Seattle sax legend and Festival Resident Artist Skerik performs solo saxophone with a complex multiple EFX system based around harmonizers and a balanced continuous matrix routing system. Those allow him to program effects in multiple arrays and create up to nine independent voices through one saxophone. He constructs dynamic, symphonic improvisations inspired by such composers and improvisers as Wayne Shorter, Ornette Coleman, Olivier Messiaen, and Steve Reich. Blazinspace (aka Gardenia Theroux) transforms the space with immersive digital projections.

Hey everyone! Sous Chef here, inviting you to a night of beautiful and avant garde sounds in celebration of the release of my debut album Pas un Monde, Mais un Miroir and supported by the incredible New York pianist/composer Erika Dohi and local bass and songwriting maestro Kelsey Mines featuring the visual crafts of Dion Egg.

The night will kick off with Kelsey Mines playing solo bass and vocals, a transcendent improvisatory experience I first saw at a Cornish show that left me mind-blown. You won’t wanna miss it. Followed by the amazing artist Erika Dohi, flying in from NYC. I saw her perform at the Chapel as part of the Earshot Jazz Fest a few years back and she was a huge inspiration for my record too. Unreal pianist, great composer, genuine mastermind.

I’ll be closing out the evening with a solo performance featuring the grand piano, my modular synths, the octatrack and a few more goodies, as well as visuals provided by the one and only Dion Egg. The performance will feature music from the album as well as a few covers and some new original works, all surrounding the theme of “Place.” It’s set to be an incredible night of unique, original music, the kind of show that only happens once in a blue moon. Come experience something truly new!

Doors open 7 PM, music 8 PM.

Blurring the limits between speed and slowness, guitarists Meg Duffy and Greg Uhlmann communicate in velocities, underwriting each other’s peaks and flurries as they ache toward a mutual horizon. After playing in Perfume Genius and Hand Habits, Duffy and Uhlmann embarked on their first record together, Doubles. A testament to the wordlessness of their musical intimacy, they take up the guitar in order to make an imprint of the slowness and presence of their improvisational practice. These one-take improvisations, recorded in Uhlmann’s brothers’ house on a borrowed tape recorder, unfold like a game of truth or dare. Their constant motif is an unceasing return, a steady heartbeat they mutually commit to, knowing when one wanders off, the other will either follow or call them home. Here, flushness overrides order, each note saunters by like initials etched into tree bark: a devotion both passing and eternal.

Primarily known as a bassist with groups like Grammy-nominated band Alvvays and surf pop band La Luz,  Abbey Blackwell (Seattle) is focusing her energies on writing for solo guitar and voice. Her songwriting calls back to the lyrical, hanging melodies of Sibylle Baier and Linda Perhacs, with angular, geometric chord progressions that lean in satisfying directions. Her next full length album Big Big Motion will be released 9/13.

(photo: Jacob Boll)

Guitarist Michael Nicolella performs his own works for solo classical guitar, alongside music of: Debussy, Falla and Albeniz and works for electric guitar by: György Ligeti, Tom Baker and Jacob ter Veldhuis. 

Described by Classical Guitar magazine as “one of the contemporary guitar’s most gifted stars,” and by Guitar Player magazine as “a classical iconoclast, (who) continues to push the boundaries of the genre as both a composer and player,” Michael Nicolella is recognized as one of America’s most innovative classical guitarists. He has performed throughout North America, Europe and Japan as solo recitalist, chamber musician and soloist with orchestra. Michael’s recording of his arrangement of the Complete Bach Cello Suites was described as a “monumental achievement” by Soundboard magazine while the Seattle Times commented, “Nicolella’s smooth virtuosity… show the suites in an entirely new light.” His previous four critically acclaimed releases were albums of contemporary music for classical and electric guitar in solo, chamber, orchestral and electronic settings. Nicolella has performed with a wide range of orchestras and artists, including Seattle Opera, Symphony Tacoma, Northwest Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Modern Orchestra, Merce Cunningham Dance Company, violinist Gil Shaham, and sopranos Alexandra Picard and Joyce DiDonato. He is a frequent performer with the Seattle Symphony, having performed over one hundred concerts with the orchestra. Michael is on the faculty of Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.  

Lauren Sarah Hayes brings the intense physicality of her hybrid human-machine sonic performance to Seattle, with support from local computer synthesists Sebastian Camens and RM Francis.

Lauren Sarah Hayes is a Scottish improviser, sound artist, and scholar recognised for her embodied approach to computer music. Her music is a mix of experimental pop/live electronics/techno/noise/free improvisation and has been described as ‘voracious’ and ‘exhilarating’. She is a sculptress of sound, manipulating, remixing, and bending voice, drum machines, analogue synths and self-built software live and physically. She is excited by what can happen in the vulnerable relationships between sound, space, and audience. Her shows are highly physical, making the performance of live electronic music more engaging for audiences. Over the last fifteen years she has developed and honed a deliberately challenging and unpredictable performance system that explores the relationships between bodies, sound, environments, and technology.

Hayes has been commissioned by major festivals including the London Jazz Festival, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival with a live BBC Radio 3 broadcast as part of its 2017 International Showcase, and Sonica, for which she gave four sold-out performances inside Hamilton Mausoleum, Scotland, famous for once holding the longest echo of any man-made structure. She has performed extensively across Europe and the US, including as part of her tenure with the New BBC Radiophonic Workshop at Kings Place, London. The Wire described her 2016 album MANIPULATION (pan y rosas discos) as “skittering melodies and clip-clopping rhythms suggesting a mischievous intelligence emerging from this web of wires”. Her 2021 release Embrace (Superpang) was included in Bandcamp’s Best Experimental Music of February 2021.

Sebastian Camens is a Dutch/Australian multidisciplinary artist based in Seattle. With releases on NADA and Conditional, his work aims to push the boundaries of the subversive within computer music.

RM Francis is an artist based in Seattle working with computer-generated sound and language via recording, installation, and performance. He has presented work at the Mills College Center for Contemporary Music (Oakland), The Lab (San Francisco), Kolonia Artystów (Gdańsk), and at festivals including Diffusion (Baltimore), Algorithmic Art Assembly (San Francisco), and Parken (Vienna). His practice foregrounds computation-based compositional strategies, focusing on methods that exploit discrepancies between human and artificial auditory systems. His current work exploits latent phonological data extracted from non-linguistic sound in order to generate the tonal, rhythmic, and semantic content of synthesized speech. The resulting asubjective narration articulates the potentialities of speech decoupled from embodied human expression, navigating between abstract sound and uncanny characterological specificity.

His oeuvre spans multimedia work incorporating sound, video, performance, and chocolate (Hyperplastic Other, 2017), investigations of historical computer synthesis methods (A Taxonomy of Guffaws, 2020), procedural text works for a chorus of synthetic voices (Every Single Person Has Some Muscle, 2022), and hallucinatory duets between dictation apps and deep learning networks (pedimos un mensaje, 2023). In addition to his solo projects, in recent years he has collaborated with Jack Callahan & Jeff Witscher, Jung An Tagen, and farmersmanual, among others.

Matthew Welch’s work, at its core, is about experimental musical hybridity between traditional and innovative forms of Western music and World music. Drawing from over two decades of research and performance interests in diverse musical systems — Western classical and experimental music, jazz and improvisation, Scottish bagpipes, Indonesian gamelan, and music of the Philippine Cordillera — he creates new compositional connections, and develops catalysts for dialogue between seemingly disparate musical forms.

Broken Crow is a Portland trio made up of Caspar Sonnet, Joel Nelson, and Sam Klapper. Their work ranges from open improvisation to tape loop material. The range of compositional form and sound design from the group is a breath of fresh air in experimental scene.

Local acts supporting the out of town groups are Tarsier Eyes and a duo between dancer Hannah Rice and drummer Casey Adams.

Tiger Poems : Arrington de Dionyso (bass clarinet and voice masking), Gust Burns (piano), and Noel Kennon (idiosyncratic percussion).

“Tiger seems a little mad… in a sense, the tiger is mad. but the tiger is also perfectly at ease. the tiger is simultaneously disarming and making minute preparations stalking and exiting beaming and weeping mending and tearing feeling and deflecting engaged in sabotage and reconstruction self defense and desubjectivation sweeping away all traces of security to condition the abolition of endangerment.” (prose piece by Gust Burns)

Gregory Reynolds will open the evening with improvisations on percussion and flutes from China, Japan, and India. Reynolds recently moved back to the Seattle area to study Acupuncture and Chinese Herbal Medicine at Bastyr University. His most recent music involves the exploration of various flutes from Southeast and East Asia.

Guitarist Satchel Henneman performs an eclectic program of contemporary works by Chris Cerrone, Han Lash, Zachary James Watkins, Tom Baker, Jarrad Powell, and Marguerite Brown. With a program evocative of many styles and genres, from Han Lash’s jazz-like “For Ben,” to Marguerite Brown’s textural study of clouds “Crown Shyness,” this rare opportunity to experience a recital of contemporary concert music played entirely on solo electric guitar is certain to have something for every listener.

Satchel Henneman (b.1995) is a composer and virtuoso guitarist from the Pacific Northwest currently based in Riverside, California. He has received degrees from Cornish College of the Arts (BM ‘17) and Yale School of Music (MM ‘20), where he studied with Ben Verdery. Satchel has guest lectured at the Yale School of Architecture, The New School, and Pace, and is currently on faculty at the Riverside Arts Academy and the Claremont Community School of Music.

Tiny Orchestral Moments presents an evening of structured improvisation for ginormous guitar ensemble, featuring eleven electric guitars: SGC ElecTrio, CKST, Fernando Kabusacki (Buenos Aires) and Fabio Mittino (Milan).

SGC ElecTrio (Steve Ball, Travis Metcalf, Brad Hogg, Dev Ray, Don Box) is a subset of Seattle Guitar Circle, local chapter of the legendary League of Crafty Guitarists playing intricate, polymetric music arranged for electric guitar ensemble. SGC Electrio perform structured improvisation that sounds composed and composed collaboration that sounds improvised.

CSKT, an instrumental quartet focused on improvisation and creative play featuring Chris Gibson, Scott Adams, Ken Jacobsen and Travis Metcalf. CSKT delivers a sonic journey exploring possibilities, in-the-moment composition and eye-opening interplay. 

Special guests: Fernando Kabusacki, Argentinian guitar legend who has played / recorded with Phil Manzanera, Charly Garcia, MG Epumer, Tricky, Robert Fripp, Electric Gauchos, Los Gauchos Alemanes, Juana Molina, Damo Suzuki Yoshimi, Otomo Yoshihide, League of Crafty Guitarists, Seiichi Yamamoto, Yuji Katsui, Buffalo Daughter and Marina Fages. Also from Milan, stunt guitarist Fabio Mittino, working with Robert Fripp’s Guitar Craft since 1998, one of the most accomplished GC graduates, well-known for his Simple Music for Difficult People series. His right hand is a high-speed, precision machine.

Produced by Tiny Orchestral Moments and Seattle Circle non-profit, this show builds on decades of collaborations in the PNW and all over the world. This orchestral guitar extravaganza will feature a climax including all eleven musicians, improvising intricate, polyrhythmic textures: the power of Branca with the intricacy of Reich.  

A confluence is when two or more flowing bodies of water meet to become one – waters that had their own ecosystems can join to make new systems greater than the sums of their parts. “Confluence 1” is the first of a prospective concert series based on this concept, inviting Seattle’s most adventurous musicians to collaborate in small sets exploring exciting avenues of contemporary music. Performers are given full freedom to program and perform 10-15 minute segments, and the combined program is varied, enriching and unrepeatable.

This inaugural concert features pianist Jennifer Chung, multi-instrumentalist Peter Nelson-King, trombonist Greg Powers, cellist Mary Riles, clarinettist Jenny Ziefel, and composer/performer Aaron Keyt, who will be premiering his own compositions. Other featured composers include Friedrich Cerha, James Dapogny, Jeremy Gill, Jordan Nobles, Justin Rizzo-Weaver, and Jinrayr Shahrimanyan. The program takes performers and listeners through three continents and a large spectrum of living styles and techniques, from mathematical precision to meditative improvisation.