TAP 4.0: The Nyxology Sessions, Installment 5

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.

Bring a yoga mat, bring a pillow, bring your favorite dance shoes, bring a pencil and sketch pad, bring a camera, bring a friend or lover, bring a deck of cards, bring a book, bring your favorite armchair I don’t care. Just be Present and the experiment will doubtless be an authentic success on every level.

Founded in 2002, The Antenna Project provides Instrumental Live-scores (improvised context-specific audio compositions) for all variety of experiences. 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. The project’s mantra is Devoted to the Present, a double nod to both the “present” as current moment and as gift.

Doors open 7 PM, music 7:30 – 9:30.

Equinox Experiments

Please join us for a celebration of the Autumnal Equinox featuring atmospheric and experimental guitar treatments, analog synthesis, electro-acoustics and psychedelic visuals. 

Performers include Meridian Arc (providing analog synthscapes reminiscent of Tangerine Dream), Sacred Signs (enveloping, warped, electro-goth-folk drones), I can’t trace time (treated guitar loops for deep listening), and Kelli Frances Corrado (experimental folk songstress). Tying the music together will bill the mesmerizing visuals provided by Brittan Drake of Space Pyramids.

Brad Dutz + Wayne Horvitz

Right Brain Records presents an evening of chamber jazz featuring two internationally famous artists: composer/multi-percussionist Brad Dutz, plus pianist and Seattle icon Wayne Horvitz. 

Brad Dutz is a composer and percussionist extraordinaire. A longtime fixture in the LA jazz scene and a prolific performer, he has released over 30 albums, most with his own compositions. He will perform in Seattle with his Octet, featuring original music from his new album, Oktet. The ensemble includes Chris Symer (bass), Paul Mazzio (trumpet), Chris Shuttleworth (trombone/tuba), Jim DeJoie (bass clarinet/baritone sax), Nathaniel Schleimer (flute), Chris Wabich (drums), and Steve Tressler (clarinet/tenor sax).

Pianist Wayne Horvitz will open the evening. Wayne is well-known in Seattle. He’s toured the world, composed and recorded extensively, and has partnered with Bill Frisell, John Zorn, Fred Frith, Julian Priester and Carla Bley, among many others. Through their craft and creativity, these master musicians link the past few decades of jazz history and its dynamic future.

August + AF Jones + CSTMR

An evening of drone and free improv featuring three distinct styles of flowing:

August (Anacortes) fuses American Primitive Guitar with Drone and Slowcore. August improvises layers from an old Casiotone as well as an array of unpredictable instruments that he chooses free will alongside his classical guitar which he runs through a reel to reel.

AF Jones (Tracyton) utilizes lap steel guitar and various tools to prepare it in an ambient setting. This includes samples and various tools to conjure unique textures.

CSTMR (Seattle) delivers free improv that echoes the styles of No Wave and Post-Punk in a tight guitar/drums duo.

NonSeq: Arugakki

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.

Verges (a sunrise)

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.

Tom Varner’s Sound Vespers: CD Release Concert

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)

Leanna Keith: Aeros ex Machina

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.

TAP 4.0: The Nyxology Sessions, Installment 4

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.

NonSeq: Gavin Gamboa

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.