Blake DeGraw is a composer, performer, bandleader and sound installation artist currently studying composition at Cornish College of the Arts. His primary interest is in large-group performance, often exploring extremes in spatial dispersion and alternative methods of conducting.

“The combined sound of [DeGraw’s] ensemble could be described as if Charles Ives had access to psychedelic mind-altering substances.” – icareifyoulisten

He will present Dissociative Containment: Chamber & Vocal Music – works for twelve violins, six violins, twelve vocalists, and solo voice with fixed media. Each piece explores a common thread of unity through dissociation: all musicians in participation will perform wearing headphones, responding in different ways to aural stimuli heard only by them individually, unlocking harmonies and rhythmic combinations that would otherwise be too challenging and counterintuitive to achieve through listening to one another.

To open the program, Noel Kennon and Greg Kelley will present a moment of music.

AIR celebrates the second CD release and digital drop by MDC in a projected tetralogy of ambient and synthesized soundscapes based on the classical elements: water, air, earth and fire. Incorporating twenty-five years of field recordings from all over the world, “AIR” also includes non-real-time granular synthesis of these recordings and real-time processing of stringed instruments: guitar, bass and moon-harp.

Mark D. Cooper is a graduate of Oberlin College and the Center for Contemporary Music at
Mills College and has previously produced numerous compositions, and sound designs for
museums, and dance and theater companies. He is recently re-emerging from 15 years of
hibernation/parenthood. He is a member of the Seattle Phonographers Union and of XYST, Inc.

Inverted Space Ensemble presents four new works by four eclectic composers. Drawing on an ensemble that was born out of Inverted Space’s Cornish Residency, the concert will feature works for a unique ensemble of violin/viola, sax/clarinet, acoustic/electric guitar, piano and percussion. The concert will feature newly commissioned works by Charles Corey, Yigit Kolat, Luke Fitzpatrick and Ben Levin.

Crippled Symmetry, written in 1983 is the second of three works by New York Jewish composer Morton Feldman for this trio combination. Representing the culminating style of his compositions, with long time frames and somewhat repetitive yet ever-changing and overlapping material for the three players in a subtle quiet dynamic, this period is perhaps his best known through a series of recordings that emerged shortly after the composer’s death, with CDs making recordings of work of such length and dynamic subtlety possible.

The performers, Paul Taub (flute), Matthew Kocmieroski (percussion), and Roger Nelson (piano) have been playing new chamber music together for nearly forty years. They were members of the New Performance Group during the 1980s and 90s and then formed the short lived but significant trio TaNeKo which premiered works by composers such as Nicolas Slonimsky. Over the years they have continued to play together and have performed all three of Feldman’s works for this trio of instruments. They are happy to once again offer the work of this great 20th century American composer.

Note: This work lasts approximately 90 minutes without intermission.

The Drone Cinema Film Festival, now in its fourth year, showcases cutting-edge minimalist works of ethereal beauty that transmute sonic drones into the visual realm.

Drone Cinema (which has nothing to do with obnoxious flying robots) draws its inspiration from a wide range of sources: the mid-century experimental films of Stan Brakhage and Jordan Belson, the sound Of the hurdy-gurdy in Early Music, the tambura of Indian music, the minimalist drones Of La Monte Young and Terry Riley, and the recent film genre called Slow Cinema.

Program:

AUME – Transmission
C130 & Scant Intone – Eye of the Storm
Mike Rooke – Falling Memories
Kat Cascone – LuxLuna
Sequencial – The Foundation
Kris Force – Cloudwalker
Albert Borkent – Moon TV
Don Haugen – From the Dust of

Opening the evening, festival/Silent Records founder Kim Cascone’s new drone composition Pollen & Fragments will be performed by the new ensemble Khem One, with Stuart Arentzon (guitar), Kim Cascone (guitar), Evan Cordes (tanpura), Steve Peters (reed organ), Ethan Sobatta (double bass), Stuart McLeod (drums/percussion), Scot Jenerik (electronics).

Presented by Nonsequitur.

Kin of the Moon’s show What Better Than Call a Dance is inspired by the relationship of dance to music; how music informs dance and dance informs music. We’ll be collaborating with Beth Fleenor on clarinet, vocals, electronics and Karin Stevens; the two will interweave a series of improvisations interspersed with four new takes on some pre-existing dance music forms composed by Kaley Lane Eaton and Heather Bentley, performed by Kin of the Moon (Leanna Keith, flute, Heather Bentley, violin/viola, Kaley Lane Eaton, soprano/piano/electronics). A hybrid of through-composed and improvised music, the retrospective/reworking includes Eaton’s 22 which is a quasi-jig; Bentley’s Waltz for Three and Conventillo, a backward look at tango music and lyrics, and Eaton’s Hildegard of Bingen-triggered EDM piece.

Renowned Dutch vocalist and sound poet Jaap Blonk is unique for his powerful stage presence and almost childlike freedom in improvisation, combined with a keen grasp of structure. With the use of live electronics, the scope and range of his concerts has acquired a considerable extension.

Dr Voxoid’s Next Move is Blonk’s current voice and electronics performance. It is in constant development, new possibilities being added frequently. He prefers to choose a specific program on the spot and may even change it during a performance. It may contain:

– sound poetry (his own works and possibly an occasional ‘classic’ from this tradition)
– pieces in invented languages, for instance in “Onderlands” (the language of the Underlands, a variation on Netherlands)
– phonetic etudes and processes
– live soundscapes
– improvisations, both for solo voice and in dialogue with his live electronics
– and more…

Jaap Blonk is a self-taught composer, performer and poet. He went to university for mathematics and musicology but did not finish those studies. In the late 1970s he took up saxophone and started to compose music. A few years later he discovered his potential as a vocal performer, at first in reciting poetry and later on in improvisations and his own compositions. For almost two decades the voice was his main means for the discovery and development of new sounds.

From around the year 2000 on Blonk started work with electronics, at first using samples of his own voice, then extending the field to include pure sound synthesis as well. He took a year off of performing in 2006. As a result, his renewed interest in mathematics led him to research the possibilities of algorithmic composition for the creation of music, visual work and poetry.

Besides working as a soloist, he has collaborated with many musicians and ensembles in the field of contemporary and improvised music, such as Maja Ratkje, Mats Gustafsson, Joan La Barbara, The Ex, the Netherlands Wind Ensemble and the Ebony Band. He premiered several compositions by the German composer Carola Bauckholt, including a piece for voice and orchestra. A solo voice piece was commissioned by the Donaueschinger Musiktage.

Seattle Modern Orchestra is pleased to host composer Orlando Jacinto Garcia with a new piece, the clouds receding into the mountains, written for violist and University of Washington faculty Melia Watras and SMO. The title refers to both the spectacular cloud formations as well as the continually receding aural materials heard throughout the work. The concert also features Swiss composer Beat Furrer’s Aria, and Melodien for chamber orchestra by the 20th century master, György Ligeti.

At 7:30 PM there will be a pre-concert conversation with SMO’s co-artistic director Jérémy Jolley and guest composer Orlando Jacinto Garcia

Composer/percussionist Adam Briggs presents an immersive musical landscape with the premier of his first string quartet as well as a large work for split percussion and orchestra, both aimed at the exaltation of unity and the expulsion of the past and future.

His music stems from the friction between his early training as a percussionist and his more recent experiences as a classical composer. While he plays regularly in a variety of groups ranging from Balkan brass bands to experimental drone ensembles, his personal compositions are consistently reflective and apocalyptic.

All donations go to supporting the Wayward Music Series.

At The Sound Ensemble, we take great pleasure in introducing you to works and composers you may have never heard before. In this concert we will share great compositions by musicians known for their pop and indie careers. This will be a fun opportunity to learn about the depth of training that many great popular artists have experienced.

You won’t want to miss Murder Ballads by Bryce Dessner of the National, or three world premieres by James McAlister of Sufjan Stevens and the Album Leaf, who just performed at the Oscars. We’ll also play Stephen Rush‘s Woodwind Quintet and selections from Beck’s Song Reader.