Through her deep commitment to new music of all periods, pianist Ana Cervantes puts different times, sensibilities and musical voices into dialogue. Impassioned creator of connections, she opens doors for her listeners. She has inspired, commissioned and been the guiding force for major collections of new piano music from the most eminent living composers of the Americas and Europe.

For Canto de la Monarca: Mujeres en México / Song of the Monarch: Women in México (2008-2013) Ana Cervantes asked 16 composers of six countries for a piece for solo piano inspired by women who had transcendental roles in Mexican history. The project’s symbol is the Monarch butterfly: a potent metaphor for persistence and valor in a seemingly fragile body.

Presented by Nonsequitur.

Spontaneous, unrehearsed musical exploration, starring Aaron Keyt, piano, objects, melodica; Bruce Greeley, bass clarinet; Carol J Levin, harp, electric harp; Ha-Yang Kim, cello; Clifford Kimbrel-Dunn, flute; Jim Knodle, trumpet; Karen Eisenbrey, piano, objects, drums; Keith Eisenbrey, piano, objects; Neal Kosaly-Meyer, piano, guitar, voice; and S. Eric Scribner, piano, percussion, field recordings. Others TBA.

The first half will consist of three fifteen-minute quartet sets; the second half will be a longer piece where anything can happen (as long as there are only four people on stage at one time). When someone plays a second time, they must play a different instrument!

CILLA VEE LIFE ARTS is an inter-disciplinary arts organization founded in 2002 in the South Bronx by Claire Elizabeth Barratt (aka Cilla Vee), now based in Asheville, North Carolina. It serves as an umbrella for multiple projects that focus on collaboration and facilitation. With a mission of blurring boundaries and crossing categories, CVLA draws from a diverse pool of artists with a wide range of artistic backgrounds. Performances can include anything from dance, movement, music, sound, text, film and video, visual and performance art to installation and beyond. This Fall Cilla Vee is touring cross-country and the west coast in order to connect and collaborate with area artists in each location.

Definition:
Data transfer capacity of the mind.

Performance:
Psychic Bandwidth – chance operations of cross-disciplinary performance modes.

Improvised collaborations of Sound, Movement, Spoken Word, Performative Drawing and other Performance Art test the Psychic Bandwidth of artists and audience alike.

Duos, Trios, Quartets and All.
Picked randomly on the spot.
Unpredictable.
Each artist could do anything at any moment.
Do we have the Psychic Bandwidth to absorb it all?
To see everything. To hear everything.
To catch and process each interaction.
Casting our psychic net wide and reeling it all in to our consciousness.

Some of Seattle’s finest improvisers have been invited to throw down in this mix:
Vanessa Skantze
Karen Nelson
Alia Swersky
Alex Riding
Bill Horist
Arrington de Dionyso
James Falzone

Please note: Performance will begin promptly at 8pm.

Greg Sinibaldi presents new music for trio with Sinibaldi on saxophone/ewi, Ray Larsen on trumpet/electronics and Remy Morritt on drums. The duo of saxophonist David Pate and pianist Steven Cohn create spontaneous compositions in a free jazz style as openers.

Following his most recent release, Ariel, Greg Sinibaldi continues to develop music and sonic delights utilizing a unique instrument, the Electric Wind Instrument (EWI). Basically a wind driven synthesizer, Sinibaldi creates unique sonic textures. With stellar collaborators Ray Larsen on trumpet/electronics and Remy Morritt on drums expect some interesting suprises.

As they have been doing for 30 years, Florida residents Steven Cohn (piano and shakuhachi) and David Pate (tenor/soprano saxophone) will create spontaneous compositions in a free jazz style, throwing themes back and forth with contagious counterpoint.

Lou Mallozzi (Chicago) is an interdisciplinary artist who dismantles and reconstitutes sounds, images, gestures and language to examine relationships between presentation, representation, knowledge, power, and site. His work is primarily based in sound and takes the form of installations, performances, fixed media works, and improvised music. During more than three decades of interdisciplinary arts practice, he has performed, exhibited, and broadcast in many international venues. He was director of Experimental Sound Studio from 1986-2016, and is currently Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Coordinator in the Sound Department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Tonight he presents an evening of solo sound performances intertwining language, objects, vinyl, whistling, and microphones to explore representation, power, and sound. Among the works presented are La patria partorisce padri partiti, which deconstructs Italian fascist texts through controlled microphone feedback, and Arc, in which the eyes drown in a sea of stardust.

Gyre (Seattle) is an experimental electronics trio of Michael Shannon, David Stanford, and Carl Lierman, formed in January of 2012. Their working method relies on the use of non-standard configurations of a wide cross-section of analog and digital electronics. They create discrete circuits between these elements that, while they can sustain sonic form, are not always stable. Sounds generated entirely with oscillators, internal and external feedback circuits, simple sound generators, microphone captures, digital processing, forming swirling loops of sound layers. Their work is informed by the concept of the gyre, the conical helix or spiral of atmospheric phenomena, and the ideas explored by W.B Yeats. Yeats’ vision of the gyre described it as cycles of creation and disintegration that he used to analyze a variety of subjects from human consciousness to historical patterns.

Presented by Nonsequitur.

Enjoy flute and saxophone music from the 1960s to today performed by Soren Hamm and Cassie Lear. These two award-winning musicians will perform pieces from all over the world including works by Takemitsu, Iannaconne, Crockcoft and more, ranging from impressionist-inspired music to contemporary showpieces to modern minimalist works.

Saxophonist Soren Hamm has been heard on the popular radio programs Performance Today and Northwest Focus Live, and has performed repertoire spanning the Renaissance through the avant-garde in concerts across North America. Whether commissioning new repertoire from rising composers, or collaborating in innovative chamber music projects, Soren strives to push the boundaries of the saxophone as a classical instrument and invigorate audiences with exciting new sound worlds. He was a winner of the 2018 Frances Walton Competition, and competed as a national finalist in the MTNA Competitions. Soren holds degrees in saxophone from Bowling Green State University and the University of Oregon, with additional study at Western Washington University.

Flutist Cassie Lear has played at the NYC Electroacoustic Festival, SEAMUS Conference, the International Computer Music Conference, and LaTex Electroacoustic Festival, where her performance was awarded Audience Choice. She is passionate about representing the music of today and premiering and commissioning new works from living composers. She is also the 2017 winner of both the Seattle Flute Society Young Artist Competition and the Maverick Flute Competition, and holds performance degrees from the University of Oregon and the University of North Texas.

The Sound Ensemble will present Stravinsky’s L’histoire du soldat (The Soldier’s Tale), with narrator. Join us for this fable-like story about wisdom vs. folly, materialism vs. meaningful relationship, as our soldier (Joe) struggles with many of the issues that we face in more subtle forms each day.

Somewhere tangled in the frequency-sheets of sound stands a lone guitar player; glaciers of distortion covering invisible mountains of sound with blankets of white noise atop towering peaks. Impossible to reconcile the enveloping sound from common six-stringed instrument; the full-on maelstrom barely representing the visible playback mechanism slung over-shoulder. Expectations submerged in an enveloping cloud of cacophony, dipped in a modulated acid-bath of signal processing and reverberation; sound emerging as a rippling pool of cascading sound-waves lapping on the shore of consciousness.

Lost Chocolate Lab presents a set of solo guitar atmospheric improvisations that weave threads of the new Lost Landscapes album set against a projected backdrop of visuals created to accompany the release.

(NOTE: Possibly Possible has proved to be impossible this time around. No opener, performance begins at 8:30 sharp.)

This piano recital celebrates the diversity of music in our time with works by celebrated British and American composers. It ranges in style from neo-romanticism to jazz-classical fusion, and in inspiration from the English countryside to the shores of the Pacific. The recital also commemorates the birthdays of Howard Skempton (70) and Frederic Rzewski (80). The piano is joined by piccolo for the performance of a dazzling piece by Seattle-based composer Ken Benshoof. The program concludes with the American premiere of a piano fantasy by John Joubert based on Jane Eyre, the composer’s internationally acclaimed opera.

Images – Howard Skempton
The Stourhead Follies, Op. 4 – Ian Venables
I’m Still Here – Stephen Sondheim/Frederic Rzewski
Spindrift – Ken Benshoof
Lyric Fantasy on Themes from ‘Jane Eyre’, Op. 144 – John Joubert (American Premiere)

Eric McElroy is an American composer-pianist based in England at the University of Oxford. Colleen McElroy plays flute/piccolo with the Spokane Symphony and Boise Philharmonic and teaches privately in Seattle.

Cacophonie will perform original compositions. Following the concert, they will answer questions and speak about their composition process. Listen on BandCamp and watch on YouTube.

Dr. Kelsey ‘Cacophonie’ Tamayo is an ex-classical musician who likes to hit things, strum things, and, in general, make noise. Earning multiple music degrees from Peabody Institute and a Doctor of Musical Arts from Michigan State University, Cacophonie uses their extensive knowledge of percussion to create a wonderful mix of classical and folk/singer-songwriter styles.

They recently moved from to Seattle from mid-Missouri, where they were the percussion professor at Drury University and percussionist/keyboardist for the Springfield-Drury Civic Orchestra, Springfield Regional Opera, and Taneycomo Festival Orchestra.

Currently, Cacophonie is the drummer for the Power Converters Band in Hello Earth’s “Wars Outdoors: A New Hope in the Park” and a percussionist for the Seattle Video Game Orchestra and Choir. Cacophonie is a part of the Social Justice Bards, a community of musicians, story tellers, and creatives that regularly stream and collaborate on Twitch and IRL. Cacophonie is a proud artist endorser of Planet Marimba and Artifact Percussion.

Presented by Seattle Composers Alliance, a non-profit professional organization made up of working composers, students, and others interested in professional music composition. The SCA was created so that composers could gather with their peers in a relaxed, non-competitive atmosphere and share knowledge, experience and information. But we also have an agenda: special forums and seminars of interest to our members; expanding Seattle’s reputation as a center for musical creativity; and educational outreach to our community.