Garrett Moore (drums) / Greg Kelley (trumpet) / John Seman (contrabass) / Jeffery Taylor (electric guitar)

Untitled Free Improvisations – Live Recordings 2017 – 2019

The GMQ churn through a gamut of freely improvised sounds encompassing the meditative, reflective, harsh, ugly and abrasive. Delve into an elixir of expansive psychedelic free improvisations that constantly unfold and meld into swirling elastic aural terrors and collapsing black holes of sound.

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Rich Hinklin (1962-2021) was a much-loved presence on the more adventurous fringe of the Northwest rock scene. A gifted multi-instrumentalist whose work combined taste, technique, and humor, he was a member of such left-field bands as Utterance Tongue, Pitbull Babysitter, Gumshen, and his periodic Red Fable project with rotating musicians. Rich also mentored a generation of younger artists as a longtime instructor of audio engineering at the Art Institute of Seattle. Rich was very pleased with this recent Red Fable improvisation recorded by his AIS students under his direction, and hoped to make it public – we offer it here to honor his memory and acknowledge his family’s deep loss. The session includes Don Berman on drums, Dennis Rea on guitar, and Rich on electric bass, keyboards, and mix.

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Clarinetist, composer, and improviser James Falzone is an acclaimed member of the international jazz and creative music scenes, a veteran contemporary music lecturer and clinician, and an award-winning composer who has been commissioned by chamber ensembles, dance companies, choirs, and symphony orchestras around the globe. He leads his own ensembles Allos Musica, The Renga Ensemble, and the duo Wayfaring with Chicago bassist/vocalist Katie Ernst, and has released a series of critically acclaimed recordings on Allos Documents, the label he founded in 2000. Also a respected educator and scholar, James is presently the Chair of Music at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington.

The Already and the Not Yet – Improvisations on clarinet, piano, penny whistles, and shruti box, recorded live at the Chapel on April 22, 2021.

Digital album available to purchase on BandCamp.

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Beverly Setzer holds degrees in clarinet performance from the University of Washington where she studied with William McColl and William O. Smith. She is a member of Symphony Tacoma, Roadside Attraction, Cascade Symphony, the Seattle Bass Clarinet Project, and was Principal Clarinet of La Filarmónica del Bajío in Guanajuato, Mexico. She enjoys playing a wide variety of music ranging from classical to polkas to jazz.

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.

Bev and Greg have been playing all sorts of music together since they met at the University of Washington in the early 80s. They were founding members of the New Art Orchestra and would play improvised operas on full moon nights at midnight on the Red Square of the UW campus. They play in the Lake Washington Symphony, Banda Vagos, the Mellifluous Zephyrs, and the Bavarian Village Band.

This improvised session was recorded live in the Chapel on April 19, 2021. Bev played bass clarinet and PVC pipe “didjeridu”. Greg played trombone, tuba, and flugelbone.

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Jim Knodle has been a member of the free jazz group Holus Bolus, and a founding member of Circular Cowboys and Inside Out. He has recorded and/or performed with Andrew Hill, Caroline Kraabel, Dave Storrs, Jonathan Edwards, Lynette Westendorf, Michael Vlatkovich, Paul Rucker, Robin Holcomb, Sue Ann Harkey, Vinnie Golia, Wayne Horvitz and others. He has released several CDs: Wending (Nine Winds) and Unprepared, with Dave Storrs (Louie Records); Keeping the Devil Out, with poet Pamela Moore Dionne (self-released); and This Is Not About the Pecking Order with Big Crinkly Trio. His compositions have been performed in concerts presented by the Open Music Workshop, the Earshot Jazz Festival, Marzena Arts’ Spring Festival of Contemporary Music, Portland’s Creative Music Guild, the Dumaurier Jazz Festival, Seattle Composers’ Salon, Tacoma New Music, Tone Action Orchestra, the Composers and Improvisers Workshop, and the Seattle Jazz Composers Ensemble. Recently he has performed with Big Crinkly Trio and Sidewinder.

Born in Moscow, Russia, and growing up in suburban Milwaukee, violinist Kirill Polyanskiy is pursuing a double major at WSU in Composition and Violin Performance. Kirill spends his free time arranging for the Materia Collective, the Seattle Video Game Orchestra and Choir, and practicing his violin. He is the Concertmaster of the WSU Symphony Orchestra and plays in the first violin section of the Washington Idaho Symphony.

This improvised duo set was recorded live in the Chapel.

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Veteran improvisor Sue Ann Harkey goes back to her solo prepared guitar roots on that $50 electric 12-string she bought over 40 years ago. Each piece is a change in implementation on an open-tuning that can do no wrong. Here is a repertoire of sounds drawn from the intimacy she has with her instrument and her proven experimental approach.

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Born on Capitol Hill, raised on Suquamish Tribal land (Seattle’s tribe). Grew up at the end of a road in the woods which has affected most of the music and sounds I am attracted to. Multi-instrumentalist performing in the area since the early 70’s in multiple roles, genres, styles. Longer bio. Mystic Weirdos.

Most if not all are combinations of live collections of sounds manipulated (or not) and electrical/midi samples etc…

(00:00) 25 21 20-1 (electronics)
(00:19) 78-2 (vinyl)
(01:27) December gurgles (toilet)
(04:31) Feet (electro-acoustic)
(09:05) Kitchen Symphony #1 (Live)
(14:58) chorale-s (synth and live)
(19:05) 78-1 (phonograph)
(24:08) nobody’s listening (radio)
(29:17) Silence 3 (found sounds)
(33:39) Finale (samples and stuff)

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Born and raised in Grand Forks, ND, Gavin Borchert attended Michigan State University and the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music. A not-entirely-unexpected inability to secure a teaching post upon graduation led him to Seattle in 1994, where he composes and has contributed classical music and arts coverage to The Seattle Times, The Stranger, KUOW, Seattle Magazine, Crosscut, and (for 24 years) Seattle Weekly.

My main composition project in this lockdown year, launched in November 2019, has been a series of Two-Part Inventions for piano (44 of them to date) — a resolutely practical project in the face of a growing backlog of unperformed chamber music. These are designed to be as simple yet as compelling and rewarding as possible for beginning piano students of any age. Some of them wear their Bachian ancestry more blatantly on their sleeve than others. (Sheet music is available.)

1. C major (00:00)
2. C major (01:04)
3. G major (02:12)
4. G major (03:05)
5. G major (04:55)
6. A minor (07:02)
7. F major (10:20)
8. A major (14:50)
9. B flat major (19:34)
10. C minor (23:03)
11. B flat major (24:56)
12. E flat major (28:35)
13. F minor (31:54)
14. C sharp minor (35:18)
15. A minor (40:23)
16. E minor (44:02)
17. G minor (47:53)
18. B major (50:55)
19. B minor (54:40)

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Steve Layton is a Seattle composer, performer, recordist, connector, facilitator. Editor of Sequenza21, a long-running website reporting on contemporary classical music. Collaborator at ImprovFriday/Sound-In, a weekly web gathering of musicians from around the globe. Hear more on BandCamp.

March Winds (2021)

As source and basis for the piece, I chose a recording shared online by a person in The Netherlands, “klankbeeld“, thirty minutes of a very strong windstorm (gusts to 60mph) blowing through a crack in their window. They recorded it in March 2019; one March later we began the lockdown; one more March and here we are, having been buffeted, and still in the storm (though maybe with a little light on the horizon?).

I use not only the original wind sound as a “voice” in the work, but also use various software to derive MIDI notes from the variation in the wind’s sound. These notes are then given to other synthesizer patches, so that an entire multi-voiced counterpoint is created. Yet it’s the wind that guides all aspects of the length, shape, notes, and unfolding of the piece.

Near the end I’ve overlaid (and somewhat transformed) a recording of the poet Dorota Czerner reading part of her poem “Cave Nocturne” at the 2017 Subterranean Poetry Festival, recorded by Chris Funkhauser.

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Afroditi Psarra (US/Greece) is a transdisciplinary artist and an assistant professor of Digital Arts and Experimental Media at the University of Washington. Her work engages with the idea of the body as an interface and sound as a medium of control and resistance. She uses cybercrafts and other gendered practices as speculative strings to hack existing norms about technical objects. Hear more of her work on BandCamp or SoundCloud.

Radiotactility was recorded live in March 2021 at the DXARTS Softlab at the University of Washington in Seattle, and has been enhanced with sample RF footage found on the Signal Identification Wiki. The live set is comprised of a series of hand-embroidered digital synthesizers, machine embroidered fractal antennas, software-defined radio, and other miscellaneous electronics. The composition is largely improvised exploring the gestural language of the handmade synths, the tactility and textural characteristics of the textile radio antennas, and the dynamics of layering live radio signals.

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.