Percussionists Allen Otte (of the pioneering early percussion ensemble Percussion Group Cincinnati/Blackearth Percussion Group) and John Lane (Texas) present The Innocents, a musical response to the well-known Innocence Project. Using spoken word, electronics, field recordings, found objects and traditional percussion, the work centers on exoneration of those wrongly convicted through DNA testing, plus reform of the criminal justice system to prevent future injustices. Excerpts of their music were recently featured on the DVD In Their Own Words, released through the Innocence Project.

Bonnie Whiting and the University of Washington Percussion Ensemble open with music by composer George Lewis and new original compositions/improvisations inspired by Otte and Lane’s work.

“Language is a tremendous gift, but language does not deliver experience, it only describes experience. It mediates between us and reality. And while music and performance cannot be equated with the actual experience of prison or arrest, it avoids the symbolic. It creates experience. What they managed to do was create an experience that brought the listener directly to the horror of what they wanted us to know. From where I sat, this was absolutely ingenious.” – Russel Gabriel, Clinical Professor & Criminal Defense Practicum Director, University of Georgia School of Law

“This project in particular continues to feel like a superior interdisciplinary model of art in action, seeking to bring such an honest and deeper meaning to its function and role in society, here to connect people and causes, and to aid in awareness and healing.” – Connie Frigo, Associate Professor of Saxophone, University of Georgia

Free improvisation utilizing the Chapel’s unique and beautiful acoustics. Artists include: Aaron Keyt, misc. instruments; Bruce Greeley, bass clarinet and electronics; Carol Levin, harp; Jim Knodle, trumpet; Neal Kosaly-Meyer, guitar, piano, and voice; S. Eric Scribner, piano, percussion, and field recordings; and guests: Ryan Burt, drums and percussion; Mark Filler, percussion and mountain dulcimer

Leanna Keith (flute), Ha-Yang Kim (cello), Rebekah Ko (percussion), Cassie Lear (flute), and Paulina Michaels perform works by Toru Takemitsu, interspersed with other works chosen by local musicians. The concert program centers around pieces that explore timbre and space in both written works and structured improvisation.

The Sound Ensemble believes that great music is found in all genres and that collaborations across boundary lines will cultivate synergy that allows all of us to enrich the lives of a broader community. To that end, TSE will be working alongside several artists to orchestrate their songs to be performed with TSE serving as the band. This allows the songwriters to access a wider range of tonal colors and textures than they might normally have, and lets us play some awesome music with incredible performers.

Tim Wilson (Ivan and Alyosha)
Lizzie Weber
Joseph De Natale (Faint Peter)
Michael Hamm (Cosmozoa)

Founded in 2002, Denmark’s Ensemble MidtVest consists of a string quartet, a wind quintet and a pianist. Understanding that classical music is a living tradition, rooted in the past, but as relevant today as it has been for centuries, therefore, it is their credo to make the most beautiful music of the past 500 years accessible to the 21st century audience. In order to achieve this goal, the ensemble is not only presenting classical chamber music repertoire, but also free improvisation, as well as baroque and early classical works. Performing more than 100 concerts a year both in Denmark and abroad, the ensemble tours internationally, collaborates with many renowned musicians, and has recorded more than twenty CDs.

For this concert, the group will present an entire program of free improvisations. Ensemble MidtVest has been developing its improvisational language since 2007, with artistic advisory from jazz pianist Carsten Dahl for the first 10 years, and master classes with, among others, Matthew Barley. The ensemble works with improvisation in order to create its own sound and musical language, breaking down barriers between styles and genres. By taking inspiration from movies (in the form of an improvised live soundtrack during screenings), or exercise (in the form of providing music for yoga-sessions, or in a swimming hall), the ensemble finds ways to meet audiences with no knowledge or previous interest in classical music.

Ensemble MidtVest is supported by the music committee of the Danish Arts Foundation and the four municipalities of Herning, Holstebro, Ikast-Brande, and Struer.

Presented by Nonsequitur.

Note: On Sunday May 5 at 4 PM, Ensemble MidtVest will also perform a classical recital at the Nordic Museum in Seattle, featuring works of Brahms, Clara Schumann, Niels W. Gade, Carl Nielsen, and Per Nørgaard.

Ha-Yang Kim’s TERMINALS is a full-length meditative audiovisual work inspired by the peripatetic quality of contemporary life; arrival and departure points, the constant states of flux both in exterior locations and interior realms, sojourns through dense tech-centric cosmopolitan urbania to vast natural landscapes, the extreme degrees of human connection-communion-discord-solitude. Through contrasting seamless sections of sonic and abstracted visual environments, TERMINALS is a contemplation upon the transitory fleeting nature of time, motion and stillness; illuminating the rich moments experienced in between the larger overlapping arc points, thus, the simultaneous vast and intimate spaces which comprise the journey itself.

Composer/cellist Ha-Yang Kim composed and performs multiple instruments (cello, piano, synth, percussion, radio) and is joined by an ensemble of three-time Bessie award winning composer/multi-instrumentalist and frequent collaborator Hahn Rowe (from NYC) who will perform guitar, violin/viola, and electronics, and violist Heather Bentley. Interactive visual artist Scott Keva James will create a live, audio-reactive, composition of projected light using custom algorithms, and found and synthetic footage expressing rhythms, constructing spaces and providing a flowing, immersive experience. Music, video, electronics and live performance come together to create an immersive full-length evening experience.

Presented by Nonsequitur.

Tenor saxophonist María Grand presents her solo project: Persephone / HerStory. A young woman tells her personal story, taking the symbolic figure of Persephone to give her story a universal dimension. María Grand uses the saxophone, her voice, and a gong, which she plays over a soundtrack she created specifically for this version of the piece, to express her vision of the stages of Persephone’s life.

Devised with Grand’s creative partner, writer and visual artist Satya Celeste, Persephone / HerStory is a creative retelling of the myth of Persephone, as performed by Grand. The story of Persephone’s betrayal, rape, and castigation is well known, but Grand’s performance offers a new, more universal telling that raises the question of why descriptions of Persephone’s experience always depict her as passive. Indeed, our portrayal of Persephone is ever-couched between the stories of the male gods Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon. Grand, instead of recasting the morals of the myth learned through their infidelity, violence, and attempts to mend past treacheries, focuses on what we might learn by listening to HerStory. Through her embodiment of the goddess, Grand provides a space to acknowledge the Persephone’s living in the here-and-now, in our personal lives and communities.

One of the most exciting young voices to emerge from New York in recent years, Swiss/Argentine saxophonist, composer, and singer María Grand makes her first appearance in Seattle. She has performed with a wide array of musical luminaries, including Nicole Mitchell, Vijay Iyer, Craig Taborn, Mary Halvorson, Chris Potter, Jen Shyu, Aaron Parks, Fay Victor, Rajna Swaminathan and Joel Ross. Her sound is deeply embedded within the jazz tradition, with a fullness and subtlety that radiates emotion, empathy, and strength that carries us into new sonic territories. Her music is of the rare type that invites listeners to challenge their deepest held assumptions, interrogate where they are complicit within ongoing abuses of power, and ultimately move towards personal healing through the shared experience of music.

Presented by Earshot Jazz, supported by The Selvage Fund.

Photo: Pedro Gil Rosas

Composer Stephen Fandrich presents improvisations and compositions for just-intoned piano along with a program of unusual musical pairings, with very special guests Gamelan Pacifica and Del Sol String Quartet.

Stephen Fandrich will perform compositions and improvisations at the piano in an “8 series” just intonation, and will present two unusual instrumental combinations with Javanese gamelan. Iron Tears, for String Quartet and Javanese Gamelan, and Ketawang Chroma, for Diphonic Singing and Javanese Gamelan.

Hailed by Gramophone as “masters of all musical things they survey” and two-time top winner of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, San Francisco’s Del Sol String Quartet is a leading force in 21st century chamber music.

Gamelan Pacifica is a Seattle ensemble based at Cornish College of the Arts and led by composer Jarrad Powell, specializing in the intersection of Javanese tradition and contemporary composition. “With an air of timelessness, Gamelan Pacifica has done an unparalleled job of taking gamelan music to new heights, while remaining respectful to the roots and cultural significance of its instruments.” SOMA Magazine.

Stephen Fandrich is a 20-year veteran as instrumentalist, composer, vocalist, and instrument curator with Gamelan Pacifica, composing for them what director Jarrad Powell called the world’s first piece combining harmonic singing and gamelan. He also founded the Seattle Harmonic Voices. Currently, Stephen can be found consistently performing, producing, and creating behind the scenes at the weekly house concert series known throughout Seattle as Spite House, composing and improvising at his piano in various forms of just intonation (the harmony of harmonic ratios), and performing music influenced by the ancient tonal colorizing form of raga in the piano/saxophone duet Outlaw Space with saxophonist William Monteleone.

Presented by Nonsequitur.

Austin Larkin and ensemble perform a composition of harmonics and tuned densities unfolding and persisting in time. Transmute states of variance and continuity are held, extended, measured through the vibration of strings and resonant bodies within a room. In the realization of this piece, a focus is placed on the ordering of tone, the diffusion of spectra, and congruences of silence.

Austin Larkin is an artist, composer and violinist focusing on in/audible forms and substances. Recently he lived in Yogyakarta to gain perspective into the architectural qualities of central Javanese karawitan, specifically how the tones dwell and unfold. Prior to this he studied composition at Cornish College of the Arts with Eyvind Kang, Jessika Kenney, and Jarrad Powell, all whose work and philosophy remain an influence. The violin remains a primary means for research as well as for the realization of his and others music. His work has been presented at festivals such as Yellow Fish, Umbral, and Corridor in addition to performing solo throughout North America, South America, and Asia. He currently lives on the traditional lands of the Coast Salish people in what is now known as Seattle.

Photo: Jessa Carter

Onomatopoeia (all alternate spellings accepted) is Cassie Lear, flutes, Soren Hamm, saxophones, and Rebecca Olason, French horn. Faced with a menagerie of seldom-paired instruments and no repertoire whatsoever, these award-winning soloists and longtime friends came together to experiment with new ensemble timbres. Please join us to hear some brand new and newly-arranged music for this unusual combination!

The program includes but is not limited to:

Aus Liebe will mein Heiland Sterben by JS Bach (arr. Cassie Lear)
Found Objects on the Beach by Jenni Brandon (arr. Cassie Lear and Soren Hamm)
Trio by Steven Luksan (World Premiere)
Cityscape by Ben Seavello (World Premiere)
And some other aural treats from the brain of Chris Thile, arranged by Rebecca Olason