Stephen Fandrich has been a resident performing artist of Seattle for 35 years, and is strongly influenced by the music of Asia, particularly Russia, Tyva (Tuva) and Indonesia. Classical piano, jazz piano, prepared piano, gamelan, throat singing, just-intonation, tuning, instrument building, sound-based installation, composition, and improvisation are all current passions.

This performance is dedicated to Darrell Fandrich
(January 31, 1942 – August 12, 2019)

The piano has been prepared with bamboo chopsticks, but only the sharp keys.

1. The Water Way: Variations on Artii-Sayir, a folk melody of Central Tyva

The Ulugh-Khem region of Tyva, a coal basin located in the modern autonomous republic of Tyva is the first home of Artii-Sayir (the dry side of a riverbed), a folk melody learned by throat singers all over the world today. The melody in all of its simplicity is presented at the end of the piece, after playing first its source and tributaries. A long beautiful affinity to the rhythms, harmonics, melodies and stateliness of water was sown into my own musical character by this Tyvan treasure.

2. Improvisation

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 Barsotti is a Seattle-based improviser, sound artist, instrument inventor and educator. He is active in several ongoing projects including the Seattle Phonographers Union, a collective that improvises in real time with unprocessed field recordings, and Mimeomeme, a record label that disseminates unusual sound art made by an eclectic collective of artists involved with a variety of unconventional techniques. He has been teaching for over 25 years at the college level (currently at Shoreline Community College) as well as presenting artists’ lectures and workshops in various approaches to electronic music, sound art, and audio production techniques. Steve also does audio post production for Kazbar Media, a small media company primarily focusing on the work of his wife, Laila Kazmi, a video producer dedicated to telling the stories of the variety of people and cultures that make up the American experience. www.kazbar.org
https://soundcloud.com/steve-barsotti

I began this piece during the first month of the lockdown due to the pandemic. It contains recordings from my collection of spaces filled with people and activity; kids in the park, celebratory fans, market goers, children’s music recitals, graduation ceremonies, park festivals and so on. I recorded these sounds over time when the spaces were filled with people, doing the things that people do in these spaces. During the lockdown, I returned to some of these spaces and recorded them again, but empty. The piece is also a reflection on the rising intensity felt across the nation during the Black Lives Matter protests. It serves as an audial analogy of our times and the rising social noise floor.

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.

Beetlebox is an experimental composer, keyboardist, and solo artist based in Seattle who creates original, piano-centered electronic music. His intricate control at the keys triggers a plethora of intertwined acoustic and computer-generated sounds. Performances by Beetlebox seamlessly weave live renditions of his piano compositions with passages of spontaneous improvisation, enhanced by homemade software synthesizers and interactive computer accompaniment. You can find his music on BandCamp and SoundCloud.

This is a continuous session of improvised piano music. Homemade software synthesizers are used along with interactive computer components. At times the computer adds random pitch, random rhythm, and random keyboard mappings based on what is being performed. Embedded in this are references made to tracks that are not yet released.

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.

Naomi Siegel is a trombonist, improvisor, composer and educator based in Missoula, MT and deeply connected to the Seattle music scene. She has released two albums as a bandleader/composer, is a member of Syrinx Effect, and is a frequent collaborator and freelancer with a variety of groups including Wayne Horvitz’s ensembles. You can find her music on BandCamp and SoundCloud.

“Gestation” is a freely improvised piece exploring and expressing my current experience being 23 weeks pregnant. Inspired by prompts from Pam Englander’s book Birthing from Within, this improvisation is a collage of honoring and owning my pregnancy journey, fears about birth, fantasies about birth, desired support, imagining of birth and delivery, and the beginnings of parenthood with my wife. Recorded on August 5, 2020 using trombone and electronics in my home studio with very little editing, I’m grateful to Wayward Music for the opportunity to document this moment.

(Photo by Rio Chantel)

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.

Susie Kozawa, a sound artist, composer and performer, works mostly with sound collages and site-specific installations, in which the gathering of sounds is a primary activity. She explores different acoustic spaces using musical instruments she makes out of found objects, kelp, modified toys and human voice. She is a member of the Seattle Phonographers Union and creates sound design for dance, film and theater productions.

This sonic exploration of the Good Shepherd Center Chapel made use of the following sound sources: Baliphones (sax & bass), Hum bows (rubber band & tape), Balloon jars (w/ marbles), Boeing surplus aluminum block, Wiggly gigglys, Boom ball racket (magnetic ball & sucker ball), Crank top music box, 7-11 Slurpee cup, spinning saw disc, rocks, voice.

(photo: Esther Sugai)

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.

MANtrio is an improvising trio based in Bellingham, WA.

Percussionist Melanie Sehman creates experimental and contemporary music that explores improvisation, gesture, the relationships between music, text and the physical experiences of sound. She performs in a wide variety of styles and enjoys collaborative work with composers, performers and artists in other disciplines, exploring alternative modes of music making.

Bassist Sarah Yates performs regularly in Seattle, Vancouver and Bellingham, where her curiosity leads her to take part in projects with styles ranging from jazz Manouche to 18th century chamber music and traditional Roma music to straight-ahead jazz. In her teaching, research and performing, Sarah seeks to explore and promote the connections between musical practice and lifestyle, with particular interest in intentionality, listening, and the value of play.

Pianist and vocalist Sage Romey’s inspirations are centered in jazz and radiate out through funk, West African mbalax, salsa, highlife, and hip hop. She is drawn to the musical creativity inherent in composition and collaboration with artists who take many different pathways to musical creation. Outside the performance setting, Sage is a scholar of ethnomusicology, studying the ways in which musicians and audiences interact to create meaning from music and musical creation.

The first and last pieces of this set were recorded by MANtrio on March 1, 2020, just before the COVID-19 lockdown. The first piece, in three movements, is based on Susan Griffin’s “Three Poems for Woman.” The middle four pieces are a series of improvised duos for bass and drums, recorded socially-distanced at home. Without reference to any text, each of these improvisations explores different sound worlds, techniques, textures, gestures and ways of conversing. After months apart, we have a lot to say to each other. The final trio piece, “Iris,” was composed by Sage Romey and its text feels particularly appropriate for the current situation.

(00:00) Three Poems for Woman, pt. 1
(03:18) Three Poems for Woman, pt. 2
(05:22) Three Poems for Woman, pt. 3
(09:48) Bass & Drums Improvisation #1
(13:08) Bass & Drums Improvisation #2
(21:57) Bass & Drums Improvisation #3
(27:33) Bass & Drums Improvisation #4
(35:40) Iris

Drummer and percussionist Melanie Sehman creates experimental and contemporary music that explores improvisation, gesture, the relationships between music, text and the physical experiences of sound. Based in Bellingham, WA, Melanie performs in a wide variety of styles and enjoys collaborative work with composers, performers and artists in other disciplines, exploring alternative modes of music making. Her most recent project is MANtrio, an improvising trio with bassist Sarah Yates and pianist and vocalist Sage Romey.

The first and last pieces of this set were recorded by MANtrio on March 1, 2020, just before the COVID-19 lockdown. The first, in three movements, is based on Susan Griffin’s “Three Poems for Woman.” The last, “Iris,” whose text feels particularly appropriate for the current situation, was composed by Sage Romey. The middle four pieces are a series of improvised duos for bass and drums, recorded socially-distanced at home. Without reference to any text, each of these improvisations explores different sound worlds, techniques, textures, gestures and ways of conversing. After months apart, we have a lot to say to each other.

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.

Jason E Anderson is an artist whose work includes performance, recorded works, video, installation, music for dance, producing and publishing. He left Seattle in 2018 to live in rural Eastern WA. Anderson has been a longtime participant of Seattle’s experimental music communities, which has led to the formation of many solo and collaborative music projects and his label Gift Tapes/DRAFT. Currently he performs/records music under his own name, and in performance art/film hybrid LIMITS with dancer Corrie Befort.

The sounds of this piece, Dermaptera, were created on a Korg Wavestation A/D, using SuperCollider and a LinnStrument to generate patterns and musical gestures. I edited passages from recordings I made in a barn and mixed them live on July 28th at 10pm. The mix was performed through studio monitors and recorded acoustically to capture the sounds in the barn as you might hear them, with an added bit of direct signal for definition. The barn is surrounded by wheat fields, so the music sits on top of a pleasant bed of insect sounds. I was hoping for coyotes, but they were a half hour late.

Thanks to Corrie Befort for giving me the time to work on this, to Harvey Gordon who brought me snacks, and to the many earwigs that no doubt influenced this recording.

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.

Marguerite Brown (b. 1990) is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist who explores new mediums, forms, and performance practices. Recent projects include a new piece for mixed chamber ensemble premiered by the Ghost Ensemble at the REDCAT Theater in Los Angeles, CA in March 2020, and new music for refretted guitars to be premiered at the 21st Century Guitar Conference in Lisboa, Portugal in 2021. She received a BM in music composition from Cornish College of the Arts (2013) and a MA in music composition from the University of California, Santa Cruz (2019).

Cycle Pieces 2020 was composed for Wayward in Limbo during the month of July in 2020. The composition is a suite in six movements for amplified mixed chamber ensemble. I used a combination of procedural and improvisatory methods to compose Cycle Pieces 2020, which has a limited pallet of bright, upper register sounds. I utilized a variety of cyclic forms to unify the movements. Thanks to Paul Matthew Moore for providing the gear used to make this recordings and assisting with post-production of the audio.

(00:00)
(04:12)
(10:00)
(13:02)
(17:47)
(24:30)

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.

Mother Tongue is a two headed art making machine. Created in 2015 by composer and musician Angelina Baldoz and multidimensional artist Katherine Cohen.

The MT Radio Show is a mix of new experimental EDM, cat jokes, and a couple of songs from our punk band SkullKat. Beats, guitars, trumpet, synths, and vocals inspired by this multidimensional life. Headphones for all the details or put it on blast for the neighbors.

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.

Tiffiny Costello (aka Housekeys) creates ambient dreamscapes designed to leave space for feeling, thinking, drifting, and disappearing. Tiffiny layers sounds on top of sounds with keyboards, guitars, and pedals, as well as recorded sounds from the field: be it city sounds, audio captured during hiking and exploring in nature – anything interesting is of interest to Tiffiny. Composing the most during dark periods of grief, depression, and hopelessness, Tiffiny uses music as a coping skill, an outlet. You can find her music on BandCamp and SoundCloud.

Jellyfish is an improvised ambient drone composition created by layering sounds on top of each other by way of long-tail delay and reverb effects played live. Nothing heard was changed after the recording, it was mixed down as-is. I love using different sounds from my keyboard, like Mellotron, strings, piano, and Wurlitzer, and then running them through a chain of pedal effects to create an emotionally sonic atmosphere, where each chord is decided on in the moment, and the preceding sound influences what comes next. Emotional response is always my goal. I want to feel something while composing, and I want others to feel something while listening or experiencing my music.

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.