Seattle Civic Poet Shin Yu Pai shares poems written during her poet laureateship for the city, with music from Leanna Keith (flute and voice), Susie Kozawa (found object-instruments), Steve Peters (field recordings), and Kyle Hanson (accordion). Join us on the longest night of the year for a meditative evening of poetry and improvised music. Bring a blanket and pillow if you wish.

Both Chet Corpt and Sean Gaskell have traveled to what might be described as “The University of Kora”, i.e., the city of Brikama in The Republic of the Gambia. There, two adjacent compounds housed two of the all-time greats of the West African kora, Alhaji Bai Konte and Alhaji Malamini Jobarteh. The former had passed some years earlier, but Malamini carried on an active role in teaching and playing even during his retirement years. A former Minister of Culture, Malamini was the perfect ambassador for this music and certainly left his mark on both players. For both, this training is foundational.

A performance of Mandinka-based music requires a great deal of interpretation and improvisation. It is an 800 year old oral tradition that has no need for the standardization of it’s songs. The student must learn from the beginning to actively participate in the shaping of any musical performance at any level.  Both players believe that while a foundation is necessary, one is inevitably thrown back on what one knows about performance and expression, as an American musician. Through creative experimentation, the hope here is to create an American kora tradition, thereby helping to establish West African Mandinka sound art practice as universal.

Otodojo (Maro Kariya, PhD)  is a Detroit-based audiovisual artist who wishes to use multimedia to connect and motivate people towards changing systems that threaten environments. They weave together sonic stories through field and object recordings, processed vocals, contact-miked materials, and layers of synthetic sounds inspired by the natural world and imagined bio-cybernetic futures. Their music has been released with labels such as Acid Camp, Mesma, Perimeter Junk, Qeone, Unimatrix Zero, and their album ‘Amphibious / Aural Spirits’ on The Bunker NY has been named one of the best albums of 2023 by MixMag. In 2018, they launched ‘Microtones’ (microtones.info), an electronic music collective in Ithaca, NY which aims to help community building through music.

Omari Jazz Addae, electing to simply go by Omari Jazz in his creative endeavors, is a composer, sound designer, and producer based in Portland, OR. Simultaneously prolific and measured in his output, the 29-year-old polymath is well-known by fans for his consistently sporadic releases of compositions. In 2020, fans were rewarded in the form of album Dream Child, a 13-track sonic exploration of ritual and the collective subconscious (among other themes) that Bandcamp’s editorial staff described as ‘one of the most immersive beat tapes in recent memory.’ In 2024, Jazz released the eponymous album Black Decelerant with collaborator Khari Lucas aka Contour on RVNG International – a label celebrated for stewarding boundary pushing works by contemporary songwriters and composers. The album was favorably received by critics, appearing in the Wire Magazine, MOJO, and a number of other domestic and international publications. Using a combination of live-looping, triggered samples and synth/piano improvisations, no two sets are the same from Jazz. His NonSeq debut promises similar exploration, oscillating swiftly through sharp electronic passages and dream-like collage.

Based in Seattle, Asa Nakagawa is an intuitive player and self-taught experimental, ambient, electronic musician who began their practice in the early 2010s. They have used a variety of equipment over the years, but have a penchant for grooveboxes and FM synthesis. Aside from writing music, they like to field record, spend time in/around the forest and bodies of water, and make visual art spanning disciplines. They released their debut EP Hex on You in April 2021, and are currently writing and recording their first full length record. For the final NonSeq event of 2024, considering the incompatibilities between labor and grief, Asa will invoke esoteric Buddhist teachings they learned this year, using sound to share teachings that cannot be transmitted using language.

Curated by Connie Fu for Nonsequitur’s NonSeq series.

Red Pants Collective, made up of father/daughter duo James Falzone and Giordana Falzone, join forces with chamber ensemble Kin of the Moon, featuring Kaley Lane Eaton, Heather Bentley, and Leanna Keith, for an evening of improvised movement and sound. Joining the ensembles will be movement artist Hannah Rice.

Red Pants Collective
James Falzone: clarinet, penny whistle, piano, shruti box
Giordana Falzone: movement

Kin of the Moon
Kaley Lane Eaton: banjo and voice
Heather Bentley: viola
Leanna Keith: flutes

Special Guest
Hannah Rice: movement

Seattle Guitar Circle closes out 2024 with an engaging set of music featuring our most fundamental technique of group circulation, and are delighted to collaborate at last with Mark Hilliard Wilson and his Seattle Guitar Orchestra.

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.

Mark Hilliard Wilson has an engaging approach to teaching and programming concerts that draws from the deep well of history. Founding the Seattle Guitar Orchestra in 2000, he became the cathedral guitarist at St. James Cathedral of Seattle in 2006. Wilson has taught at Whatcom Community College, Bellevue College, Rosewood Guitar, and is currently at the Holy Names Academy; his compositions are published by Seconda Prattica and performed widely. Recently, he premiered a concerto written for him in 2023 by Ukrainian composer-in-exile Oleg Boyko; 2023 also saw the release of the music of Nigeria’s Taiwo Adegoke for guitars, which also featured cellist Abbie Eads. In April 2025, he will perform the 1951 Heitor Villa-Lobos Guitar Concerto with the Port Townsend Symphony, under the direction of Tigran Arakelyan. In 2024, Wilson released a set of videos based on his ongoing collaboration with Boyko; he also worked with the Seattle Classic Guitar Society to commission Boyko’s Secret Life of Trees for the Seattle Guitar Orchestra, which was recorded and filmed at St. James Cathedral.

The Seattle Guitar Orchestra was founded in 2000, after having met at the Seattle Classic Guitar Society Holiday Concert in December 1999. It is now 24 years later, and they have performed at every SCGS Holiday Concert since, along with performances at Benaroya Hall for the Day of Music Concerts, many of the Northwest Guitar Tests, and much more.

Portland’s Wild Card of Cascadia, (Marcus Fischer (12k), William Selman (Mysteries of the Deep) and Paul Dickow (Strategy) ) visit Seattle for an evening of immersive electro-acoustic music —with Pacific Northwest electronic music veterans Cindy Reichel (Patchwerks) and Marc Barreca (Palace of Lights).

Wild Card of Cascadia is a trio from Portland whose immersive, spontaneous music emerges from omnivorous, ever-changing, inquisitive working methods. In search of unexpected discoveries, they deploy conceptual prompts, unexpected instrumentation, and game-like challenges. Their emphasis on electro-acoustic sound means they draw from a large palette of techniques, from free improvisation to concrete composition. Wild Card’s membership includes established artists William Selman (Mysteries of the Deep, Critique of Everyday Life), Marcus Fischer (12k), and Paul Dickow (who records as Strategy), but the group’s sound is distinct from their individual projects.

Cindy Reichel is a Washington-based electronic musician & co-founder of Patchwerks, Seattle’s local hub for synthesizer sales, education and community events. Cindy uses a highly improvised approach to performance, blending spacious, slowly evolving sonic landscapes with intricate, tightly-woven melodies. She enjoys performing live throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond, both as a solo act and as a member of Dahliia (with Tom Butcher) and the Monster Planet collective.

Marc Barreca, veteran Seattle electronic music composer, performs electronic compositions with modular synthesizers, samplers and audio processing. 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 and performing with Young Scientist. His most recent releases include solo CDs A Discourse of Mist, Recordings of Failing Light, and a collaboration with K. Leimer, Arrhythmian.

Huck Hodge is a composer of “harmonically fresh work”, “full of both sparkle and thunder” (New York Times). His music has been praised for its “immediate impact” (Chicago Tribune), its “clever, attractive, streamlined” qualities (NRC Handelsblad, Amsterdam) and its ability to “conjure up worlds of musical magic” with “power and charisma” (Gramophone Magazine, London). His musical collaborations include those with members of Ensemble Modern and the Berlin Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony, the Orchestra of the League of Composers, the Aleph, ASKO/Schönberg, Dal Niente, Divertimento, SurPlus and Talea ensembles, the Daedalus, JACK, Mivos, and Pacifica string quartets, and numerous other ensembles.

His music has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and at numerous major festivals throughout the world — the New York Philharmonic Biennial, Berliner Festspiele, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Shanghai New Music Week, ISCM World Music Days, and many others. Recordings of his music appear on the New World and Albany record labels.

Hodge was educated at Columbia University and at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart, Germany where he studied with Fred Lerdahl, Tristan Murail, Marco Stroppa, and Georg Wötzer. Hodge is currently Professor and Chair of the Composition program at the University of Washington.

Performers:
Abbey Blackwell, double bass
Jeff Bowen, guitar
Luke Fitzpatrick, violin
Huck Hodge, melodica
Naeim Rahmani, guitar
Brian Schappals: clarinet
Laure Struber, piano
Cristina Valdes, piano
Neil Welch, saxophone
Bonnie Whiting, percussion
Marcin Pączkowski, conductor

Curated by Naeim Rahmani for Nonsequitur’s NonSeq series.

Seattle musicians Leanna Keith, Kate Olson (KO Solo), and Levi Fuller (Passenger Pigeon) will perform three overlapping sets of improvised, loop-based music. Leanna plays flutes in a wide range of settings and contexts (see her new bass flute album Body of Breath); Kate plays saxophones seemingly everywhere all at once; and Levi plays guitars and bass, writes songs, and has a day job. In addition to their many other pursuits, the three share a love of making stuff up with the help of a variety of trusty loop and effects pedals, so they have joined forces to do just that.

81:80 is a group that explores new textures and the passage of time through microtonal improvisation. Consisting of cellist Ha-Yang Kim, electric guitarist Jeff Bowen and violinist Luke Fitzpatrick, 81:80 will present the expanded version of Ha-Yang Kim’s may you dream of rainbows in magical lands (2021/24) for multiple strings and electronics. The group will be joined by local legend and versatile electronic wizard Marcin Pączkowski. 

Commissioned by and written for violinist Olivia De Prato (Mivos Quartet), this piece was initially conceived as a collaborative sound exploration between Olivia and her son, celebrating the profound connection between mother and child. The expanded version incorporates multiple string instruments (violin, adapted electric guitar, and cello), found objects, as well as electronics, to create an enriched sound world. Drawing upon the Kraig Grady Centaur tuning as a starting point, centered on the fundamental 174 Hz, the piece further delves into extended just intonation. Layers of sustained single notes evolve into pulseless, shifting chords that float within a dreamy, ambient texture. Found objects, such as Lego toys and glass bottles, bring a playful dimension to the soundscape, enhancing the atmosphere with spontaneous textures and resonances. In this meditative work, electronics subtly augment the live instrumental sounds, conjuring imaginary landscapes and dreamlike vistas inspired by the improvised play of children.  “may you dream of rainbows in magical lands” is also dedicated to the composer’s daughter, whose own visions of magical lands filled with rainbows serve as a guiding inspiration. Together, these elements create a slow, immersive journey into a realm where the everyday transforms into the magical, inviting listeners into an intimate, enchanted sonic experience. 

Alan Licht’s first-ever solo performance in Seattle closes out a West Coast tour in support of his new double album Havens (VDSQ/Black Editions), a sprawling summation of his decades-long exploration of solo electric and acoustic guitar performances that navigate and challenge the boundaries of Minimalism, rock, and other non-idiomatic music-making. Licht is masterful and relentless in his negotiation of the often-unknowable intersections that exist between juxtaposing strands of sound. His work is marked by contrast & contradiction: maximalism versus minimalism; rockist inclinations versus avant, expanded-field expression; loose improvisation versus considered performance. What these dichotomies shouldn’t obscure, however, is the simple pleasure that transpires in his refracting of idiom, conjuring expansive pieces that collapse, stratify & convolve competing schools of music to wholly singular ends.

Alan Licht has released several albums of his own structured improvisations for solo guitar and tape pieces and appears on dozens of other commercially released recordings. A co-founder of the indie rock bands Love Child and Run On, he has played with figures in the worlds of jazz, rock and the avant-garde, ranging from Rashied Ali to Tom Verlaine to Yoko Ono. He’s also known for his long-standing duo with guitarist Loren Connors, and for Text of Light, an ongoing ensemble which performs freely improvised concerts alongside screenings of classic avant-garde cinema, which he co-founded with Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo in 2001.

Alan has written extensively about the arts for Artforum, Modern Painters, Rhizome, the WIRE, Film Comment, Sight & Sound, Village Voice, Time Out New York, and other publications. His books include Common Tones: Selected interviews with artists and musicians (Blank Forms), Sound Art Revisited (Bloomsbury) and Will Oldham on Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy (Faber & Faber/W.W. Norton). Licht was curator at the famed New York experimental music venue Tonic from 2000 until its closing in 2007.

Presented by Nonsequitur.