Kyle Hanson is a non-traditional accordionist and has developed an oscillating bellows technique that produces shimmering waves of sound. This evening’s set will consist of luscious clouds of rhythmically articulated, slowly-unfolding tone clusters, populated with ghostly suggestions of melody, notes hovering in the air.

Erin Jorgensen will play a half-improvisatory, half-structured set of meditative, dreamy landscapes on her five-octave marimba. Accompanied by ephemeral vocals and narration, this is the perfect evening to close your eyes, dream, and experience literal good vibes. 

COVID-19 PROTOCOLS: Following current mandates from King County & WA State public health officials, all audience members will be required to wear masks. Additionally, proof of vaccination is required to attend. Chairs will be arranged to maintain social distancing (people who live together may group chairs accordingly). Windows will be open, weather permitting. Audience should be aware that some performers will be vocalizing.

The Right Brain Music Minifest is a one-night explosion of improvised music, featuring local virtuosos and spontaneous jams that will stretch your imagination. The Minifest will include short sets by widely contrasting local artists, followed by Chance Trios, randomly chosen by audience members, and a massive full ensemble jam, in a unique program to be created for just this audience on this night only. Featured artists include:

Bill Horist, a renowned master of experimental guitar music, known for a mind-boggling range of palettes.

Amy Denio, a prolific, world-class vocalist, composer and improviser, known for busting known frontiers of the human voice.

Spontanea, a free improv quartet that creates surprising, otherworldly soundscapes, comprised of Carol Levin (harp), Kenny Mandel (sax, flute), Matt Benham (guitar, electronics) and Scott Schaffer (bass).

Outlaw Space, a youthful, high-energy post-jazz quartet that defies genre labels and adjectives, with Stephen Fandrich (piano), Kirill Polyanskiy (violin), and Bill Monteleone (reeds).

COVID-19 PROTOCOLS: Following current mandates from King County & WA State public health officials, all audience members at this performance will be required to wear masks regardless of vaccination status. Additionally, chair seating will be arranged to maintain social distancing; people who live together may group chairs accordingly. Audience should be aware that performers will be unmasked, and some will be singing or playing wind instruments.

Morton Feldman’s For Bunita Marcus (1985) is one of the great piano masterpieces of the late 20th century. Building on a handful of notes and pregnant pauses, Feldman uses his singular talent to spin magic glass and dance through silence. Lasting 72 minutes in one unbroken movement, For Bunita Marcus brings music to the event horizon.  

Multi-instrumentalist Peter Nelson-King will perform the work while showcasing his original visual art in public for the first time, primarily asemic writing on salvaged materials. These pieces, including an enormous scroll, will be arranged throughout the performance space, and audience members are encouraged to walk around to view the works during the performance in a one-of-a-kind immersive experience.

COVID-19 PROTOCOLS: Following the current mandate from WA State public health officials, all audience members at this performance will be required to wear masks regardless of vaccination status. Additionally, seating will be arranged to maintain social distancing; people who live together may group chairs accordingly. Windows will be open, weather permitting.

Golden Retriever (Matt Carlson and Jonathan Sielaff) and Saariselka (Chuck Johnson and Marielle Jakobsons) will share their cinematic and hypnotic electro-acoustic compositions for bass clarinet, pedal steel guitar, piano, and synthesizers.

Golden Retriever (bass clarinetist Jonathan Sielaff and modular synthesist/pianist Matt Carlson) have spent the last decade expanding their palette from primarily electronic music into works for chamber ensemble and electro-acoustic collaborations with jazz, classical, and folk musicians. Their collaborative 2020 LP Rain Shadow (Thrill Jockey), with Bay Area pedal steel guitarist Chuck Johnson, is a high point for both artists: slowly shifting instrumental arrangements combine clouds of melody and texture with vivid emotional peaks. 

Saariselka, Johnson’s duo with composer Marielle Jakobson (Fender Rhodes, organ, synthesizers), has been unearthing a new kind of ambient Americana since the release of The Ground Our Sky in 2019. Crafting a universe of remarkable resonance, the duo create a vibrant, seemingly infinite sway of sounds that exists unmoored in time and space.

This concert will feature performances from both duos, as well as a collaborative trio set in which Johnson will join Golden Retriever in the spirit of the Rain Shadow LP.

Presented by Nonsequitur.

COVID-19 PROTOCOLS: Following current mandates from King County & WA State public health officials, all audience members at this performance will be required to wear masks regardless of vaccination status. Additionally, chair seating will be arranged to maintain social distancing; people who live together may group chairs accordingly. Windows will be open, weather permitting. Audience should be aware that some performers will be singing or playing wind instruments.

Brooklyn duo of guitarist Drew Wesely and drummer Kevin Murray improvise through liminal spaces of pitch, rhythm, timbre, and texture running the gamut from rhythmically dense collages to  shimmering timbral interplay. 

Drew Wesely has established themself as a unique voice on the guitar, pushing the instrument to new timbral and relational territories using screws, styrofoam, kitchen knives, ceramic plates, and cello bows, among other objects. Their music explores the intersection between noise and pitch running the gamut from ferocious energy and abstracted lyricism to repetition, space, and minimalism. Of primary concern in their practice are the fractal scales of form that emerge through improvisation. Their compositional approach aims to create dynamic, self-perpetuating musical spaces which embrace players’ idiosyncrasies and allow the music to grow from itself organically while maintaining a unique intensity.  

Kevin Murray is a drummer, saxophonist, improvisor, and organizer. He co-founded DIY label Subruckus Collective in 2013, and has continued his organizing efforts since moving to NYC in 2018 via the Pool Improvised Music Series and 1039 Records. He has been actively performing since 2012 in projects including Elaine the Singer, Strictly Missionary, the Eddie Gale Inner Peace Arkestra, the Kevin Murray Quartet, Percentage Bridge, Parhelion, and more. 

Sharing the bill is a Northwest trio comprised of Arrington de Dionyso (bass clarinet, sax), Noel Kennon (sound sculptures), and China Faith Star (soprano sax, objects, electronics).

COVID-19 PROTOCOLS: Following current mandates from King County & WA State public health officials, all audience members at this performance will be required to wear masks regardless of vaccination status. Additionally, chair seating will be arranged to maintain social distancing; people who live together may group chairs accordingly. Windows will be open, weather permitting. Audience should be aware that some performers will be singing or playing wind instruments.

Composer-multi-instrumentalists Amy Denio and Christian Asplund performed as The Naked Slime Duo in the ‘90s, in a synergy of phreneticism, quirky humor, lyricism, and genre-bending. In this performance, they will be joined by the brainy, profound, and dexterous composer-guitarist Tom Baker in their first outing as a trio. This performance will offer a rare chance to hear this trio of seasoned composer-performers playing premieres of new comprovisations by Asplund.

Christian Asplund is a Canadian-American composer-performer based in Provo, Utah, where he teaches at Brigham Young University and curates the Avant GaRAWge. He has composed in diverse media and performs mainly as a jazz and free improvisation pianist and violist. His interests have included the intersections of improvisation/composition, modular textures/forms, text/music. 

Tom Baker is a composer, guitarist, improviser, and electronic musician specializing in fretless guitar and live-electronics. He writes chamber music, opera, and electronic music, as well as music for percussion, chamber orchestra, dance, film, and chorus. He is the artistic director of the Seattle Composers’ Salon, co-founder of the Seattle EXperimental Opera (SEXO), founder of the new-music recording label Present Sounds Recordings, plays in the improvisational froup Triptet, and teaches at Cornish College of the Arts.

Amy Denio is a singer, composer, multi-instrumentalist, improviser, record producer and recording engineer. She is a co-founding member of The Entropics, Tone Dogs, (ec) Nudes, FoMoFlo, The Tiptons Sax Quartet (1988-present), The Danubians, Petunia, Quintetto alla Busara, Die Resonanz, and the accordion quartet Hell’s Bellows! (US). She plays with Kultur Shock (1999-present), Latin American group Correo Aereo (2005-present), and improvising rock band The Bats of Ballard (2016-present), and is regularly commissioned to score music for film, dance, theater, television, radio, as well as sound installations.

COVID-19 PROTOCOLS: Following the current mandate from WA State public health officials, all audience members at this performance will be required to wear masks regardless of vaccination status. Additionally, seating will be arranged to maintain social distancing; people who live together may group chairs accordingly. Audience should be aware that some performers will be playing wind instruments.

Triptet is a meeting of minds and spontaneous electrical impulses between Michael Monhart (saxophones and percussion), Tom Baker (guitars and effects), and Greg Campbell (percussion and cheap electronics). Amsterdam-based Anne La Berge’s passion for the extremes in both composed and improvised music has led her to storytelling and sound art as her sources of musical inspiration. Her music gathers the elements on which her reputation is based: ferocious and far-reaching virtuosity, microtonal textures and melodies, and her unique array of percussive flute techniques, all combined with interactive electronic processing and text.

This show will bring together these musicians in various groupings and as a quartet for an evening of sound and recalibration for returning to this new, strange world in which we find ourselves. It was January 10, 2020 when Triptet did their last live show, which also included Anne La Berge, and was also at the Chapel Performance Space. It is only appropriate our next live show will again be with Anne at the Chapel.

COVID-19 PROTOCOLS: Following the current mandate from WA State public health officials, all audience members at this performance will be required to wear masks regardless of vaccination status. Additionally, seating will be arranged to maintain social distancing; people who live together may group chairs accordingly. Audience should be aware that some performers will be playing wind instruments.

Joey Largent joins his quartet, Glacial Time Communion, in presenting a new, long-duration composition for four re-tuned reed boxes in collaboration with interdisciplinary artist Katrina Wolfe, who will perform her subtle and intricate choreography with the composition. 

For the piece, three shruti boxes and one harmonium have been re-tuned by hand into just intonation using the first seven primes (2-17) with each box carrying its own sonic attributes in pairing with a graphic score. The result is a 90-minute hypnotic, fully-acoustic composition of delicate movement, gradual sonic shifts over time, pure intervallic relationships, and exposures of unique and changing natural harmonics.

Glacial Time Communion is:

Danielle Quenell – 7-limit shruti box
Taehyung Kim – 17-limit shruti box
Kaliane Van – 7-limit shruti box
Joey Largent – 7-limit harmonium, voice, composition
Katrina Wolfe – movement, handmade costume, choreography

The performance will be held under warm, dim light on an installation of rugs. Seating will be primarily on the floor, with chairs arranged for those who would like them. Listeners are encouraged to bring blankets, cushions and items comfortable to them to the space.

The composition is dedicated to Michael Harrison, for all his support, guidance, and inspiration in the early conception of this project; to La Monte, for his innovative beauty in J.I. that shared with us this music in a prophetic capacity; and to the sentient goliaths of our oceans, for their continued existence, wisdom, and altruism– may we humans learn to live more in their image. 

COVID-19 PROTOCOLS: Following current recommendations from King County & WA State public health officials, all audience members at this performance will be required to wear masks regardless of vaccination status. Additionally, chair seating will be arranged to maintain social distancing; people who live together may group chairs accordingly. Those seated on the floor are responsible for distancing themselves accordingly. Audience should be aware that some performers will be singing.

The Seattle Phonographers Union is a collective of sound recordists who have been improvising together with unprocessed field recordings since 2002. Coming from diverse backgrounds (musicians, recording engineers, game designers, etc.), they treat the sounds of the world as raw material for moving and evocative sound collages woven in real time. In recent years they’ve expanded their approach to collaborating with improvising musicians.

Tom Varner is a renowned French horn player in the jazz lineage, whose ongoing series of Sound Vespers concerts and recordings have enlisted members of the Phonographers Union to play in combination with large improvising ensembles of brass and percussion.

Tonight’s performance will feature one set by the Phonographers Union, and one set featuring a small subset of SPU playing with Varner’s group (Tom Varner, Samantha Boshnack, Jim Knodle, Ray Larson, and Greg Campbell).

There will be free SPU CDs for all who attend! Copies of the SPU vinyl LP will also be available for sale.

COVID-19 PROTOCOLS: Following current recommendations from King County & WA State public health officials, all audience members at this performance will be required to wear masks regardless of vaccination status. Additionally, seating will be arranged to maintain social distancing; people who live together may group chairs accordingly. Audience should be aware that some performers will be playing wind instruments.

RE-EMERGING: An evening of improvisations and connection

Please join saxophonist Eric Barber (ex-Seattle, now in Los Angeles) as the beautiful Chapel at Good Shepherd Center reopens! This night will celebrate friendship, resilience, and hope through small and large group improvisations featuring some of Seattle’s finest improvising musicians.

Eric Barber – saxophones
Heather Bentley – viola
Samantha Boshnack – trumpet 
Greg Campbell – tuba, percussion
Jesse Canterbury – clarinets
Stephen Fandrich – piano
PK – bass
Aniela Perry – cello
Byron Vannoy – drum set
Tom Varner – French Horn