simultaneously as a two-hour piano concerto, with the ensemble encircling the piano.

Gradus: for Fux, Tesla and Milo the Wrestler is Neal Kosaly-Meyer’s composition in progress for solo piano. It began with the sentence, “learn to play the piano one note at a time.” That instruction became a project to devote an extended solo improvisation session to each single tone on the piano, and to each combination of tones on the piano. Now in year 24 of the project, all the pitches in the D major scale have been accumulated, and are featured in the first rung of tonight’s performance. Live performances of Gradus are presented as 3 Rungs, one Rung focused on a single pitch, a second Rung on 2 pitches, and the third on 3 or more pitches. The ambient sound of the performance space is fully as important to a Gradus performance as are the intentionally produced piano sound.

Neal Kosaly-Meyer has been actively working on Gradus: for Fux, Tesla and Milo the Wrestler since 2002. Another long-term project has been A Finnegans Wake Project, learning and performing from memory each of the seventeen chapters of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Part II, Chapter 3, will be performed this December at Chapel Performance Space, one of the Wake’s longest chapters, taking approximately five hours to recite. Kosaly-Meyer also performs rock n roll with Karen Eisenbrey as Your Mother Should Know, and is a founding member with Keith Eisenbrey and Aaron Keyt of Banned Rehearsal, an argument in creative expression, now entering its forty-second year.

For more than fifteen years, John Teske has been exploring composition for open instrumentation, shaped by hand-crafted algorithms. His latest work, ‘novelty generator,’ continues this approach. Inspired by elementary cellular automata, the piece is built upon straightforward rules that allow for unexpected and complex patterns to emerge. ‘novelty generator’ will be performed by: Matt Benham, Hanna Broback, Aaron Michael Butler, Haley Freedlund, Noel Kennon, Dave Knott, Christian Pincock, Greg Sinibaldi, Dave Stanford, John Teske, and Evan Woodle.

John Teske is a Seattle-based composer writing contemporary concert music and presenting site-specific performances. He has written works for soloists, chamber ensembles, and chamber orchestras, which have been performed across the Americas and Europe. Teske’s compositional approach balances intentional composition with spontaneous expression. Using algorithmic techniques, he sculpts scores and musical systems that incorporate chance, variation, and improvisation. He experiments with distilling musical concepts to their essence and aims to write music that can be performed by any ensemble of instruments. Teske’s work has been supported by organizations such as the Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, the Jack Straw Foundation, and the City of Seattle.

Now in it’s 19th year, Seattle ensemble Eye Music presents a concert of text based and graphic scores chosen for their ability to be interpreted in both sound and movement. The group of eight musicians are joined by dancer Katrina Wolfe. The works include pieces composed for the group by Eric Lanzillotta and historic compositions by Mieko Shiomi, David Toop, and Richard Teitelbaum.

The Wizards are Returning with Reinforcements to Once Again Corrupt the Young and Confound the Ancient!

Tom “Green Eggs and Ham” Baker, guitar; Keith “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins” Eisenbrey, piano; Haley “Would You Rather Be a Bullfrog?” Freedlund, trombone; Leanna “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!” Keith, flute; Jim “Horton Hears a Who” Knodle, trumpet

R.A. Jones is a New York-based composer, producer, and educator. A current member of electronic, avant-garde band Eaters, the bi-continental duo Scythe, and releasing solo music as Jha Bones, Bob first appeared on the international stage through his involvement in Jackie-O-Motherfucker and Parquet Courts, to say nothing of the more regional/local heavyweights Evolutionary Jass Band (Portland, OR) and Gospel of Mars.

For his performance at the Chapel, Jones will present new work centering on gesture as a means of sonic origination and interaction. Using a 3-D motion sensor to modulate synthesis and spatial processes in real time, Bob’s performance calls to mind the kinetic syntax of orchestral conducting, the hand as positioned in Orthodox iconography, and Eastern mudras. The result is undeniably computer music, yet the computer itself seems off center, or at least off stage: less an instrument, more a conduit, a feedback loop between embodied intention and sound in space and time—a continuous, tactile exchange. Bob’s most recent work is Sahrazad, the debut release on Random Walk, a new label focusing on spatial audio founded by Ryan Carlile of Visible Cloaks.

Wild Strawberries is a new project with Nick Bindeman (Eternal Tapestry) and Ryan Carlile (Visible Cloaks). The duo crafts expansive compositions in which heavily processed guitar textures dissolve into shimmering delays and reverbs, paired with a digital horn (EWI) that breathes between acoustic models and digital abstractions. Their patient, hypnotic compositions build through gentle layering, creating music that feels both structured and spontaneous.

RM Francis is an artist working with computer-generated sound and language. His work explores the unique perceptual effects of the simulated human voice and the unstable auditory personae that emerge within the gap between artificial and embodied speech systems. Alongside this inquiry into the material properties of the voice, he is engaged in an investigation of the semantic affordances of spoken language decoupled from its capacity for the communication of human intention. These processes yield a synthetic sprechstimme that traverses a continuum of vocality ranging from abstract sound to uncanny characterological specificity. His most recent release is H E L L O After-Person, a collaboration with Viennese sound artist Jung An Tagen.

Myrrum is a Seattle-based instrumental and experimental band, active in the community since 2011. Making use of sample-based rhythms and textures, feedback, drones, swells, and distortion, as well as softer arrangements for brass, vibraphone, mellotron, and modular synthesis, Myrrum stubbornly explores structure through improvisation, repetition, intensity, and friendship. Having released a full length record in 2016, as well as a live recording with Sonarchy Radio through KEXP in 2018, Myrrum is celebrating the release of their new, self-titled full-length record and an accompanying EP. This record release and performance is in honor and celebration of Brian T. Boyle, founding member of Myrrum and dearest friend for life. 

Brit Ruggirello is a Seattle-based artist performing under the moniker, flowers in the city. Blending ambient textures, distorted loops, and electronic vocal echoes with womb-resonant tones, her music drifts between tenderness and tension. Through layered soundscapes and somber ache, she explores the messy beauty of love, longing, and inner worlds.

Demure Asian Rage is a multidisciplinary structural improv piece involving taiko, flute, electronics, poetry, and movement. This work explores how rage manifests in the context of being Asian, non-binary, genderfluid and AFAB individual in a world that frequently marginalizes such identities. What if our inner world was allowed to be free? What happens when rage and joy are encouraged to be unleashed? Demure Asian Rage is created by flutist/taiko drummer/composer Leanna Keith and taiko artist/composer Yeeman “ManMan” Mui. Poetry by Shin Yu Pai. With opening set by Josh Hou. 

The work is being created in collaboration between flutist/taiko drummer/composer Leanna Keith and taiko artist/composer ManMan Mui. Both artists are Asian-Americans with Chinese (Mainland and HongKong respectively) backgrounds who chose to use a Japanese traditional art form as their mode of expression. Both artists have a focus on storytelling through musical expression, choreography, and theming. Together, they believe they can create something truly unique in both the realm of taiko and experimental art. 

The Red Pants Collective, an improvised movement and sound project formed by father/daughter duo Giordana and James Falzone, are joined by special guests Christopher Williams (bass) and Jadi Carboni (movement) from Graz, Austria, and Seattle stalwarts Luci Baker (movement) and Steve Peters (field recordings).

Rich viola melodies fuse with ambient soundscapes in this new collaborative album performance from Tristan de Liège & Gregory Allison. Their new release, Samatha, features meditations for solo viola performed by Allison and soundscapes beautifully crafted by de Liège. They will be performing music from the record and others from their previous two collaborative albums. Vinyl will be available at the show!

Asher Fulero opens with a set of solo piano. Fulero is a world-class Pianist/Keyboardist with virtuosic skills and a modern-edged Music Producer that defies categorization. Constantly involved in a wide range of musical projects, he has spent the last 20 years relentlessly pushing his own boundaries both technically and stylistically while captivating music lovers around the globe with his fresh ideas, deep chops, natural feel and infectious spontaneity.

Rooted in Eastern European Jewish life, Yiddish music holds echoes of migration, memory, and revolution. In Facing Yiddishland, three bold artists push this tradition into new terrain. Lori Goldston, Chaia, and Levoneh reimagine the Yiddish song tradition through glitchy and psychedelic performance techniques.

Classically trained and rigorously de-trained, possessor of a restless, semi-feral spirit, Lori Goldston (Earth, Nirvana, Mirah) is a cellist, composer, improvisor, producer, writer and teacher from Seattle. Her voice as a cellist, amplified or acoustic, is full, textured, committed and original. A relentless inquirer, her work drifts freely across borders that separate genre, discipline, time and geography.

Chaia is an electronic composer working at the intersection of Yiddish culture and electronic club music. She weaves archival Yiddish samples with techno and ambient frameworks, creating hybrid folkloric-electronic compositions that situate ancestral sound within global and liberatory rave ecologies. Her work has been featured at the NAMM Show, Pop Montreal, Shtetl Berlin, and beyond.

Levoneh is a collaborative music project led by composer and producer, Ross Kirshenbaum, based in Seattle, on unseeded Duwamish territory. Kirshenbaum grew up in the PNW, deeply influenced by the coalescence of gritty, ethereal, and moody music that evolved there. Levoneh reflects the absorption and digestion of these dichotomies, combining elements of electro-acoustic, psychedelic pop soundscapes with deeply vulnerable protest folk songs.

Saxophonist Steve Griggs, synthesist Ruben Griggs, and percussionist Greg Campbell reunite as Dowsing, a free-improv interplay between acoustic jazz and ambient electronics. Imagine John Coltrane at peace, scanning the crepuscule on a Southern California beach, his toes in warm ebbing waves, birds darting above in dimming dusk, the boom of a low-rider rumbling in the distance, a nearby bucket drummer riffs and rocks. Where is the source of all this magic? Dowsing taps it gently on your eardrums.