Uncharted Duo is a percussion and trumpet collaboration pushing the limits of contemporary music through a synergy of avant-garde, jazz, electroacoustic, and new music styling. Percussionist and composer Mitchell Beck employs the full range of percussion instruments spanning styles from old to undiscovered, while trumpeter Derek Ganong utilizes a dazzling array of classical and jazz virtuoso techniques to create a marvel of collaborative music. The audience will experience the full range of musical styles, timbres, genres, and moods throughout the event as Beck and Ganong venture into uncharted territory for both jazz and contemporary music collaborations.

(Note: This concert was rescheduled from the original date of Jan. 12.)

Sid Samberg, a composer-pianist from Chicago, is honored to participate in the Wayward Music Series a second time, exactly one year after the last, which was his Seattle debut. He will perform more original works for piano solo, which explore concepts ranging from the personal (meditations on dreams and close relationships) to the global (referencing the climate crisis and our changing environment).

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 are inspired by (or pay tribute 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, a special “Schubertiade” concert with soprano Natalie Ingrisano, 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.

Nonsequitur kicks off the 2024 NonSeq concert series with a special performance introducing this year’s curatorial team:

Beth Fleenor is an electric, adrenaline inducing performer crafting moments that ricochet between meditation and a full body purge. Whether performing solo with amplified clarinet, voice & electronics, leading blindfolded chamber ensembles, conducting a full theater house as a beat-boxing choir, or singing in her own invented language as Crystal Beth, her work is grounded in the idea that “art is the discipline of being.”

enereph is a persona of multidisciplinary artist Connie Fu (b. 1992). Her atmospheric, percussive, and labyrinthine compositions have been presented live, on radio, and as recorded releases by Acceleration Radio, Vancouver (2023), Ground Hum, Seattle (2023), ANTiPODE, Seattle (2023), Active Passive Performance Society, Galiano Island (2023), OneBeat (2022), and Heterodox Records, Portland (2021). Tonight she will play a set from computer, synth, and sampler accompanied by a video composition.

Kole Galbraith is an interdisciplinary artist and noise musician. He has collaborated with various artists including Lori Goldston, Greg Kelley, Chloe Alexandra Thompson, morher, Cigve, Jason Lazer, Patrick Wurzwallner, Warren Realrider, and Sean Waple. Kole is also a co-director of local experimental label Obscure & Terrible, and is an enrolled member of the Peoria Tribes of Indians in Oklahoma. Tonight he will be presenting an electro-acoustic piece that focuses on Sinixt/Interior Salish concepts of the Coyote and prehistoric identity practices.  

Born in Iran, classical guitarist Naeim Rahmani immigrated to the United States as a refugee and has since made a name for himself as an accomplished performer, both nationally and internationally. His talent and dedication to his craft have earned him numerous accolades, including a 2022 Goethe-Institut Residency Award, and a 2023 CityArtist Award from the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture. Naeim is also the artistic director of the Seattle-Isfahan Project (SIP), which brings together musicians from Seattle and Iran to create a shared workspace where performers and composers come together to create new works for the guitar repertoire. The forthcoming installment, “Displaced Voices,” sponsored by the Seattle Symphony, is scheduled to premiere in the fall of 2024. Tonight Naeim will play a set of solo guitar pieces in which composers have explored the extensive percussion palette of the instrument. These elements, playing alongside the fingerboard, and tapping on the fretboard with both hands, bring a novel dimension to the sound of guitar music. 

A meditation on the frailty and resilience of the human spirit. Directed by Joan Laage/Kogut Butoh in collaboration with Kaoru Okumura & Helen Thorsen (butoh), Randy Shay (piano) & Aaron Harmonson (bass).

A world in chaos, multitudes of people displaced, frozen in place or constantly moving. Refugee is the latest in Joan’s body of work inspired by the aftermath of war and the urge to find a safer, saner place to live. Earlier works are The Suitcases Project (Snoqualmie Depot and Issaquah Depot), Stations (solo), Black Angels (Dappin’ Butoh Troupe) and Nothing Lasts But Memory (solo). All the travel journeys, especially in Europe over many years, the waiting in stations – train, ship, air. Where have all these travelers come from and where are they going and even more so – why?

Known as Kogut Butoh, Joan Laage has been performing and teaching butoh and collaborating with area and international performers since she settled in Seattle in 1990 after studying butoh with masters in Tokyo. Collaborations include Rob Angus, noisepoetnobody, Stephen Fandrich, Jeff Greinke, Scott Adams and Seattle Kokon Taiko. Her group Dappin’ Butoh was well-known in the Seattle Fringe Theater Festival for 10 years. Joan is a co-founder of DAIPANbutoh Collective (since 2010), which produces an annual butoh festival. Joan directs Wandering & Wondering, an annual site-specific event at the Seattle Japanese and Kubota Gardens and organizes performances in the summer at her Green Lake home. Her work is influenced by her years of practicing Tai Chi and her profession as a gardener.

(photo: Brian Liesse)

Bay Area improvised music stalwarts Phillip Greenlief (saxophone) and Scott Amendola (drums) bring their long running duo to town. Local clarinetist James Falzone offers a short opening set.

Scott Amendola and Phillip Greenlief celebrate 30 years of collaboration with the release of STAY WITH IT on clean feed records. They began playing together when Greenlief moved back to the SF Bay Area in 1993. They experimented with a variety of approaches, but soon dedicated their work in the tradition of free improvisation for drums and saxophone. Their first release on 9 Winds Records, COLLECT MY THOUGHTS (1995), garnered international acclaim and offered the push they needed to begin touring and deepening their musical relationship. 30 years later, the sound of the duo has changed. Greenlief’s sound palette has expanded to create a theater of the unexpected, and Amendola has integrated live electronics; the duo now moves easily between free jazz and electro-acoustic improvisation traditions with a fierce dedication to the moment that overrides allegiance to genre aesthetics.

Seattle composers BC Campbell, Paul Matthew Moore, and Krystal Barghelame join up again for the Invisible Composers Lab third installment  featuring new works for piano and cello. With the composers at the piano, they are teaming up with cellist Maria Scherer Wilson, to present new pieces exploring the composed and improvised boundaries of these two instruments.

Invisible Composers Lab brings composers and musicians together, across generations, to create luminous, new creative works. The laboratory’s mission is to collaborate, fuel curiosity, and experiment in a supportive, non-hierarchical environment that welcomes inspiration from new music, improvisation, jazz, film scoring, classical music, and the wide sonic world. Fueled by discussions and interactive workshops over many months, each ICL Session includes workshop performances to open the collaborative conversation to listening audiences.

The ICL members’ collective adventures in music have brought them to The Royal Room, The Moore Theater, Cannes, PBS’s American Masters, The Smithsonian, The Paramount, The Seattle Symphony Youth Workshop, KEXP, and Sasquatch Music Festival to name just a few. They are thrilled to be joining forces to create new possibilities at the Good Shepherd Chapel.

Threshold is an all-star band comprised of Seattle improvised music scene veterans. Organized by Don Berman, the group assembled for a free-ranging recording session in 2023, and their self-titled first album together is the result.

This project is the manifestation of a musical vision Berman has held for years. His late father, William Berman, was a master violist who performed extensively in symphonic and string quartet settings. Having listened to so much of his chamber music playing, Don decided he would would form a 21st century string quartet. In his words: “I took the liberty of choosing cello, two guitarists, percussion, and creative electronics, as opposed to the classical two violins, viola, and cello format. Heather, Simon, Dennis, and I decided this would be an exciting musical adventure.”

Drummer Don Berman has performed with a long list of Seattle’s top jazz artists and improvisers since migrating there after college percussion studies. His most recent previous recording credit is Ascension Northwest, a large ensemble work he composed in honor of John Coltrane.

Heather Bentley is among the Pacific Northwest’s most active improvising musicians. She’s also a classically trained violist and cellist, one-third of Right Brain Records artist CHA, and co-founder of Kin of the Moon, a nonprofit organization which fosters collaboration between artists in service of creating unique art.

Guitarist Dennis Rea has performed internationally with his own groups like Moraine, as well as such trailblazing musicians such as Hector Zazou and Hawkwind members Nik Turner and Michael Moorcock, and many others. He has appeared on over 50 recordings. 

Guitarist Simon Henneman has made a name for himself as an improvisor and experimentalist in Seattle’s creative music scene.

Here to Play is a hard-charging trio featuring Kelsey Mines on upright bass + vocals, Neil Welch on saxophone + electronics, and Gregg Keplinger on drums + handmade percussion. Their work explores original songwriting and fully improvised sonic creations. Flowing from an avant spirit fit for astral traveling, they are currently performing works from their new album Cosmic Moments.

Contemporary classical pianist and composer Thomas Abrahamson will debut his new Piano Sonata as well as a select number of preludes complemented by a piece by local composer Jesse Myers. His style blends classical form with modern freedom, exploring new yet familiar soundscapes.

It’s the year 2048 and an unseen beast is terrorizing the land. In this near-future re-telling of the legend of the Wawel Dragon, Dragonslayer invites audiences to join Our Majesty Krak’s Republic so they may benefit from the protection and knowledge this body provides.

SHOWTIMES:

Thursday Feb. 8, 6-7:30 PM (BUY TICKETS)
Thursday Feb. 8, 8-9:30 PM (BUY TICKETS)
Friday Feb. 9, 6-7:30 PM (BUY TICKETS)
Friday Feb. 9, 8-9:30 PM (BUY TICKETS)

AnA Collaborations Directors, Audrey Rachelle, former Sleep No More cast, and Alex Oliva bring their experience performing and choreographing immersive productions to Dragonslayer, a 90-minute immersive experience with live original composition by Maciej Lewandowski, called an “electronics specialist” (Seth Colter Walls, The New York Times). Inside the medieval architecture of Good Shepherd Chapel, this experimental score accompanies a cast of eight dancers, highly-detailed costumes by Atelier Abene, and dynamic lighting design by cinematographer Blake Horn to transport audiences into a post-apocalyptic dystopian future.

Performers guide audience members around the Chapel, encouraging them to explore and choose which 13 of the 36 scenes they wish to experience. Audience members may be selected for intimate one-on-one encounters, and will be given the chance to actively participate. They might find themselves whispering with a member of the Resistance, witnessing a woman sacrificed to save them, or asked to carry Our Majesty’s burden.

It’s the year 2048 and an unseen beast is terrorizing the land. In this near-future re-telling of the legend of the Wawel Dragon, Dragonslayer invites audiences to join Our Majesty Krak’s Republic so they may benefit from the protection and knowledge this body provides.

SHOWTIMES:

Thursday Feb. 8, 6-7:30 PM (BUY TICKETS)
Thursday Feb. 8, 8-9:30 PM (BUY TICKETS)
Friday Feb. 9, 6-7:30 PM (BUY TICKETS)
Friday Feb. 9, 8-9:30 PM (BUY TICKETS)

AnA Collaborations Directors, Audrey Rachelle, former Sleep No More cast, and Alex Oliva bring their experience performing and choreographing immersive productions to Dragonslayer, a 90-minute immersive experience with live original composition by Maciej Lewandowski, called an “electronics specialist” (Seth Colter Walls, The New York Times). Inside the medieval architecture of Good Shepherd Chapel, this experimental score accompanies a cast of eight dancers, highly-detailed costumes by Atelier Abene, and dynamic lighting design by cinematographer Blake Horn to transport audiences into a post-apocalyptic dystopian future.

Performers guide audience members around the Chapel, encouraging them to explore and choose which 13 of the 36 scenes they wish to experience. Audience members may be selected for intimate one-on-one encounters, and will be given the chance to actively participate. They might find themselves whispering with a member of the Resistance, witnessing a woman sacrificed to save them, or asked to carry Our Majesty’s burden.