Big drums, choreography, synthesizers, and an abacus shaker… Arugakki is groundbreaking taiko. The inventive duo from Los Angeles Arts District debuts new music alongside local artists, Karin Stevens (dance), Heather Bentley (viola), and Leanna Keith (flute).

Nguyen’s dance and Bergstrom’s taiko collided at a choreography residency in 2019, exchanging fresh perspectives on movement and rhythm. The inspiration fueled a North American composition tour and a 9-month residency in a covid-shuttered theater resulting in Harbor, the duo’s first stage production, acclaimed for its heart-wrenching melodies, pulsating electronics, and quirky, home-made instruments.

Tonight’s performance features the world premier of Feel Me for taiko and crotales, Distracted Driving for slant taiko, Continuum synthesizer, and electronics, and the Seattle premier of Prairie for flute, snare, and electronics.

Curated by Leanna Keith for Nonsequitur’s NonSeq series.

An evening full of morning. A series of intimate, improvised solo and small-group performances playing with new notions of temporality. A fertile four-hour space displaced through the simultaneity of daybreak and last light.

Jocelyn Beausire is a performance artist, musician, and spatial researcher who splits her time between Seattle, WA and Princeton, NJ, where she is pursuing her Masters of Architecture. Her work constructs and activates a multi-sensory ecology to augment perceptions of her body as a place of constructed and performed youth, vulnerability, and femininity, as an artifact of her ancestry, and as a site of present action.

Casey Adams is an explorer of sounds and structures, as a drummer, builder and creator of electro-acoustic noise. In his work and research he is interested in the de/construction of sound and space, and the exploration of the ambience that exists between. As a performer, Casey attempts to fuse disparate and peripheral sounds while exploring movement, tension, intensity and the materiality of auditory experience; pursuant of a moment that never arrives. He is based in Seattle, Washington.

Joey Largent’s work explores relationships between time, consciousness, and the physical body, using acoustic instruments to delicately interweave organic vibrations with both natural and psychosomatic landscapes. Through the performance of durational compositions rich in natural overtones – often using just intonation – and through frequent collaborations with movement artists, Joey seeks to produce deep feeling and experience through sound– one that is strongly immersive, sensitive, and empathetic, inviting listeners to be both performers and observers of the continuously changing sensations throughout the body and mind.

Yaara Valey Perczek is a multidisciplinary performer and sound artist based in Portland. She utilizes looping technology to create luscious vocal-based live transmissions. In addition to her solo work, she collaboratively creates work for dance, film, and other performance art projects.

A.F. Jones is a Dallas-born, Washington-based musician, composer, and sound designer. In improvised live performance he emphasizes the use of guitar, lap steel, and pedal steel. Jones is the architect behind Laminal Audio, a mastering studio in Washington state that appeals to his bent for the archiving and analysis of sound. Laminal Audio’s quality control lends to his carefully curated small batch label Marginal Frequency.

Please join French hornist/composer Tom Varner for a celebration of the new CD and Bandcamp release of his Sound Vespers project. For several years now, Tom has assembled a wonderful assortment of Seattle’s best improvisers on both “acoustic instruments” and electronics/field recordings. The 2019 pre-covid Jack Straw recording, with mixing and (some) electronic processing by Steve Barsotti, is now finished! Muted trumpets, low horns, termite sounds, unknown animal sounds, and more!

Brass: Tom Varner (French horn), Haley Freedlund (trombone), Jim Knodle (trumpet)
Electronics/field recordings: Doug Haire, Steve Peters
Strings: Abbey Blackwell (contrabass), Aniela Perry (cello)

(photo: Michelle Smith-Lewis)

For her first solo recital since 2016, Leanna Keith presents Aeros ex Machina/Air from the Machine, a recital of newly commissioned works for flute and electronics. Pedalboards, tape tracks, live processing, bass flute, standard flute, and a great deal of air. Compositions include world premieres of local composers Kaley Lane Eaton’s GEO –, Heather Bentley’s Become Dragon, and Philadelphia-based composer Nebal Maysaud’s Al Wahdat Al Wujud.

A freelance flutist, artist, improviser, and composer in the Seattle area, Leanna Keith (she/they) delights in creating sound experiences that make audiences laugh, cry, and say: “I didn’t know the flute could do that!” Her performance artworks have focused on cultural connection and the breaking of audience/performer boundaries. Leanna is co-founder of the 501(c)(3) arts organization Kin of the Moon and is co-artistic director and flutist of the ensemble. They explore sonic rituals, promote cross-pollination of genres, and celebrate the creativity that multiplies itself through the collaboration of performers and composers. She is dedicated to playing music by composers who are still living, and advocates for the usage of music as social activism. Leanna is the professor of flute at Cornish College of the Arts.

COVID-19 PROTOCOLS: For the safety of performers and audience, all audience members will be required to show proof of vaccination and wear masks covering nose and mouth.

Part art-theatre concert, part site-non-specific live-score, part socio-cultural research project, TAP 4.0: The Nyxology Sessions are experimental open rehearsals, designed as a hybrid experience for me to learn and for you to freely explore one thing: how and what The Antenna Project’s music inspires you to Be and Do.

Founded in 2002, The Antenna Project provides Instrumental Live-scores (improvised, context-specific audio compositions) for all variety of experiences including extended duration performance, yoga, meditation and other movement-based classes, events, performances and happenings, films, fashion shows, ceremonies and gatherings of all kinds. Amplified electric guitar, an effects pedal and various methods of interfacing are used to create full-registered music ranging from subdued waves of droning minimalism to exuberantly celebratory maximalism.

Gavin Gamboa is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work revolves around improvised and notated composition, algorithmic video art, and short-form cinema. Between 2014 and 2020, Gavin released one album a month on Bandcamp, mixing both contemporary and classical music, all available with a free Creative Commons license.

Collaborations include performances with Erykah Badu and the Dallas Symphony, the score for filmmaker E. Elias Merhige’s latest opera Polia & Blastema, incidental music for modern dancer Josseline Black at the Miedzynardowe Spotkania Teatrów Tańca in Poland, and sessions with percussionists Frank Moka and Max Jaffe for Flying Lotus x Brainfeeder’s Twitch series “The Hit”.

For this performance, Gavin will be bringing an interdisciplinary show of music and visuals to the Good Shepherd Center, in what promises to be an exploration of the spatial volume and ritual lineage of the Chapel itself through an enmeshed praxis incorporating contemporary classical, jazz, and live-coding.

Curated by Omar Willey for Nonsequitur’s NonSeq series.

An evening of sounding and bioremediation presented by Arrington de Dionyso, Amelia Coulter, Casey Adams, and Noel Kennon, with an opening solo set from trombonist Greg Powers.

Greg Powers, performs on trombone, tuba, ukulele, didjeridu, garden hoses, etc. He is at home playing Salsa, Rock, Banda, Dixie, Swing, Avant Garde, and Jazz. A Fulbright Fellow to India, Powers is a pioneer in adapting Hindustani music to the trombone and is the only trombonist on earth performing in the style of Dhrupad.

Noel Kennon is an artist and musician living and working in Seattle. This work is currently questioning the role and purpose of sounding in society as well as continued research into the perceptual awareness. 

Arrington de Dionyso conjures Utopic Spaces with multiphonic vocal work & minimalist instrumentation. It’s shamanic seance meets rock and roll ecstasy; “TRANCE PUNK” combining traditional ritual trance, electrified experimental approaches, dancehall rhythms, gamelan scales and mystically inspired Indonesian incantations.

Amelia Coulter is an alto trombonist and experimental sound artist. She enjoys discovering new, messy, and uncomfortable embodiments for the trombone using alternative techniques, modifications, and integration with analog electronics. She has a bachelor of music from Cornish College of the Arts. She would like to acknowledge that these sounds were produced on the unceded traditional land of the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish People past and present, and to honor with gratitude the land itself and the Duwamish Tribe.

Casey Adams is a local drummer and percussionist. His primary project at the moment is a noise rock group called CSTMR.

The Helen Scarsdale Agency presents a night of blurred sound, caustic noise, antique drift, and liminal drone with Faith Coloccia, Jim Haynes, and Robert Millis.

Faith Coloccia is an American artist and composer based in Vashon, WA. She was born and raised in Palm Springs, CA, and attended Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles (BFA). Her work is focused on time deconstruction, inherited memory, indexical archives and how sound affects the body in space. Using voice, field recordings, visual scores and traditional instrumentation, she unites composition, spirituality and installation acoustics into a cohesive whole. She performs under the names of Mamiffer and Mára and has been commissioned by and performed at festivals such as Big Ears (US), Hopscotch (US) and Sacrum Profanum (PL). She has performed in Europe, North America and Japan, and has collaborated with artists such as Daniel Menche, Jon Mueller, Aaron Turner, Circle and Eyvind Kang. Her work has been released on SIGE Records, Karlrecords. Room40 and Touch.

Corrosion and decay are central themes to the work of Californian artist Jim Haynes. He works with a recombinant crucible of shortwave radio, convulsive motors, electro-magnetic disturbances, and electronics in variable states of disrepair, with publications through Editions Mego, Sige Records, Elevator Bath, Monorail Trespassing, The Helen Scarsdale Agency, and many others. His latest album “Insomnia” has been published in 2022 in the face of many difficulties by the Ukranian imprint Sentimental Productions.

Robert Millis is known for many things – co-founder of Climax Golden Twins, Messenger Girls Trio, Idol Ko Si, and AFCGT; filmmaker and producer for the Sublime Frequencies label; co-producer of the Victrola Favorites book and cassette series (other collections include the Deben Bhattacharya: Men and Music on the Desert Road and Indian Talking Machine books). His scholarship into the hidden corners of music across the world has also earned him Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships. His most recent LP, 2020’s Related Ephemera, was on the Helen Scarsdale label and explored the textures of 78rpm and wax cylinder recordings.

Danny Godinez performs both solo with guitar and voice, as well as in various bands in Seattle, including The New Triumph & Michael Shrieve’s Spellbinder. He is known for his looping and use of effects in his solo acoustic performances, as well as his fiery electric guitar playing.

In this body of work Godinez examines some key experiences and realizations that have influenced his life thus far. Recognizing that we are all born into a set of experiences and undergo transitions that shape and transform who we are, what we are, and what we can possibly become, Danny will be presenting music that reflects his own self-realizations and transformation, aiming to instill hope and to inspire others through his epiphanies from self-reflection. Joining him are Ron Weinstein (piano), Chava Mirel (voice), Sidney Houser (electric bass/flute), and Petro Kyrsa (violin).

Sidney Hauser (She/Her) is a member of the next generation of Northwest Jazz musicians. She graduated from South Whidbey High School and the University of Washington, where she received a BA in Painting and a minor in Music Performance. Sidney has studied with saxophonist Neil Welch, Mark Taylor, and Michael Brockman, and has played alongside musicians such as Joshua Redman, Maria Schneider, Christian McBride, and more recently Tia Fuller. In addition to her position as second alto with the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra, Sidney has also played with the Seattle Women’s Jazz Orchestra and the Jazz Police among other ensembles, including leading her own fusion group, SmackTalk. She has been twice nominated through Earshot for the emerging artist award, and continues to write music for her own personal projects.

The theme of her set tonight will be “New Growth – a reflection on transitions, farewells and making way for the new: In a world that’s constantly shifting, the one thing we can truly rely on is change. But what about the in-between? The grey areas? The crossroads? Join me as I explore the uncanny feeling of being in two places at once, and the tension that comes from exchanging the old for the new.”

Curated by Marina Albero for Nonsequitur’s NonSeq series.

COVID-19 PROTOCOLS: For the safety of performers and audience, all audience members will be required to wear masks covering nose and mouth. Windows will be open.

Born in the Arizona desert, a veteran of multiple explorations into the Sahara desert via Morocco and Western Sahara, and now a resident of the Mojave, Derek Monypeny sees his musical mission as adding to and expanding on what he calls the “desert continuum” – the psychedelic sirocco swirl of desert-based stringed instruments played with utter abandon by musicians the world over. He takes great inspiration from desert guitarists whose playing so perfectly reflects their surroundings in its gnarled beauty and all-pervasive individualism: Richard Bishop, Zoot Horn Rollo, Curt Kirkwood, Jesus Acedo, Bob Log III, and Howe Gelb to name a few. In his travels in North Africa, Derek discovered that same spirit in Saharan guitar playing, in artists such as Seddoum ould Eide, Hammadi ould Nana, and Luleide ould Dendenni.

Derek uses a variety of instruments to achieve these ends. In addition to guitar, he has recorded an album of solo oud recordings (Don’t Bring Me Down, Bruce) and is currently performing and recording using the 15-string electric shahi baaja (Indian electric banjo). Tonight he’ll perform a 40-50 minute quasi-ambient set with electric guitar and shahi baaja, utilizing long-duration tones to interact directly with the resonant properties of the space.

Derek is a former member of the bands Oaxacan (Oakland, CA), ALTO! (Portland, OR), and Sir Richard Bishop’s Freak Of Araby Ensemble. In addition to his solo work, he has an ongoing duo project with Bryan Hillebrandt, OAE (Oakland Afternoon Ensemble). He has performed and toured with artists such as Bill Orcutt, Jozef van Wissem, Eva Aguila/Kevin Shields, Arrington de Dionyso, and many others.

what is the duo project of drummer Dave Abramson and pedal steel guitarist Alan Jones that can be expanded with other players. Their latest release is out on Eiderdown Records. For this show they are joined by guitarist Robert Millis of Climax Golden Twins fame.