Tiny pies & delectable treats, meditation, and catharsis combine with live music, video, and light in a two hour ritual experience. Created by Beth Fleenor (voice / amplified clarinet / sound & food composition) with Scott Keva James (video art), David Verkade (lighting), and special surprise guests, this will be an evening of taste, breath, listening, motion, and being.

For this performance experience, the Chapel will be divided into four connected spaces, filled with sound, light, video, and food. Audience members are invited to move freely about the space to experience different perspectives of the work created. Above all, the intention is to create a moment of beauty and peace – a space to just be with yourself and others – that stretches out continuously over two hours.

“Divided into four ventricles, the human heart rhythmically pumps blood through our circulatory system, providing the body with oxygen and nutrients, and assisting in the removal of metabolic wastes. Even though emotions are thought to be centered in the brain, a strong rush of emotion such as fear, anger, or love, pumps adrenaline to the heart – accelerating the heart beat. In conversation and thought, we often charge this tiny muscular organ with the responsibility of guiding us in the right direction, or cluing us into aspects of universal connection. Residing in the center of our chest, we use phrases like “listen to your heart,” “follow your heart” and “have a heart” to find our way to a deeper part of ourselves. We seem to seek a pathway to our own inner knowing and our ability to connect that knowing with others…heart to heart. The heart communicates to the brain and body in four ways including nervous system connections, hormones produced in the heart itself, biomechanical information via blood pressure waves, and energetic information from its strong electrical and electromagnetic fields. The heart emits an electrical field 60 times greater in amplitude than the activity in the brain and an electromagnetic field 5,000 times stronger than that of the brain. It not only can be measured anywhere on the body (using an EKG) but also for several feet outside the body. And interestingly, activity in one person’s heart can be measured in the brain waves of another person. The electromagnetic field of two individuals, touching or within a few feet of each other, can interact so that energy activity in the heart of one individual is measured in the brain waves of the other. The electrical activity of the heart and the brain can be guided into a synchronous electrical rhythm easily measured and displayed by simply focusing on positive and loving emotions emanating from the heart. This state of organ “coherence” is associated with improved higher level functioning, lower blood pressure and cortisol levels, and improved immune system function.” (Cardiologist Dr. Joel Kahn) All of which serves as inspiration for this performance experience.

Presented by Nonsequitur.

Women are central to mythic stories of death and rebirth, but they are often pushed to the side in patriarchal institutions. Our goal is to reclaim this space and fill it with dynamic expressions of femininity. You can expect chants by Hildegard von Bingen sung by Danielle Sampson and Beth Ann Bonnecroy. Janna Webbon and Sarah Pyle will be in the center of the space doing free musical improvisation and performance art with costumes and make-up.

We invite you to enjoy the experience in whatever way best fits you: on a yoga mat, pillow, or sitting in a chair. You can bring crafts like knitting or cross stitch if you like to keep your hands busy. There won’t be any audience participation like being singled out or having to speak (a nightmare for those of us with social or performance anxiety). It will be all-ages friendly; we would love for this to be an intergenerational event.

Janna Webbon, violinist and improviser, is curating this performance. She suffers from panic disorder, and the Chapel has been one of her trigger places for a few years. While this is an artistic endeavor, it’s also a goal post for her to reclaim a space and to be herself in a place she felt she didn’t belong. She works in administrative support in health research during the weekdays and is a socialist organizer on the weekends.

She collaborates with Sarah Pyle, flutist and musicologist. Her scholarly interests span a wide range of topics and eras regarding music and gender, including interpreting musical iconography of the Late Renaissance and Baroque eras. She has premiered more than forty works by American composers at concerts throughout Oregon and Washington. Sarah has used her expertise and artistic expression to make pivotal contributions to the development of this project. Janna and Sarah regularly go on hiking trips together.

Danielle Sampson is an avid performer of baroque, classical, and contemporary music. She is known for her “youthful and light timbre” (Classical Voice North America) and “a compassionate calm and a warm, glowing tone” (Boston Globe). Danielle and Janna got to know each other performing and recording Neil Welch’s “Concepcion Piciotto.”

At Seattle Pacific University, Beth Ann Bonnecroy teaches voice and conducts the SPU Women’s Choir. Beth Ann is a frequent soloist at recitals all over the Seattle area. She is currently a member of the music staff of Phinney Ridge Lutheran Church in Seattle where she conducts the Chancel Choir and Handbell Choirs. Janna is an alto in her church choir, and Beth Ann has been very supportive in helping Janna feel welcome at church and in the choir.

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.