Hypnotic jams for the discerning listener, High Right Now features the programmatic, minimalist music of composers Brian Lawlor and Benjamin Marx (tov). Lawlor is known locally for his musical work with theater artists Saint Genet and Marx for work with durational choreographer Alice Gosti, among others. A supergroup of local players will perform a seamless evening of their work. Experience an auditory high in an otherworldly, ritualistic environment.

With:
Rose Bellini | cello
Storm Benjamin | percussion
Beth Fleenor | clarinet
Aleida Gehrels | viola
Erin Jorgensen | percussion
Rebekah Ko | percussion
Leanna Keith | flute
Brian Lawlor | piano, synths
Benjamin Marx | keyboards
Rachel Nesvig | violin
Alina To | violin

Production & design:
Erin Jorgensen & Charles Smith

(photo: Kelly O)

Known for his stunning video projections and beguiling soundscapes, Rob Angus directs his latest full-length evening work with well-known collaborators Jeff Greinke (electronics) and Joan Laage (Kogut Butoh) with dancers Kaoru Okumura and Shoko Zama.

Rob Angus builds kinetic ambient-industrial soundscapes using a variety of acoustic instruments and toys to generate sounds that are manipulated, layered, and sent out into a multi-channel surround-sound system. Rob has done scores and sound production work for dance, video, and multimedia installations, and has recorded and produced music by other musicians. His photography is based on mirroring ambient details, lending an aesthetic quality to things that would normally go unnoticed.

Jeff Greinke is a renowned composer of dark ambient, electro-acoustic, and experimental music who was an integral part of the Seattle music scene before relocating to Tuscon. His work blends electronic and acoustic instruments and textures to produce haunting yet inviting soundscapes. He has released more than twenty recordings on various U.S. and European labels. He has composed music for film, video, dance, theater, radio, and art installations.

After studying with Butoh masters Kazuo Ohno and Yoko Ashikawa in Tokyo in the late 80s and performing with Ashikawa’s group Gnome, Joan Laage settled in Seattle and founded Dappin’ Butoh in 1990. A co-founder of DAIPANbutoh Collective, she performed at many international butoh festivals and a Butoh symposium at the University of California (LA). She creates site-specific work for Seattle Japanese gardens annually.

Presented by Nonsequitur.

(photo: Kaoru Okumura)

Inverted Space welcomes guest artists Dr. Brendan Kinsella and Charles Corey for a night of solo instrumental and voice music.

Inverted Space welcomes Dr. Brendan Kinsella to present his groundbreaking music for piano and voice. Featured on the program is the world premier of Luke Fitzpatrick‘s Infinite, Frederic Rzewski’s De Profundis, and the Seattle premier of Kinsella’s SAD!. Charles Corey and Luke Fitzpatrick will also present the music of Harry Partch in a set of solo works for adapted guitar and adapted viola.

Lost Chocolate Lab is the Solo project of Damian Kastbauer and his ever-expanding effects pedalboard and guitar-noise-making system. Ambient Guitar for Active Minds. Respect the Vibrations.

After successfully Activating Ambient Acoustics last year in a multi-amplifier, spatial maelstrom of resonating frequencies, Lost Chocolate Lab returns to bring a new slice of dynamic ambient guitar acrobatics in conjunction with the projected visuals of exotic geological anomalies. Expect billowing delay-clouds, stuttering-drones of instrumental undulation, and a fluid-thread of guitar histrionics processed through the universal consciousness cascading amidst the columns, windows, and walls of the Chapel in an enveloping audio/visual experience.

The evening’s performance coincides with the release of Serious Frosting Batch 1 – The Space Between Two Notes (They Grow Up So Fast), recorded in Seattle during sessions that produced over 5 hours of improvised guitar-based soundscapes.

Kin of the Moon will present a new commission, No house on fire, no. by Seattle saxophonist/composer Neil Welch, with Abbey Blackwell, bass. KOTM encores composer Ewa Trębacz’s Winter After Times of Fire. KOTM will also premiere Leanna Keith and Em Piro’s interactive work “imagination is an act of rebellion”. Thanks to 4Culture for their generous support.

“No house on fire, no. for improvising quintet explores phonetic text painting and my reflections on physical landscape. Through this piece, I attempted to channel the collaborative spirit of Kin of the Moon — a virtuosic ensemble committed to engaging in creative dialogue with one another. Throughout this piece you will hear breathing, undulating wind currents, unified melodic passages and solos for each member of the ensemble. It was composed from late 2017 through early 2019. After initially completing the piece in late 2018, I was inspired to re-compose major sections after a journey through the mountains and valleys of New Zealand. While in country in early December, 2018 I traveled to a remote location in the central South island. With a crew of traveling companions I walked among tall, dry grass waist high that rolled unbroken over hill after hill throughout a 2 day journey. As the wind picked up the grass would take on new forms, winding and coursing in every direction around me. In these long days a new vision of this composition began to take form in my mind.

The work is segmented into four sections (Introduction, I, II, III) and is intended to progress between sections without pause. All instrumentalists use extended techniques to create undulating sounds of air and wind through various means, such as: fingers sliding on the keyboard with plastic picks, flute and saxophone blowing directly into their instruments without engaging pitch, bows sliding on the body of the instrument, amplified bow swirls and pulls, feet and hands brushing against the floor, clothing, or instrument. The work is dominated on the whole by graphic score language I developed for the piece, however many selections are also notated in pitch. These notated passages are often dichotomous in their pitch content, blending tempered and non-tempered tuning. No house on fire, no. is a work that must be sonically sculpted by each member of ensemble in order to bring the composition to completion. The rhythms and phrasing are taken from the poem Drawn Together, by Joan Naviyuk Kane. The poem is reinterpreted throughout the duration of the composition.” — Neil Welch

Drawn Together

Shot through with white, error—
A dream of birds of prey returned
Dropping glyptics, baskets.

Last night’s lopped moon
Couldn’t put into words
The ink around it.

Split and cleft,
I no longer weaken into sleep.
I no longer ash,

Ache. No carrion bird
Blown into the city,
No house on fire, no.

— Joan Naviyuk Kane

Jailbreak…the one with 32 bars.

Solo double bass by composer/bandleader Pete Leinonen.

A spontaneously improvised long form composition using elements and fragments from various original compositions and jazz standards as thematic material to be developed in the course of the performance.

Following his solo set, Pete will be joined by long-time associates Wally Shoup on saxophone and Jim Knodle on trumpet plus Greg Campbell, drums and percussion. They will create an unrehearsed “free jazz” set in which anything might happen. No plan. No rules. This will be the very first performance by this ensemble of well known and loved improvisors. Says Pete: “I’ve performed extensively with all of them individually in various settings going back as far as the early 80s. I’m looking forward to improvising, the four of us together for the first time, on this special night.”

Seattle born, Pete Leinonen played his first professional gigs here in 1955 at age 13. Starting with a long run at Seattle’s Llahngaelhyn Coffee House in the 1960’s, he has been a full-time working member of the jazz community, as a freelance bassist, touring sideman, composer/arranger and studio musician and for the last 40 years has led successful working jazz bands throughout Seattle and the greater Northwest. Locals know that he has always had a foothold in the free improvisation world too, and that’s what Jailbreak is about. No rules, except make beautiful new music and share those creative moments and discoveries with you. Pete calls it “unofficial music”.

(photo: Stewart Tilger)

The musicians, actors, and dancers of the Mosaic Art Ensemble seek to balance individuality and community in their collaborative art. Works such as Mosaic II, III, IV, and V pair various ensembles together to simultaneously perform solos developed independently, then assembled into a cohesive whole. Unintended associations are inevitably made when these independent compositions are organized through a rehearsal process and molded into a single piece. However, the individual voice of each performer is preserved and presented at the final event.

The pieces provide a platform for each artist to deliver their own message. Simultaneously they create a space for cooperation, a fundamental trait in both the ensemble’s work and any functioning community. Each piece the ensemble performs investigates how a communal objective can be achieved without the sacrifice of individual voices and identities.

Performing composite works of individual solos reflects the art of mosaic, in which small pieces are combined to create a larger and greater image. This ensemble was inspired by Antoni Gaudí’s Park Güell, in Barcelona, Spain, which features large-scale mosaics. These mosaics are composed of contrasting patterns and are built from pieces that come from various and differing sources. Nevertheless, the mosaics communicate effectively and are experienced as a cohesive work. Similarly, the Mosaic Art Ensemble performs works of composite performance in the manner of the mosaic, in that what began as individual pieces now constitute a greater communal expression..

The cast will include Liam Hardison, Madilyn Cooper, Payten Redwood, Elijah Luce Baraceros, Karyn Tobin, Brooke Morrison, and Maeve Haselton. Taya Pine will design and build the costumes for the performers, and Kate O’day will provide lighting. The process involves the composition of a fixed-media piece of music for each Mosaic, which are then sent to the individual artists to compose their own solos. Three rehearsals in addition to the dress rehearsal will be allotted to realize the greater works with all cast members present, providing an opportunity for the ensemble to cultivate a more cohesive quality between their solos.

Originally booked as part of the 34th Seattle Improvised Music Festival in February, which was rescheduled due to snow.

Odeya Nini is a Los Angeles-based experimental vocalist and composer with work spanning solo voice to chamber music and collages of musique concrète. As a vocalist she is devoted to redefining vocal interpretation and song through an exploration of extended vocal techniques, and how they resonate with the physical body’s language and space.

The duo of contrabassists Abbey Blackwell and Kelsey Mines will play the opening set. Abbey and Kelsey have crossed paths many times in the jazz, improvised, and classical music scenes in Seattle by way of the University of Washington and the Racer Sessions and are excited to play together as a duo.

NOTE: Odeya Nini will also do a Voice and Singing Bowl Sound Bath at the Seattle Sound Temple on Wednesday, Nov. 13 at 7:30 PM. Info and reservations here.

Los Angeles artists Yann Novak, Robert Crouch and Ian Wellman visit Seattle on the first stop of their west coast tour. Yann Novak will present his new work Slowly Dismantling, reflecting on his formative experiences as a queer youth in middle America and explores these acoustic and social spaces as zones of liberation. Robert Crouch will perform new work inspired by poet Ted Berrigan, that explores the tensions between collective listening and personal reflection. Ian Wellman will be performing segments from his latest offering, Bioaccumulation, and new material comprised of recordings made around Southern California, Sierra Nevada, and Lake Azeui, Haiti.

Yann Novak is a queer interdisciplinary artist and composer based in Los Angeles. His work is guided by his interests in perception, context, movement, and the felt presence of direct experience. Through the use of sound and light, Novak explores how these intangible materials can act as catalysts to focus our awareness on our present location in space and time. Novak’s diverse body of works—audiovisual installations, performances, recording, and prints—ask participants to reclaim the present moment as a political act. His works have been released by 901 Editions, Dragon’s Eye Recordings, LINE, Room40, and Touch, among others.

Robert Crouch is an artist and curator whose work encompasses sound, performance, and technology. As an artist, he locates his work with the intersection of post-phenomenological listening practices, conceptual sound art, and contemporary electronic music. At its core, his work can be understood as a conversation between tonality, context, history and subjectivities. Similarly, Crouch’s curatorial work focuses on the overlapping disciplines of sound, technology, movement, and performance. Crouch is currently the Executive and Artistic Director for Fulcrum Arts and the Artistic Director for the A×S Festival. His works have been published by Dragon’s Eye Recordings, LINE, and Touch, among others.

Taking influence from ethnographic film, bioacoustics, and noise music, Ian Wellman merges real and imagined worlds to create consuming acoustic portraits. His work is created from single tape loops, effect pedals, and field recordings, often focusing on themes based on the environmental collapse. Wellman’s solo efforts have been released on Room 40, Dragon’s Eye Recordings, Touch Radio, and Industrial Coast. Along with Aaron Bartell, he is part of the collaborative listening duo Zzyzxzyzz, which focuses on electromagnetic and other inaudible by ear sound worlds. Ian Wellman works and resides in Los Angeles.

An evening of music and discussion with Seattle composers, curated by Tom Baker:

Carson Farley
Garrett Fisher
Satchel Henneman
Clement Reid

The Seattle Composers’ Salon fosters the development, performance and appreciation of new music by regional composers and performers. At bi-monthly, informal presentations, the Salon features finished works, previews, and works in progress. Composers, performers, and audience members gather in a casual setting that allows for experimentation and discussion.