Seattle Guitar Circle culminates a weekend intensive retreat with a performance featuring the ensemble and special guests, with ambient support from our friend and collaborator Travis Metcalf.

Seattle Guitar Circle is a multicultural guitar ensemble founded in 1993, representing an international community of music and education founded with Guitar Craft in 1985.  Its members and composers hail from many different ensembles, including both the League and Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists, Tiny Orchestral Moments, the Atomic Chamber Ensemble, Electric Gauchos, Los Angeles Electric 8, and Guitar Circle New England, among many others.  Featuring music from the world of classical, folk, bluegrass, rock, and the avant-garde, every performance is a unique event for the audience, the musicians, and the music, with a multiplicity of new and timeless moments. 

In addition to performances in the Seattle area, its members can also be found hosting monthly open seminars at Phinney Community Center, teaching at residential and online Guitar Circle courses, and actively engaging with the community through education and collaboration.

Nonsequitur kicks off the 2026 NonSeq concert series with a special performance introducing this year’s team of Community Curators:

RM Francis is an artist working with computer-generated sound, with a focus on the unique perceptual effects of the simulated human voice and the unstable auditory personae that emerge from artificial speech systems. Alongside this inquiry into the material properties of the voice, he is engaged in an investigation of the semantic affordances of spoken language decoupled from its capacity for the communication of human intention. His performance at the Chapel will feature vocal synthesis generated from information extracted from non-linguistic audio and converted into phonological data.

Haley Freedlund (they/them) is a trombonist, tour manager, photographer, and community builder, and was the lead curator and producer of Racer Sessions from 2016 until its final season in 2024. In all the work they do, Haley is committed to supporting efforts for new and creative music, large ensembles, nontraditional instrumentation, and uplifting underrepresented artists from all walks of life. Their performative and compositional practice often creates an amalgam of jazz, chamber music, songwriting, and free improvisation. When Haley plays the trombone or sings, it is truly an extension of their spirit.

Trumpeter/composer Cuong Vu is an internationally acclaimed artist, recognized by jazz critics as an original voice and innovator with his work with the Cuong Vu Trio.  Collaborative works include projects/recordings with a wide range of artists such as  Bill Frisell, Myra Melford, David Bowie and Pat Metheny (on recordings that earned Cuong two Grammys). Cuong is currently professor and head of jazz studies at the University of Washington.

Cellist Gretchen Yanover wears two musical hats: one as a composer of spacious string atmospheres which she performs on electric cello with a looping pedal, and one as a classical acoustic cellist performing with Northwest Sinfonietta and other ensembles. Tonight she will perform past and current selections from her body of work for solo electric cello. “With an electric cello in hand and a loop pedal under foot, Yanover is her own one-woman band. Playing and layering her melodies, she crafts instrumental atmospheres that grow and transform onstage.”  – Maggie Molloy, Classic KING FM — NPR Slingshot

Enter a world where sound is spirit, and every performance is a ceremony. Tiger Poems, a trio of visionary explorers, conjures a unique universe where the rigorous spontaneity of free improvisation meets the primal pulse of animistic trance ritual.

Hear the voice as a wild, untamed instrument. Arrington de Dionyso (Old Time Relijun, Malaikat dan Singa) channels guttural overtone singing and hollering melodies, while his bass clarinet offers everything from raven-croak murmurs to Ayleresque glossolalia. He is met by the all-caps kinetic piano of Gust Burns, a master of texture and dynamic architecture, who navigates the strings and keys to build tumultuous, resonant storms. Noel Kennon holds the space together, sculpting time and vibration with an array of gongs, metallic objects and giant bass drums. The trio yawps in a language of shimmering overtones and deep, grounding frequencies that physically shake the air.

TIGER POEMS is not a concert, but the invocation of an ancient growl. In the resonant acoustics of the Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center, the trio weaves a collective, unrepeatable journey. Expect a transformative “beyond-listening” experience—a cascade of primal echoes, modern dissonances, and hypnotic rhythms that bypasses the intellect to speak directly to the body and the unseen.

Tiger Poems invites you to witness the moment where music becomes ritual, and the performance space becomes a sacred ground for summoned sound.

Ahmad Yousefbeigi will open the event promptly at 8pm with a solo set showcasing his breathtaking mastery of the Kurdish Daf (frame drum).

James Falzone presents Mystery of Winter Skies, new music for the rare combination of string quartet and penny whistles. Commissioned and premiered in 2025, the work is a meditation on the mystery of existence and natural beauty. 

Featuring: 

James Falzone: composer and penny whistles
Alex Guy: violin
Luke Fitzpatrick: violin
Erin Wight: viola
Rose Bellini: cello 

Threshold is an improvising band composed of Seattle music scene veterans Don Berman (drums), Dennis Rea (guitar), Simon Henneman (guitar), and Heather Bentley (cello). This project is the manifestation of a musical vision Berman has held for years. His late father, William Berman, was a master violist who performed extensively in symphonic and string quartet settings. Having listened to so much of his chamber music playing, Don decided to form a 21st century string quartet: cello, two guitarists, percussion, and creative electronics, as opposed to the classical two violins, viola, and cello format. The music from their first album has been described as “often challenging listeners to identify the sources of the unique sounds they are hearing.” Bruce Greeley wrote about their second album: “A quartet of questions. . .I hear four equal voices. . . [T]he music proves to be its own consciousness-expanding sound show for the ears!” — Earshot Jazz Magazine (41:7) July, 2025.

Active for more than 20 years, Tempered Steel is Frank Junk, and Dennis Rea playing amplified, electronically enhanced thumb pianos. The trio thumbs its collective nose at musical convention with seamless improvisations conjuring everything from phantom harpsichords and subterranean percussion to vintage musique concrete. The group has played Seaprog, the Olympia Experimental Music Festival, Northwest Folklife Festival, the Zero-G Concert Series, and scads of underground haunts in the Pacific Northwest. Recommended to partisans of Harry Partch, John Cage’s prepared piano music, and Konono No. 1. Tempered Steel’s eponymous album is available through the usual streaming services. 

Composer and percussionist Joey Largent, visiting from Istanbul, joins movement artist Maumae (formerly Katrina Wolfe) for a three-hour durational performance of sculptural movement, improvised cymbal music, and field recordings.

In 2021, Joey Largent and Maumae performed a three-hour, durational work, Basaltic Void Dervishes, for improvised cymbals and dance at the Chapel, featuring a long-form movement duet in collaboration with her mother, Kawtee Wolfe. Nearly four years later, in this continuation of the work, they will come together again to construct another expansive meditative space at the peak of winter, oriented towards their shared practices of mysticism and inward investigation. 

Maumae will work with slow, sustained movement, gradually transforming the relationship between her body and a sculptural costume composed of industrial wire mesh and dried hydrangeas. The costume is visible in its original form at the beginning of the performance and is slowly dismantled and reshaped through movement over time. As the piece unfolds, the costume will not return to its initial state, rather, its changing nature will constantly be understood from when one enters the space to how long one remains present.

Joey will perform on ten closely mic’d cymbals, layered with long-form, natural field recordings collected during his recent travels in Türkiye and Georgia (საქართველო), and past travels in Washington State. His sound offers a deep, repetitive resonance that enraptures both space and the body.

Doors open at 6 PM. The performance begins promptly at 6:30pm and continues without intermission until 9:30pm. Audience members are welcome to come and go as needed, though those who are able are encouraged to arrive at the beginning and remain for a longer stretch in order to experience the full arc of the costume’s transformation with the sound. To preserve the gentleness of the closing, we ask that no entry or exit occur between 9:00pm and the end at 9:30pm. 

Attendees are encouraged to bring blankets, sleeping pads, or anything that helps them settle comfortably into the space. Gentle movement, meditation, dancing, and sema are welcome. Those who remain through the end are warmly invited to stay for a short period afterward of conversation and shared time.

Joey Largent is a semi-nomadic composer, writer, and publisher from Arkansas, currently based in Istanbul. His work often centers on long-duration work, acoustic mysticism, and field recording, exploring sound as devotion and sustained presence.

Maumae (formerly Katrina Wolfe) is an interdisciplinary artist working with sculptural movement, organic materials, costume, film, and photography. Her practices explore the body and organic and recycled materials as sites of transformation, ritual, and ecological memory.

TORCH (Brian Chin, trumpets, Eric Likkel, clarinets, Steve Schermer, bass, and Bonnie Whiting, percussion) is a multi-arts collective of artists dedicated to the creation and performance of new socially-conscious work. Embedded within the collective is a contemporary chamber music ensemble whose original compositions play with our heady intellects and our groove-craving souls. Rooted in contemporary classical, jazz, and improvised music, TORCH bridges the gaps between genres, re-imagines classic masterworks, and demonstrates an indie-band model of self-composition. This performance features original music by the collective as well as world premieres by local favorites Tom Baker, Sarah Bassingthwaighte, Ed Castro, Garrett Fisher, and Aidan Gold.

A night of free-improvised music flavored with drone and noise.

Just back from touring, Friends of the Road is an experimental string band from Seattle exploring long-form acoustic drones rooted in a melting pot of influences from American-primitive, dhrupad, and free improvisation which coalesce into original arrangements of traditional folk tunes.

Casey Adams is a Seattle-based builder and creator of electro-acoustic noise. As a performer, Casey attempts to fuse disparate and peripheral sounds while exploring movement, tension, intensity, and the materiality of auditory experience; pursuant of a moment that never arrives.

‘what’ is the East/West Sound performing and recording duo of A.F. Jones and Dave Abramson. Since their formation and first tour in 2018, their shows and recording projects are entirely improvised.

An evening of improvised music from Lu Evers (clarinet), Amy Denio (alto sax, voice), Lady Zade (cello), and Tom Scully (guitar). The joy of spontaneity, sharing in the moment of awareness, the scintillating particles in the diverse array of dimension.

An evening of ambient and electronic drone music, slow and calming. Come and relax for as long as you wish.

Ben Kaya is an American composer, producer and performer based in Belgium. His work primarily is concerned with simplicity, limitation and repetition, using long durations, repetitive motifs and a focus on texture in sound and visuals to bring a natural life to his vision. He will use hardware synthesizers in the trio to create a blanket and base layer of sound.

Last Train West is a Seattle-based producer and sound artist. His work blends sampling with generative melody. Using synthesizers and samplers, he will provide melodic reinforcement throughout the performance.

Aetheres is a Seattle-based composer and sound designer whose work blends ambient textures with dramatic, melodic expression. In this performance he will use various electronic devices to add texture to the ever present cloud.