Mark Hilliard Wilson plays music for guitar from the Wandelweiser collective:

Guitarist Alone by Jürg Frey
Aeolian Island by Eva Maria Houben

The music on this program is a sharp contrast to the hyper-edited, compressed digital world that we are living through on our phones and computers. The evening will feature a single nylon string guitarist exploring the written instructions of Jurg Frey and Eva Maria Houben’s ideas of stillness and motion, of the color of notes and the lightness of silence between the sounds.

Guitarist Mark Hilliard Wilson has performed new music with a variety of ensembles around the Northwest, Ensemble Sospeso, Ecco Chamber Ensemble and Sirroco. Wilson has directed the Guitar Orchestra of Seattle for the last 20 years. He has written numerous works for guitar quartet and guitar orchestra and they have been performed across North America. He is published on Seconda Prattica and his solo CD En Sueño de Camino is out on Rosewood records. Pilgrimages, a CD of his own compositions and arrangements featuring Guitar Orchestra of Seattle, is released on his own label, Tutti Voce.

Cellist Lori Goldston improvises and performs compositions from her new LP, Things Opening, by Jessika Kenney, Satchel Henneman, Julio Lopezhiler and herself.

Lori Goldston is a cellist and composer from Seattle whose work moves easily and recklessly across borders. Her voice on cello is deeply textured and original, drawing on a restless curiosity and a long, busy history of collaborations with bands, orchestras, composers, film makers, writers and choreographers. She has released solo and duo recordings on Sub Rosa, Mississippi Records, Second Editions, Ed Banger, No Sun and Marginal Frequency.

Video by Rod Guevara:

Guitarist-composer Lucas Winter will lead a quintet of new original music featuring a host of the city’s top jazz improvisors, in a setting ripe with rhythmic exploration and a collective desire to communicate freely through new musical space.

Seattle native Gus Carns, piano, saxophonist Rex Gregory, and Xavier Lecouterier drums. (Bassist TBD, possibly Michael Glynn.)

Video by Rod Guevara:

A durationless composition for deep winter in honor of Faquir Pandit Pran Nath (1918-1996) and his many disciples that continue to carry his tradition through time . . .

Selected Drift in Dream Stasis is a long-form work exploring the elimination of time and thought. Through slow, delicate movement of an unfixed duration, the piece shapes an environment that invites both performers and listeners to dissolve into a state of spiritual unity, or, deep stasis. Composed in a dissonant combination of just intonation and equal temperament within Pandit Pran Nath’s 12-note Raag Bhairavi, the work will weave pure intervals and harmonic beating amongst a 12-person ensemble, utilizing a continuous drone of acoustic instruments to serve as an expanded alap in the Kirana tradition. Although the work may seem to be primarily a sonic experience, it is just as much a practice of the physical body. Applying theories and methods derived from study of Butoh, Sufism, meditation, and Pran Nath’s methods of Riyaz, the work seeks to integrate the awareness of the body and breath equally with sound.

The performance will be held under warm, dim light on an ornate installation of rugs and floor pillows. Listeners are encouraged to bring blankets and items comfortable to them to the space.

Performed by Dhikr al-Fana’ Time Communion:

Katrina Wolfe – Riley/Leedy Miraj tambura
Jocelyn Beausire – solo voice
Joey Largent – solo voice, shehnai, composition
Noel Kennon – viola, voice
John Teske – double bass
Sasha Leon – sheng, drone voice
Kyle Griesmeyer – sheng, drone voice
Zack Wait – just intonation reed horns, shehnai, drone voice
Brendan McGovern – just intonation reed horns
Sam Tullman – shruti box, drone voice
Russell Christenson – harmonium, drone voice

Others to be announced.

Joey Largent is a composer, movement and performance artist based in Seattle. His current work draws from ongoing vocal study in the Kirana style of North Indian Classical music under Rose Okada, disciple of vocal master Pandit Pran Nath, and student of Terry Riley and La Monte Young.

The Morsel Trio, joined by guest artist Natalie Ham, will perform pieces by Charles Ives and George Crumb, in addition to a new piece by Yiğit Kolat and an arrangement by Luke Fitzpatrick.

This concert will showcase two classic 20th-century pieces for trio, a world premiere, and a new arrangement of a Baroque opera aria. The program begins with Charles Ives’ Piano Trio. Finished in 1911, the Trio still sounds original over one hundred years later. It includes a clever variety of semi-disguised American folk tunes, hymns, and college drinking songs from the early 1900s. This will be followed by an innovative arrangement for violin and piano by Luke Fitzpatrick of the aria Sposa son disprezzata, then a brand-new piece for trio by Yiğit Kolat. To conclude, flutist Natalie Ham joins the group for the beautiful, blue-lighted glow of George Crumb’s Vox Balaenae (“Voice of the Whale”).

Steven Damouni (piano), Emily Acri (violin), and Chris Young (cello) started playing together in 2017 as doctoral students at the University of Washington. They named themselves “Morsel” in honor of a favorite breakfast restaurant that hosted many pre-rehearsal meetings.

The SPU perform in collaboration with clarinetist James Falzone in an evening of field recordings and wind instruments.

The Seattle Phonographers Union have been improvising solely with unprocessed field recordings since 2002. As a group, we will continue to explore using this incredibly vast resource of field recordings as our means of expression. This event is an attempt to explore how we, as a unit, can collaborate with other entities while maintaining our approach. In that spirit, we have invited noted clarinetist James Falzone to join us for an evening of improvised sounds. The Phonographers will set up smaller, localized sound systems throughout the space, creating a rich tapestry of sounds that will allow Falzone to wander through the space and respond.

James Falzone is a clarinetist, composer, and improviser whose work in the jazz and creative music scenes has won him international acclaim. A veteran contemporary music lecturer and clinician, as well as an award-winning composer who has been commissioned by chamber ensembles, dance companies, choirs, and symphony orchestras around the globe, Falzone leads his own ensembles (Allos Musica and The Renga Ensemble), and has released a series of critically-acclaimed recordings on Allos Documents, the label he founded in 2000.

Triptet is a meeting of minds and spontaneous electrical impulses between Michael Monhart (saxophones and percussion), Tom Baker (guitars and effects), and Greg Campbell (percussion and cheap electronics).

Anne La Berge’s passion for the extremes in both composed and improvised music has led her to storytelling and sound art as her sources of musical inspiration. Her music gathers the elements on which her reputation is based: ferocious and far-reaching virtuosity, microtonal textures and melodies, and her unique array of percussive flute techniques, all combined with interactive electronic processing and text.

This show will bring together these musicians as a new quartet exploring the liminal space of each other’s sound and the amazing space of the Chapel.

Join us for post-solstice solace in the long night by way of a solo performance by A.F. Jones, songs of death and love from Rachel LeBlanc, and a new work for chamber ensemble by Noel Kennon, featuring Neil Welch (saxophones), Amelia Coulter (alto trombone), and Dave Abramson (percussion).

A. F. Jones (Dallas, TX, USA, 1971) is a Washington-based audio engineer, composer, and performing musician. He has spent collective years underwater analyzing, studying and monitoring the acoustic environment of the world’s oceans. This critical analysis and experience greatly influenced his concepts of music and archival methodology. He has engineered audio and advised for numerous regional and international musicians and performing ensembles as Chief Mastering Engineer at Laminal Audio, which specializes in audio mastering, in addition to sound design and post audio for film. He also runs the Marginal Frequency performance series and record label of the same name.

A former booking agent and improv musician, Rachel LeBlanc has spent the last few years coming into her own as a vocal-based composer under the alias Blessed Blood, as well as a practiced artist in Matriarch and as RN White. To hone her voice and to study folk techniques, she’s been utilizing old traditionals. For tonight’s special appearance, LeBlanc will treat us to a handful of these pieces a capella.

Noel Kennon is a violist, dishwasher, record collector, instrument builder and composer living in Seattle.

Young Scientist, Seattle’s original electronic music group, formed in the 1970’s, reunites for an evening of immersive modular and computer based electronic music ambience — with Marc Barreca, celebrating the release of his latest CD, From the Gray and the Green.

Marc Barreca, veteran Seattle electronic music composer, will be performing electro-acoustic loop-based compositions with modular synthesizer, MIDI keyboards and computer. 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 releases include the solo CDs From the Gray and the Green, Shadow Aesthetics, and a vinyl collaboration with K. Leimer, Chains of Being on the Spanish label, Abstrakce Records.

Young Scientist was formed in Seattle in the mid-1970’s by James Husted, Roland Barker and Marc Barreca, performing for several years with analog synths, tape loops and keyboards. Following re-releases of 1970s material on the German labels Bureau B and Vinyl on Demand, the group has reunited for a recording project with Marc and James joining forces for this performance of evolving, transportive electronics.

Dangerknife is Seattle based band made up by Nico Sophiea (somesurprises) and Brad Rouda (Leviathan Worship Service) with special guests often sitting in. Focusing primarily on providing improvised soundtracks for silent and/or short films in a live and unsettling setting. Often focusing on the silent films of the early and mid 1920’s, we have decided to return to our roots of playing to our homemade short films. These shorts are comprised of painted and stressed out film/slides and ambient footage showing the slow passing of time. Please join us for an evening that is sure to boggle the minds of venture capitalists.