Sarah Pyle offers an evening of experimental music for baroque and modern flute. Inspired by styles ranging from the Early Baroque to musique concrète to noise music and beyond, this program explores tropes of flora and fauna across more than 400 years. The set features three world premieres for baroque and modern flute by Sarah and Seattle composers Andrew Stiefel and Daniel Webbon, and includes works for solo flute by American composers Elizabeth Brown and Vivian Fine, along with improvisations on baroque melodies by Francesca Caccini.

Program:

Elizabeth Brown: Botanical Obsessions for solo flute (2000)

Andrew Stiefel: Let us whisper our names into the trees for flute, baroque flute, and electronics (premiere)

Sarah Pyle: Improvisations on three secular monodies by Francesca Caccini

Daniel Webbon: To Square a Circle for baroque flutist as percussionist (premiere)

Sarah Pyle: Beehive for flute and electronics (premiere)

Vivian Fine: The Flicker for solo flute (1973)’

Sarah Pyle is a founding member of the Seattle and Portland-based contemporary chamber ensemble Sound of Late, where she has premiered more than forty works by American composers at concerts throughout the Northwest.

As a piccolo specialist, she was awarded first place at the 2015 Kujala International Piccolo Competition in Chicago. She has played flute and piccolo with the Oregon Mozart Players and has played substitute flute and piccolo with the Seattle Symphony and the Eugene Symphony Orchestra.

Her current scholarly interests span a wide range of topics and eras regarding music and gender, from promoting current musical voices through artistic planning for Sound of Late to analyzing and interpreting musical iconography of the Late Renaissance and Early Baroque eras.

Sarah studied flute with Molly Barth, Michel Debost, and Kathleen Chastain. She holds master’s degrees in flute performance and musicology from the University of Oregon as well as a B.M. in flute performance from Oberlin Conservatory and a B.A. in environmental studies from Oberlin College. In her spare time she explores forests and fiber arts.

Inverted Space explores the music of three major 20th Century Composers. Pairing the Etudes of John Cage and György Ligeti, the second concert of the season will present Book 1 of Cage’s Freeman Etudes for solo violin (performed by Luke Fitzpatrick) with Book 1 of the Ligeti Études for solo piano (performed by Steven Damouni). The second half will feature Karlheinz Stockhausen’s enigmatic Plus Minus.

The 4th concert of Spontaneous Combustion New Music Festival features Iktus Duo from New York City, performing works by Lou Harrison, Joseph Pereira, Adam Vidiksis, James Romig, and Washington-based composer Bruce Hamilton.

This innovative new touring festival features seven exciting up-and-coming soloists and ensembles who specialize in contemporary art music, performing in Seattle, Portland and Eugene between Jan. 19 and Feb. 3. In addition to tickets for individual concerts, festival passes are available here ($50/3-day, $100/7-day).

Iktus Duo is a strong advocate for new music, heavily active in the commissioning, promotion, and educational outreach of new music. The duo has performed at the Con Vivo New Music Series (New Jersey), Bulgarian Consulate in NYC, Spectrum (NYC), Open Sound Series (Boston), Trans Pecos (Queens) and Noon Concert Series (Williamstown, MA), Hardin Simmons University, University of UT at Tyler, Stephen F. Austin State University, Louisiana State University, Southeastern Louisiana University, and the Versipel New Music Festival in New Orleans. While on tour, the duo has presented workshops, masterclasses and concerts, and collaborated with student and faculty composers on new commissions written for the duo.

Aspiring to develop its repertoire with the audiences throughout the USA and abroad, the duo has commissioned and premiered a diverse list of composers such as Erin Rogers (Canada), Philip Schuessler and Seth Boustead (USA), Ronaldo Cadeu (Brazil), Hiroya Miura (Japan), and Kostadin Genchev (Bulgaria). These commissions are uniquely crafted for Iktus Duo’s performance style.

Iktus Duo features Hristina Blagoeva, flute, and Chris Graham, percussion

An evening with two veterans of the Seattle electronic music scene. There will be two solo sets followed by a duo set.

Marc Barreca will be playing electro-acoustic loop based compositions with a laptop and MIDI accordion. He has been making electronic music in Seattle since the mid-1970s, releasing a number of projects over the years on the Hawaii-based Palace of Lights label. His most recent PoL releases are the solo project Aberrant Lens, and the brand new double CD collaboration with K. Leimer, Dual Mono.

Rob Angus will perform pieces from his recording projects Ethnoloopography and Slow Rain on vintage sampling keyboards. He is revisiting these pieces after years of performing live acoustic ambient-industrial music as a soloist, in a long-running duo with Jeff Greinke, and in a number of ad hoc improvising groups.

Opening night of the inaugural Spontaneous Combustion New Music Festival! This innovative new touring festival features seven exciting up-and-coming soloists and ensembles who specialize in contemporary art music, performing in Seattle, Portland and Eugene between Jan. 19 and Feb. 3. In addition to tickets for individual concerts, festival passes are available here ($50/3-day, $100/7-day).

For the first concert, the festival is proud to present Delgani String Quartet from Eugene, Oregon. Delgani is one of the most active chamber music ensembles in the Pacific Northwest, with over 75 performances and educational programs each year. The quartet curates their own concert series in both Eugene and Salem while also appearing as guest artists throughout the state. Delgani recently completed its first east-coast tour following an invitation to perform at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.

This concert features a new work inspired by the Oregon Cascade Range composed by Benjamin Krause. As the musical basis for Delgani’s Cascade Quartet Project, Krause’s composition will be used in a documentary on the Cascades that explores the formation, preservation, and sacredness of the Range. This unique educational tool will be used in schools and museums to bring awareness to Oregon’s geographical history. This project is supported in part by a Creative Heights Grant from the Oregon Community Foundation.

The concert also includes two contrasting 20th century works, the first string quartets by Seattle composer Alan Hovhaness and Hungarian György Ligeti. This is Delgani’s premiere performance in Seattle.

Canadian singer Helen Pridmore focuses on experimental music and improvisation. She blends formidable classical technique and style (think Anton Webern, Michael Finnissy) with work in extended vocal techniques (think Joan La Barbara ). With a special interest in the work of John Cage, Helen has performed his music widely, including at Carnegie Hall in NYC. She frequently works with artists in other disciplines – dancers, visual artists, software engineers – to create new and stimulating art, asking questions about our voices, our bodies, and beauty.

For her visit to the Wayward Music Series, Helen will perform with renowned Seattle musicians Lori Goldston (cello) and Mark Hilliard Wilson (guitar). The trio will explore graphic scores by Cage and his contemporary Earle Brown — music to see and to hear, with visual interpretation of the score as a crucial part of the performance. For the second half of the program, accordionist, composer and arranger Kyle Hanson (The Murkies) will join the group for improvisation, fresh takes on new sounds.

Seattle Times article.

Seattle pianist, Jesse Myers, presents an evening of spacious solo piano works from the masters of time and space— Arvo Pärt, Morton Feldman, and more. In a reference to the aesthetics of John Cage, this program is meant to bring mental clarity. The audience is encouraged to get comfortable, bring a mat or pillow, and forgo the chairs. So, hit reset on your brain, close your eyes, and become entranced by the magical sounds of the Chapel’s extensive resonance.

Jesse Myers is an adventurous explorer of music that expands the possibilities of the piano. With a strong interest in performance that pushes piano music into new realms, Myers frequently performs music for prepared piano, new music for piano and electronics, as well as traditional classical literature. He is a performer, educator, and composer with a goal of giving the audience a fresh perspective of the piano and an imaginative understanding of the music. His solo concerts have been featured on City Arts Magazine, KingFM’s Second Inversion, Seattle Weekly, The Live Music Project, Seattle Weekly’s “35 Things You Must Do This Fall,” and were a part of The Stranger’s Best Concerts of 2017 for three seasons. His recent work with the prepared piano and electroacoustic music has led to tours across the country including artist residencies and guest performances at Cornish College of the Arts, Capital University Conservatory of Music, Bowling Green State University, Lewis University, and Carlsbad Music Festival.

Program:

David Lang – Cage
John Cage – In a Landscape
Carl Vine – Threnody
Beat Furrer – Voicelessness, The Snow Has No Voice
Morton Feldman – Palais de Mari
Arvo Pärt – Für Alina

February, led by double bassist Kelsey Mines, will be premiering five separate pieces that seek to challenge the musical range of the double bass. The program incorporates contemporary classical compositional elements with free improvising, all made possible by ensemble members, Mike Gebhart, Andrew Olmstead, and Matt Williams. Concert attendees can expect to hear extended techniques, synthetic sounds, eclectic percussion instruments, vocal harmonies, and so much more!

Tiny Ghost is a new quartet with Greg Sinibaldi, Katie Jacobson, Ivan Arteaga & Raymond Larsen. We play music that is strange, pretty, funny, and weird. We like trying to understand the limitations we put on ourselves within the ‘free’ or ‘improvised’ music genre. We often ask ourselves questions like “what happens if we make ‘silly’ sounds while improvising?” or “what if this piece had a story behind it?” to try to push ourselves beyond what we think we know about free and improvised music. We like discovering sounds together and using words in combination with sound in our music.

Pink Void is the moniker of Crystal Perez, best known in the noise world for her part in the much-revered Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, and currently playing bass in Low Hums. Since 2011, she’s created sprawling landscapes of layered guitar, samples, and static as Pink Void, that are, as she describes, “Sensual nightmare soundtracks for the whole family.”

Noisegasm is the Electronic music duo of Greg Weber (guitars, synths, pedals) and Brad Anderson (keyboards, computer). Equal parts noise, rock, classical, ambient and avant garde, their shows may caress your eardrums or bludgeon them, usually both.

OwL-Dent = Experimental soul. Crux trinket. Everything is a toy. Whirlpools. Sometimes finds ghost voices.

An evening of music and discussion with Seattle composers:

Carson Farley, Film Music, for piano, cello, and flute
Aaron Keyt, Music for Wallace, for piano
Ian McKnight
Patrick O’Keefe, Morning Stroll (revised), for clarinet quartet

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. Everyone is welcome!