MANtrio is an improvising trio based in Bellingham, WA.

Percussionist Melanie Sehman creates experimental and contemporary music that explores improvisation, gesture, the relationships between music, text and the physical experiences of sound. She performs in a wide variety of styles and enjoys collaborative work with composers, performers and artists in other disciplines, exploring alternative modes of music making.

Bassist Sarah Yates performs regularly in Seattle, Vancouver and Bellingham, where her curiosity leads her to take part in projects with styles ranging from jazz Manouche to 18th century chamber music and traditional Roma music to straight-ahead jazz. In her teaching, research and performing, Sarah seeks to explore and promote the connections between musical practice and lifestyle, with particular interest in intentionality, listening, and the value of play.

Pianist and vocalist Sage Romey’s inspirations are centered in jazz and radiate out through funk, West African mbalax, salsa, highlife, and hip hop. She is drawn to the musical creativity inherent in composition and collaboration with artists who take many different pathways to musical creation. Outside the performance setting, Sage is a scholar of ethnomusicology, studying the ways in which musicians and audiences interact to create meaning from music and musical creation.

The first and last pieces of this set were recorded by MANtrio on March 1, 2020, just before the COVID-19 lockdown. The first piece, in three movements, is based on Susan Griffin’s “Three Poems for Woman.” The middle four pieces are a series of improvised duos for bass and drums, recorded socially-distanced at home. Without reference to any text, each of these improvisations explores different sound worlds, techniques, textures, gestures and ways of conversing. After months apart, we have a lot to say to each other. The final trio piece, “Iris,” was composed by Sage Romey and its text feels particularly appropriate for the current situation.

(00:00) Three Poems for Woman, pt. 1
(03:18) Three Poems for Woman, pt. 2
(05:22) Three Poems for Woman, pt. 3
(09:48) Bass & Drums Improvisation #1
(13:08) Bass & Drums Improvisation #2
(21:57) Bass & Drums Improvisation #3
(27:33) Bass & Drums Improvisation #4
(35:40) Iris

Drummer and percussionist Melanie Sehman creates experimental and contemporary music that explores improvisation, gesture, the relationships between music, text and the physical experiences of sound. Based in Bellingham, WA, Melanie performs in a wide variety of styles and enjoys collaborative work with composers, performers and artists in other disciplines, exploring alternative modes of music making. Her most recent project is MANtrio, an improvising trio with bassist Sarah Yates and pianist and vocalist Sage Romey.

The first and last pieces of this set were recorded by MANtrio on March 1, 2020, just before the COVID-19 lockdown. The first, in three movements, is based on Susan Griffin’s “Three Poems for Woman.” The last, “Iris,” whose text feels particularly appropriate for the current situation, was composed by Sage Romey. The middle four pieces are a series of improvised duos for bass and drums, recorded socially-distanced at home. Without reference to any text, each of these improvisations explores different sound worlds, techniques, textures, gestures and ways of conversing. After months apart, we have a lot to say to each other.

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Jason E Anderson is an artist whose work includes performance, recorded works, video, installation, music for dance, producing and publishing. He left Seattle in 2018 to live in rural Eastern WA. Anderson has been a longtime participant of Seattle’s experimental music communities, which has led to the formation of many solo and collaborative music projects and his label Gift Tapes/DRAFT. Currently he performs/records music under his own name, and in performance art/film hybrid LIMITS with dancer Corrie Befort.

The sounds of this piece, Dermaptera, were created on a Korg Wavestation A/D, using SuperCollider and a LinnStrument to generate patterns and musical gestures. I edited passages from recordings I made in a barn and mixed them live on July 28th at 10pm. The mix was performed through studio monitors and recorded acoustically to capture the sounds in the barn as you might hear them, with an added bit of direct signal for definition. The barn is surrounded by wheat fields, so the music sits on top of a pleasant bed of insect sounds. I was hoping for coyotes, but they were a half hour late.

Thanks to Corrie Befort for giving me the time to work on this, to Harvey Gordon who brought me snacks, and to the many earwigs that no doubt influenced this recording.

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Marguerite Brown (b. 1990) is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist who explores new mediums, forms, and performance practices. Recent projects include a new piece for mixed chamber ensemble premiered by the Ghost Ensemble at the REDCAT Theater in Los Angeles, CA in March 2020, and new music for refretted guitars to be premiered at the 21st Century Guitar Conference in Lisboa, Portugal in 2021. She received a BM in music composition from Cornish College of the Arts (2013) and a MA in music composition from the University of California, Santa Cruz (2019).

Cycle Pieces 2020 was composed for Wayward in Limbo during the month of July in 2020. The composition is a suite in six movements for amplified mixed chamber ensemble. I used a combination of procedural and improvisatory methods to compose Cycle Pieces 2020, which has a limited pallet of bright, upper register sounds. I utilized a variety of cyclic forms to unify the movements. Thanks to Paul Matthew Moore for providing the gear used to make this recordings and assisting with post-production of the audio.

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(17:47)
(24:30)

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Mother Tongue is a two headed art making machine. Created in 2015 by composer and musician Angelina Baldoz and multidimensional artist Katherine Cohen.

The MT Radio Show is a mix of new experimental EDM, cat jokes, and a couple of songs from our punk band SkullKat. Beats, guitars, trumpet, synths, and vocals inspired by this multidimensional life. Headphones for all the details or put it on blast for the neighbors.

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Tiffiny Costello (aka Housekeys) creates ambient dreamscapes designed to leave space for feeling, thinking, drifting, and disappearing. Tiffiny layers sounds on top of sounds with keyboards, guitars, and pedals, as well as recorded sounds from the field: be it city sounds, audio captured during hiking and exploring in nature – anything interesting is of interest to Tiffiny. Composing the most during dark periods of grief, depression, and hopelessness, Tiffiny uses music as a coping skill, an outlet. You can find her music on BandCamp and SoundCloud.

Jellyfish is an improvised ambient drone composition created by layering sounds on top of each other by way of long-tail delay and reverb effects played live. Nothing heard was changed after the recording, it was mixed down as-is. I love using different sounds from my keyboard, like Mellotron, strings, piano, and Wurlitzer, and then running them through a chain of pedal effects to create an emotionally sonic atmosphere, where each chord is decided on in the moment, and the preceding sound influences what comes next. Emotional response is always my goal. I want to feel something while composing, and I want others to feel something while listening or experiencing my music.

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Ahmad Yousefbeigi is an inspired and sought-after percussionist/vocalist from Kurdistan. Ahmad’s versatility, love of cultural exchange and collaboration has co-founded Yesod in 2010, an acoustic, avant-garde improvisational collaboration. In 2017 he became a member of the band The Crown and released their first vinyl record in 2018. He has performed at the Chapel many times with YESOD, Amy Denio, and Arrington de Dionyso.

In my live-raw recording-music performance I tried to present some songs which each one reminded me of certain memorable times in my life. The first song reminded me of my Pish-Dastgah (Iranian-Radif system) teacher, Dr. Hussein Omoumi. Second piece in memory of my dear friend who I have his memories with is Yusef Nouroozi. Third, fourth and fifth pieces are Kurdish songs which reminded me of my rich Kurdish culture/heritage. The sixth and seventh songs are in memory of well-known female influential poet and women’s right activist in Iran, Táhirih Qurrat al-ayn. At the end I tried to finish this music performance with two instrumental solos starting with Tonbak and ending with Kurdish Daf.

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Evan Flory-Barnes merges his breadth of musical experiences to create an elegant, honest, approachable and magical sound. With deep influences in hip-hop’s boom-bap, classical music’s delicacies and rock ‘n’ roll’s power, Flory-Barnes is a fire, centralized and for any to be made warm. His current Avant-Soul Pop music features a deep love of classic soul and experimental pop, featuring talents as a bassist, composer/arranger and singer-songwriter. His songs touch on the cultivation of hard won self-love, personal sovereignty and experience relationships as both a catalyst and crucible in the developing of one’s soul and self. You can support him directly via Venmo: @Evan-Flory-Barnes, Cash App: $EvanFloryBarnes, or PayPal.

Greetings. Thank you for listening. For the past year and half I have been focusing on singing, writing songs and reconnecting with my first instrument, the bass guitar. It has been a deep joy to discover my singing voice and to dive deep into the bass guitar, while exploring the challenges of playing and singing simultaneously. I call this music Avant-Soul Pop, a merging of my love of classic soul and experimental pop. (Think Curtis Mayfield meets Björk.) On this performance, I emphasize the “avant” in Avant Soul-Pop, taking five of my songs and turning them into vehicles to explore and play within and outside the song.

1. (00:00) “Doe, Oh So Very Dear”
2. (06:13 ) “The Way Out”
3. (12:55) “Nah”
4. (20:47) “I’m Out”
5. (29:42) “Memory Lane”

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Michaud Savage is an American artist, born in Seattle, Washington. His work spans a variety of musical mediums, intrigued by the fault-lines of genre, medium, and contemporary society. Influences reach across early to contemporary classical, jazz, pop, tango, rock, blues, Latin folkloric musics, sound art, noise, and beyond.

“ACAB”

1. (00:00) WHITE BODIES TO THE FRONT
2. (08:30) THIS WAS PEACEFUL UNTIL YOU CAME
3. (14:05) THIS SHIT IS REAL PAIN
4. (20:50) EVERY DAY
5. (32:15) Peace Isn’t Passive, It Is Active.
6. (39:21) Dear Black Man, written & performed by Christopher Lee
7. (43:48) The People’s Assembly – Jesse Miller & Roxanne White

Michaud Savage: guitars, synthesizers, voice, arrangement, production
Lori Goldston: cello
Christopher Lee: poem
Jesse Miller & Roxanne White: speeches

I acknowledge that we are on the unceded ancestral lands of the Duwamish people. A people that are still here, continuing to honor and bring to light their ancient heritage.

These recordings were gathered by myself during the protests in Seattle which took place after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis by the on-duty Police Officer Derek Chauvin, with the assistance of officers J. Alexander Keung, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao.

The poem by Christopher Lee was performed days before the emergence of CHOP, and the speeches were spoken during the People’s Assembly by Jesse Miller and Roxanne White inside of CHOP. While all of these recordings are legally mine to use as they were made in a public gathering space, I was only able to contact Christopher Lee, who has allowed me to use this recording for this purpose.

The field recordings are by and large unabridged. I have chosen to remove a few audio issues, any potentially incriminating information, and to edit the speeches together, which were not successive to each other during the People’s Assembly.

To the many voices who ring out in these recordings, who risked their safety, health, and their very lives by continuing to show up at these protests during a pandemic, I say thank you and stand with you in solidarity. Together we will end systemic oppression. Defund and abolish the police, abolish the carcel state, end White Supremacy and capitalism, and reinvest in the communities who have suffered most from these power structures. 

To know more about how to ensure that Black Lives Matter here, visit Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County. For a more comprehensive list of demands from the Black community of Seattle, visit King County Equity Now. If you think the title of this collection, “ACAB,” is a bit gauche, please try reading Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop. For more on direct action, check out Real Rent Duwamish. If you want to talk about racism, check out local author and (currently #3) New York Times bestseller Ijeoma Oluo’s book, So You Want to Talk About Race. (White people, there is a discussion guide in the back of the paperback edition, also available here.)

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Monika Khot creates apocalyptic dirges combining modern classical explorations of electronic ambience with hardware-fueled industrial barrages under the name Nordra. The project has taken her across North America and Europe, performing in both the high-brow art world and in the underground rock trenches on tours with artists like SUMAC and Algiers. Her last album Pylon II is the soundtrack to a modern dance choreographed by Coleman Pester and, like her debut album, was released on the renowned experimental label, SIGE. The work was voted one of the top 20 albums of 2018 by the Wire Magazine, and it took first place in the December issue of the year in the “Best Noise and Industrial Album” category. You can directly support her by purchasing recordings at BandCamp or SoundCloud, or make donations via PayPal (magiczenmother@gmail.com).

Just over the hills, from the city

This work focuses on both the cacophonous and meditative, of creation with uninterrupted listening, and an allusion to unseen beauty, knowledge, and truth.

“Piped music lifts over choral hills and reaches for the center, the untouched side.

The sounds of the city’s interaction travels over 3 elevated knolls, close by.

The highest peak of the 3 may unveil the source.”

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Carlos Snaider is a guitarist, composer, writer and joy devotee based in Seattle. His current projects include his solo project DONDETOY, trio EarthtoneSkytone with Kelsey Mines and Chris Icasiano, and Eléré Salsa con Jazz. Venmo: @Carlos_Snaider

Thanks for taking the time to be here and explore music with me. In this mix, you will hear new compositions composed since April of 2020, including songs with guitar and vocals, improvised variations on themes performed on guitar and udu, and a multitrack song sung in Spanish.
These sounds and songs have been created in (and as a way to sustain) my personal sanctuary, which for me extends not only to my living space but also to my inner life (thoughts, feelings, vitality, essence). I humbly offer it for you to exist with as you please. The name of my performance practice is DONDETOY, which is Spanish slang meaning “where I’m at.” DONDETOY signals an open method of creating beauty and presence through alertness in mind, body and consciousness, which extends into the musical act.

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.