TOZ (aka Tom Zeiler) is an electro-acoustic experimentalist musician and visual artist who does surprising things with QWERTY and MIDI keyboards, guitars, horns, voice, toys, and more. Zeiler’s adventures in out-of-the-ordinary music began at an early age, and his passion for exploring novel sonic territories has only deepened over time. His approach blends a diverse set of digital and physical elements including acoustic instruments, synthesizers and sample players, algorithmic sequencing, and live looping. Sounds will swoosh, throb, and bounce; optic nerves will be stimulated; active participation will be encouraged. Feel free to bring nesting materials such as mats, blankets, and pillows!

Bongo Funhouse is a free-improvisation performance ensemble that explores the world of percussion and found sounds. Bongo Funhouse seeks to create a unique performance experience that blends elements of avant-garde and contemporary classical music. Taking influence from many types of music, literature, and nature, Bongo Funhouse travels through a wide variety of sound worlds and moods that at times will have your adrenaline pumping and at other times will have you drifting into an ambient trance.

Having met at Indiana University through a shared interest in free improvisation, Bongo Funhouse is composed of Stephen Karukas, Mitchell Beck, and Paul Millette. Stephen Karukas is a Seattle-based musician who participates as a contemporary percussionist and composer in various collaborations. He also releases experimental electronic music as kmodp. Also based in Seattle, Mitchell Beck is an active performer, composer, and educator in the Pacific Northwest. He has performed internationally, had his works performed internationally, held the position of Visiting Assistant Professor of Percussion/Music Technology at Boise State University, and founded the Seattle Percussion Academy. Paul Millette is a percussionist based in San Antonio, Texas, where he teaches at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He maintains an active career as an orchestral percussionist, improviser, chamber musician, composer, and educator.

In_Series hosts a participatory musical contemporary art performance with Colin Tucker alongside works by Luke Martin, Eva-Maria Houben and Tom Johnson.

Feeling as Capacity / Feeling as Relation
This program features musical contemporary art with musical instruments, text, musicians, found objects, spectators, audio, chairs, projection, lights, and more. The program asks how sensation and emotion are tools of political power and struggle, in the concert hall and beyond. The featured pieces mark the politics baked into the concert hall’s often unmarked protocols of listening, “decorum,” and funding, while also proposing a musical practice that emphasizes relationality over historically white compartmentalizations between artistic disciplines, politics/aesthetics, colony/metropole, and past/present. The program presents realizations of new scores by Colin Tucker, alongside new realizations of scores by Yoko Ono and Ben Patterson, as a way to position the new scores in a long yet neglected history of decolonial musical contemporary art. Attendees will have the option of participating or not participating in listening, movement, speaking activities oriented around the reframing of routine concert music protocols.

Luke Martin is an experimental musician and writer living in Minneapolis. He plays guitar, sine tone generator, and no-input mixing board, often with people in and around the Wandelweiser Group, and is part of the ensemble Ordinary Affects. Luke’s work focuses on silence and the relation between music and truth.

Aaron Michael Butler, Peter Tracy, and Carlos Cotallo-Solares also present a brand new work by Eva-Maria Houben, as well as a rarely performed classic by Tom Johnson. 

Aquíestoy (Carlos Snaider) – guitar, vocals, synthesizers
souschef – synthesizers
Rocky Martin – drums
Mario Layne Fabrizio – drums

Aquíestoy (Carlos Snaider). Guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, singer and rapper. Aquíestoy, Spanish for “I am here,” is the name of his personal creative laboratory, with music exploring encounters of the present moment through intimate and elemental expressions of sound, language, grooves and songs. Based in Seattle for the last five years, his musical background leads to sonic explorations at the nexus of Black American and Latin American music, electronica, meditative praxis and hip-hop. Since 2015, Carlos has been a member of the international performance troupe Ay Ombe Theatre, incorporating the creative system/philosophy Performance Autology into his work. Carlos co-leads the songwriting jazz quartet EarthtoneSkytone and experimental salsa band Eléré. He holds a Bachelor degree in Music and African American Studies from Harvard University.

In preparation of his forthcoming album “Multiverso”, Aquíestoy (Carlos Snaider) is presenting a new configuration of trusted collaborators to enact Creative Music sound worlds with joy as a guiding technology. Working with traditional and syncretic forms, the Multiverso songbook explores diaspora, macro and microcosm, English and Spanish, being lost in translation, Silence, subjectivity, and the Higher Self. Aquíestoy’s musical trajectory has led him from composing and performing with bands, to recording most of the instruments on his album himself, to now having the unreleased recorded music informing how he orchestrates his live bands. Sous chef (Antoine Martel) brings an element of textural and performative sensitivity on synths and electronics, while Mario Layne Fabrizio and Rocky Martin bring drum languages that span the Americas. This is the first time that Snaider is presenting himself with his artist name Aquíestoy, with the NonSeq series being a trusted space for experimentation.

Curated for Nonsequitur’s NonSeq series by Noel Brass, Jr.

Kin of the Moon returns from their Denver collaboration with Nebula Ensemble with two new works in hand. All works will be performed by Kin of the Moon.

Kin of the Moon (Heather Bentley, viola; Kaley Lane Eaton, voice; and Leanna Keith, flutes) is “an experimental chamber troupe with an ear for the eclectic. A power trio with classical roots and sprawling musical tastes, their intimate performances blend classical music with sonic ritual, dissolving genre and erasing boundaries between performer and audience.” – Maggie Molloy, Second Inversion. Just back from a residency in Denver at the Metropolitan State University, KOTM will share new works by Sarah Perske of Nebula Ensemble (“The Lack of Anchors”) and Leanna Keith (“Built to Last”). Perske’s piece deals with the emotional states of Panic, Anxiety, and being unmoored, while finding solace in a twelve tone waltz. Keith’s trio is an unhinged ode to Late Capitalism in three movements.

(Photo: Shaya Bendix Lyon)

The Forbidden Valley Ensemble is set to make a stunning debut with their upcoming recital, a captivating celebration of the works of renowned composer Kaija Saariaho. This highly anticipated performance is part of the Wayward Music Series and coincides with International Women’s Day, honoring the contributions of female composers to the world of music. The ensemble will present an evocative selection of Saariaho’s works, including Changing Light, Leino Songs, Light and Matter, and Five Reflections on Love from Afar. Each of these pieces showcases Saariaho’s unique ability to blend the ethereal with the emotive, creating an immersive auditory experience that transcends traditional boundaries.

The recital will feature a talented lineup of performers, including soprano Emerald Lessley, baritone Darrell J. Jordan, violinist Emily Acri, cellist Chris Young, cellist Michael King-Leiferman, and pianist Steven Damouni. Together, they will bring to life Saariaho’s intricate compositions, emphasizing the beauty and complexity of vocal music alongside strings and piano. Audiences can expect a mesmerizing evening where the interplay of voice, strings, and piano creates a rich tapestry of sound, perfectly capturing the essence of Saariaho’s visionary work. This debut promises not only to be a showcase of exceptional musical talent but also a celebration of the profound impact of women in music, making it a must-attend event for enthusiasts and newcomers alike.

Nonsequitur kicks off the 2025 NonSeq concert series with a special performance introducing this year’s team of Community Curators:

Noel Brass, Jr. is a composer/keyboardist based out of Seattle’s thriving musical landscape. He’s a founding member and leader of the improvising space-funk trio Afro Cop along with other side projects. His solo work is part ambient, part psychedelic, all soul. Influenced by early sci-fi soundtracks, film noir, and improvisation, his scenes are synth-lush and spliced, while dosed with mood changing textures, dystopic yet hopeful.

Chloe Harris (aka Raica) has been an integral and influential figure in the Pacific Northwest music community for over two decades. Her contributions as a musical artist, producer, DJ, mentor, record label owner (Further), and record shop owner have helped lay the groundwork and build the foundation upon which rests the current success of Seattle’s underground electronic music scene.

Christopher Icasiano is a Filipino-American percussionist and composer from Redmond, WA. Based now in Seattle, he has been performing and touring professionally for over 15 years. His specialization in free-improvisation and experimental music combined with his vast experience with pop and rock have made him a highly sought after collaborator in all genres of music. He co-founded the grassroots arts organization Table & Chairs, as well as the Racer Sessions, a weekly performance series and free-improvisation jam session. He is committed to anti-racist and anti-sexist organizing within Seattle’s DIY and art communities in order to create more accessible and safer spaces.

Ha-Yang Kim is a cellist, composer, and improviser who has developed a unique language of extended string techniques and creates her own music based on this work, as well as collaborating on new pieces from other composers. Her musical influences draw equally from a range of western classical music, American experimentalism, rock, jazz, and improvised music, to non-western musical sources from Bali, Korea and South Indian classical music (Karnatic). She has collaborated/performed with many diverse musicians such as Evan Ziporyn, Cecil Taylor, John Zorn, Christian Wolff, Lee Hyla, Louis Andriessen, Lukas Ligeti, Larry Polansky, and Stefan Poetzsch.

Mark Wilson presents an evening of his own compositions exploring his interest in integrating the musical fingerprints of kora music from Gambia, theorbo music from 17^th century Italy, American hip hop from the 90’s and the French Baroque, along with canons and tango. All of this through the lens of living in a time of racial reconciliation, the too-soon death of a friend, the success of another beating cancer, while living a life of music, teaching, playing and listening.  

It is an evening of compositions and collaborations by Mark Hilliard Wilson with flutist Leanna Keith, oboist Bhavani Kotha, clarinetist Bev Setzer, bassoonist Kate MacKenzie, tenor and trumpet player Peter Nelson King, soprano Teresa Tam, and the Seattle Guitar Orchestra.

Stone & Sky is the meditative improvisational project of Trevor Eulau, Tara, and Rocky Martin. The performance aims to bring together musical expressive arts with mindfulness and spiritual practice.
The performance will include a guided meditation led by Tara, the sonorous sound of various bells and singing bowls, along with Tara and Rocky’s beautiful sound on the tenor saxophone and drum set. 

Trevor Eulau is an improviser, guitarist, and composer based in Seattle, WA, whose music is guided by a deep sense of mindful exploration and spiritual openness. Through his evocative melodies and fluid improvisations, he creates a sacred sonic space. Trevor just got home from 4 months at a Buddhist monastery.

Tara is an award-winning artist and multi-instrumentalist based in Seattle, deeply influenced by their training in Buddhism, psychology, jazz saxophone, and multimedia composition. They studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and have performed across Europe and North America. Inspired by meditation, spiritual practice, psychology, social connection, and dance, Tara aims to embody open-hearted spontaneity and an embodied loving presence while creating music — while hopefully having a lot of fun!

Via New York City, and raised in Chicago, Rocky Martin resides in Seattle, performing, creating, and teaching. While rooted in the history of jazz drum set, Rocky leads and curates projects that may incorporate visual art, spoken word, martial arts/movement, or various plant life to supplement their music. In addition to bandleading, teaching drum set, composition, and beginner piano, Rocky is dedicated to the study of soil science, farming, food cultivation, various cultural arts in Seattle, and honoring the histories and ancestrality of Seattle’s recognized Duwamish territory.

Lori Goldston plays written and spontaneous work on cello, and works as a composer, teacher, bandleader, and prolific, widely varied collaborator. Her voice as a cellist is singular, deeply textured and original, investigating thresholds, instability, and connections between far-flung modes of thought. She lives in Seattle and performs in venues large and small throughout North America and Europe as a soloist and collaborator with composers, folk musicians, film makers, writers, theater directors, choreographers, visual artists, orchestras and bands.

This concert lays groundwork for ideas to explore in a seven-week trip that starts the following day.

(photo: Austin MacDonald)