Hosted by Debacle Records. Doors open at 7:30.

Two of the Pacific Northwest’s most lovely experimental artists have recently put out work that deserves celebrating. Spiritual Exit (Aaron Davis) has released Fragment, a record built from pieces of his own history spanning back to 1999, reconstructed into something that honors nostalgia without surrendering to it. His moving drones, layering guitars and reprocessed sources create these emotional arcs that feel like loss and hope stacked recursively building towards the sky. Meanwhile, John Swanke just dropped the first chapter of his rain country music – stark Americana-inflected guitars, woozy synths, and beautiful field recordings on local label Eiderdown. It’s really something special. Rounding out the evening is Sonora Enjambre, who creates swarms of cascading sound designed for spiritual respite and reflection, guided sonic journeys that prioritize the regenerative power of deep listening. Come out and celebrate these certified rippers.

Spiritual Exit (Aaron Davis) is a Portland-based experimental musician with over 25 years of practice in drone and ambient music. Previously known for his project Acre (early 2000s-2016), which earned critical acclaim for technical innovation and appeared on decade-best lists alongside Tim Hecker and Yellow Swans, Spiritual Exit represents an evolution toward more dynamic emotional territories while maintaining his commitment to heavy and immersive sounds.

John Swanke is a Camano Island-based instrumentalist exploring what he calls “rain country” music, a deeply personal approach that bridges experimental guitar work with regional landscape and ambient tones. John’s practice is rooted in collaboration and a contemplative pride in his natural surroundings.

Sonora Enjambre (Sombra) is a descendant of the Condor y la Aguila who dwells on Duwamish land. Often times, we are inundated with the distraction of “reality and responsibility” and denied what is needed for our spirits to regenerate. Sonorous respite is the desired experience to be shared, reflection for the soul is encouraged, open hearts are welcome.

Clarinetist/composer Eric Mandat will present an evening of solo and group improvisations featuring his unique sonic landscapes that draw from his more than 40 years of explorations with clarinet multiphonics, microtones, and timbral modulations, and further sculpted through his use of interactive technologies. Joining Eric will be Seattle woodwind luminaries Kate Olson, James Falzone, Sean Osborn, and Jesse Canterbury.

Eric has received numerous awards for his work as a composer, and his solo compositions have become staples in the repertoire of adventurous clarinetists throughout the world. Eric tours regularly as a concert soloist. He was a member of the Chicago Symphony’s MusicNOW ensemble for 15 seasons, and he performed with the eclectic experimental sextet Tone Road Ramblers for nearly 30 years. Eric is currently Visiting Professor of Clarinet and Distinguished Scholar at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, where has taught since 1981.

DeKirÖpp is a new trio dedicated to rhythm featuring Jim DeJoie, Steve Kirk and Brian Oppel that dives into exploratory moods through both improvisation and through-composed music! We seek to find the true basis of music through vertical harmony and rhythmic drive. Never losing sight of melody, each player is at once an accompanist and soloist. The improvisation is based on melody and form with the freedom of non-judgmental experimentations. Made up of some of Seattle’s finest, DekirÖpp has played many festivals (including Earshot’s “Jazz in the Second Century) as well as numerous gigs throughout the Seattle area.  Tonight’s performance will also feature visuals by Steve Kennedy Williams.

Three members of the Tom Baker Quartet (Tom Baker, guitar; Brian Cobb, bass; Greg Campbell, drums) will be joined by saxophonist Neil Welch in a set of composed and improvised music. The Tom Baker Quartet combines carefully composed and sometimes complex music with open-ended improvisation and strong grooves. Their album Begin Again was awarded the Earshot Jazz award for Northwest Album of the Year in 2023. Neil Welch has carved out a niche as a specialist in soprano, tenor, baritone, and bass saxophones, creating powerful and original music as a solo artist and with groups such as Bad Luck and the Royal Room Collective Music Ensemble.

Fresh from East Coast tour, Lori Goldston delivers an immersive, transportive improvised solo cello set.

Classically trained and rigorously de-trained, possessor of a restless, semi-feral spirit, Lori Goldston 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.

“Masked, warrantless, unmarked vans, statelessness as policy. Is that mole new? Can you take a look, I can’t get quite the right angle on it.”

This performance features four improvisers – Caroline Kraabel (sax/voice), Kelsey Mines (double-bass/voice), Gregg Miller (clarinet/sax/voice) and Anjali Grant (live drawing) – using sounds, images, and words to conjure and make present the weird contemporaneity of normality and growing dis-ease under contemporary fascism. What is an anti-fascist aesthetic? Given our complex feelings of rage and paralysis, terror and disbelief, the incongruence of domesticity and resistance, is there hope to be found in improvising together?

Originally from Seattle, inveterate improviser of the London scene Caroline Kraabel is a saxophonist, artist, composer, author, and organizer. She has worked with many excellent improvisers, including Robert Wyatt, Maggie Nicols, John Edwards, Louis Moholo, Cleveland Watkiss, Hyelim Kim, Pat Thomas, Susan Alcorn, Sarah Washington, and Charlotte Hug.

Kelsey Mines is a Seattle-based bassist, composer, and educator. Mines has been a featured artist for the Earshot Jazz Festival, Wayward Music Series, and the Ballard Jazz Festival. In 2019, Mines received the Earshot Jazz Golden Ear Award for Emerging Artist. Mines currently teaches at Cornish College of the Arts at Seattle University.

Gregg Miller is a Seattle-based improviser who started Sonic Action Records to document the vibrant creative/improvisational music scene in Seattle. He has taught political theory at the University of Washington, Western Washington University, Lewis & Clark College, Brooklyn College, and elsewhere. He thinks of improvisational music as political theory.

Anjali Grant is a Seattle-based visual artist and practicing architect. She has exhibited work in New York, Chicago, Portland, Bellingham, Nairobi, and Seattle, and has designed countless record covers for improvising and avant-garde musicians.

Join the Seattle Chamber Orchestra for an unforgettable evening celebrating Italian avantgarde composer Luciano Berio and American mezzo Cathy Berberian, a trailblazing power couple who reshaped the sound world of the 20th century. The program also includes music of Monteverdi, Ghedini, Dallapiccola, and Cage.

Doors open 7 PM; pre-concert talk at 7:15; concert starts at 8 PM.

Seattle Chamber Orchestra’s mission is to gather world-class musicians, to curate and perform chamber and orchestral repertoire that uplifts, inspires, and celebrates live performances. Brought to life through thoughtful and at times risky, programming that educates as much as inspires, SCO seeks to evolve and reinvigorate classical music, which has suffered most of all during the pandemic, by providing paid opportunities for professional musicians to explore traditional and new music in a sort of continuum space-temporal and push the boundaries of programming beyond those of other orchestras. SCO reaffirms the value of live music by bringing adventurous repertoire to eager and open-minded audiences. 

Founded in 2021, the Seattle Chamber Orchestra is rooted in our cherished Pacific Northwest’s casual and open culture and brings together the region’s top instrumentalists to create an all-sensory experience of music where you are invited to be part of the experience rather than merely witnessing it. SCO seeks to bring music lovers tantalizing combinations of the traditional and contemporary repertoire, performed by world-class professional musicians. 

Vancouver-born award-winning pianist/composer Cat Toren leads Cat Toren’s HUMAN KIND, a dynamic Brooklyn-based quartet with Xavier Del Castillo (sax), Jake Leckie (bass), and Steven Crammer (drums). Described by UK Vibe as “vibrant, earthy and spiritual”, this project is influenced by the free-form, socially conscious jazz of the late ’60s, reimagined for the modern day. The group will perform music from their self-titled debut album as well as from Scintillating Beauty, their 2020 release on Panoramic Recordings that reached the NPR and New York Times Jazz Critics Polls, and was featured in The Best New Jazz on Bandcamp.

Gathering threads from the corners of her imagination to tell stories of creatures and places of folklore yet to be written, Every Shade of Green is the performance project of Carolyn b (Mt Fog). She uses her voice as instrument along with synthesizer, violin and whatever else inspires, looping sounds and improvising as the moment requires. Melodies that feel like memories mingle with elements that call from early music (particularly the works of Hildegard von Bingen), art pop, and ambient. “Domus de Janas (“House of the Fairies”) are underground tombs cut into rocky hillsides that resemble the homes of the living. Constructed 5000 years ago in modern-day Sardinia, these stone houses feature spiral pattern decorations, many chambers, and false doors. I recently came upon the knowledge that I’ve seen these so-called Fairy Houses in dreams of mine. This evening’s Every Shade of Green set will traverse these ancient and dream spaces, asking questions about the borders between the living and the dead, the interior and the exterior, and the coziness of imagining life as moss on a rock.”

Curated by Christopher Icasiano for Nonsequitur’s NonSeq series.

Presented by Earshot Jazz Festival. Doors open 7 PM.

A key figure on the Seattle scene — as bassist, composer, and educator — Kelsey Mines dazzles in an intimate concert with music from her new recording. In celebration of Mines’ album release of Everything Sacred, Nothing Serious (Origin Records), she will be joined by Elsa Nilsson (flute); Conner Eisenmenger (trombone), Rafael Chamone (guitar), John Hansen (piano), and Christopher Icasiano (drums). Mines draws on her varied in-depth studies in jazz, classical and experimental music showcasing her versatility as a player, composer, and vocalist in this collection of 8 rich, hard hitting songs. Mines is the recipient of various awards including the Holland Award which allowed her to study in the Netherlands at the Prince Claus Conservatoire before returning to Seattle to establish her career. As well as  performing regularly in Seattle and beyond, Mines also teaches, with her most current post at Cornish College of the Arts.

(photo: Tiffany Tomkinson)

Seattle Modern Orchestra presents Among the Trees: Sonic Ecology in the Anthropocene

Seattle Modern Orchestra flutist Sarah Pyle curates an evening of environmental music in which the audience and musicians collectively explore how we are shaped by and shape the natural world. Meadows (2025), a growable graphic score led by Flicker Duo (Sarah Pyle, flute & Janna Webbon, violin), encourages at-home ecosystem restoration, while Caroline Miller’s territories::refrains invites human participation in recreating ephemeral signals from the animal world. Miller’s world-premiere commission, Heat Islands (2025) explores our rapidly-changing environment due to urban tree canopy loss and the resulting man-made effects of urban heat islands. Hilda Paredes’ Chaczidzib for solo piccolo probes themes of displacement and colonialism as sung by the Mayan red-chested bird. To close, George Crumb’s Vox Balaenae hearkens back to a time of nature without humans and celebrates our region’s Orca Recovery Day. An event for dreamers and doers alike, we invite you to come, listen, and “stay awhile.”

PROGRAM:
SARAH PYLE: Meadows – World Premiere
CAROLINE LOUISE MILLER: SMO Commission – World Premiere
CAROLINE LOUISE MILLER: territories::refrains (2020)
HILDA PAREDES: Chaczidzib (1992)
GEORGE CRUMB: Vox Balanae (1971)

About SMO:

Founded in 2010, Seattle Modern Orchestra (SMO) is the only large ensemble in the Pacific Northwest solely dedicated to the music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Led by co-artistic directors Julia Tai and Bonnie Whiting, SMO commissions and premieres new works from an international lineup of composers, in addition to presenting important pieces from the contemporary repertoire that are rarely if ever heard by Seattle audiences. The ensemble “operates at that exciting cusp between old and new, between tradition and innovation” (Vanguard Seattle) curating new sounds and experiences for concert goers in the region.

SMO provides audiences with performances of the best in contemporary chamber and orchestral music, and develops podcasts, lectures, educational residencies, and other forms of community engagement in an accessible and inviting format all designed to expand the listener’s appreciation and awareness of the music of today.

(photo: Amy Vandergon)

Local percussionist Mitchell Beck presents a night of live-looped music. Using loop pedal technology and live audio processing software, Mitchell will be building up full pieces of music one layer at a time as a one-man-band. You will hear him using standard percussion instruments, found objects, software synthesizers, and vocal layers to craft unique sound worlds that travel through a variety of different styles and moods. There will be moments of high intensity that explore complex rhythms and phrasing, diving headfirst into the intricacies of percussion. In contrast, there will be moments of blurred ambient serenity, giving listeners a chance to become lost in the sound and guided into a meditative state of mind. There will even be moments that explore the world of avant garde singer-songwriter music, encouraging the audience to find relatability between themselves and the performer on a more personal level. Passionate about creating music that is experimental and boundary pushing, yet still accessible to a general audience, Mitchell strives to spark intrigue and a feeling of connection across people with all types of musical tastes through his music.

Mitchell Beck is a percussionist, composer, producer, and educator based in Seattle, WA. Having a passion for all things percussion, Mitchell performs and teaches in a wide variety of musical settings. He has performed across the country and internationally in orchestras, chamber ensembles, indie rock bands, jazz combos, and as a solo performer. He is a founding member of Seattle based percussion collective Splinter Percussion. Mitchell also presents clinics on various topics in music around the country. As a composer and producer, Mitchell is passionate about pushing the boundaries of music with the goal of creating music that is still accessible to a general audience. Mitchell has been commissioned by people around the country to write concert music as well as music for indie video games and has had his music performed internationally. During the 2021/2022 academic year, Mitchell held the position of Visiting Assistant Professor of Percussion and Music Technology at Boise State University. An active educator, Mitchell has since founded the Seattle Percussion Academy.