Three rabid sonic explorers join forces for a night of electricity fueled deep dives to power wash your nervous system for the coming of the new year.

Don McGreevy is a Totalist-minimalist, American-Primitivist composer and multi-instrumentalist who will be performing select pieces from his forthcoming new album INSOUCIANCE using guitars, amplifiers, effects, looping devices, and percussion. Don has worked with drone legends Earth and psychedelic mayhem purveyors The Master Musicians of Bukkake. His SULPHURIC ensembles have performed in varying capacities ranging from duos to small orchestras.

SKERIK will be performing a new solo sax piece with electronics, inspired by the Six Marimba compositions of Steve Reich and the 1977 Dickie Landry album 15 Saxophones. Instead of a tape-based stereo performance, SKERIK will utilize digital delays and a quad surround speaker set up to achieve the different delay time settings.

Crystal Beth uses wailing vocals, amplified clarinet, beat-boxing and electronics to weave a sonic universe all her own. This will be an evening of improvised/intuited aural rituals that ricochet between meditation and a full body purge.

Longtime avant garde jazz conceptualist Lu Evers branches out into word art, presenting a performance piece centered around a poetry reading format. The willowy and stoic Jo Anderson is featured as the reader on several pieces, with Keith Eisenbrey performing piano support composed by Evers, who also picks up the clarinet here and there, and presents the pieces he reads with a variety of characters. Humor, incisive criticism, surreal imagery and dark drama etch the landscape in this engaging new work.

Doors at 7 PM; Performance at 7:30 sharp.

The final installment in 2019’s Finnegans Wake series is also this year’s premiere, Part I, Chapter 6. In the form of a quiz of 12 questions and answers, James Joyce also described Chapter 6 as a picture gallery of the novel’s characters.

Composer Neal Kosaly-Meyer’s ongoing Finnegans Wake project is an unprecedented undertaking: to commit to memory and perform all of James Joyce’s final novel, one chapter per year over seventeen years, with acute attention to the work’s musical detail. Meticulous attention has also been given to the presentation, including liturgical and theatrical elements, and unique approaches to lighting and sound, all deeply informed by the singular language and vision of Finnegans Wake. The striking personality of the Chapel Performance Space itself provides a perfect, and quite Joycean, setting for these performances.

Excerpt from Mexico City Joyce Symposium performance:

Read an article by Charles Mudede in the Stranger.

An evening of sustained sounds and silence over long durations. This new evening length work ‘dreams of willows and thresholds’ for viola and double bass uses the harmonic series a foundational element of its structure. The music is concerned with implementing rational structures that correspond to actual phenomenon found (observed) in natural (actual) sounds in search for new (lost) shapes , places , and resonant fluctuations that are often overlooked . . This interaction with tone is meant to quiet and sober the mind; both rational structure and intuitive process . .

The music will be presented in 2 parts .

{ dreams:

willows – viola / double bass

(intermission)

thresholds – viola / double bass

}

Presented and written by Noel Kennon, joined by John Teske.

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

These three multi-faceted artists draw equally on mainstream and outside, giving birth to the new:
Kathy Moore is a go-to guitarist ranging from rock to funk to jazz and beyond. She is a studio musician, arranger, multi-instrumentalist and teacher who performs in many theater projects, and local bands: Thaddeus Turner (Maktub), Mike McCready (Pearl Jam, Mad Season, Flight To Mars), the band Brad, Crystal Beth and the Boom Boom Band, Shawn Smith, Kim Virant, Wayne Horvitz to name a few. In her solo incarnation,, she brings experiments in song using electronics, guitar and voice.

Ben McAllister’s Guitar Cult: Not a Fripp or Branca situation: Guitars have mass and volume in Ben McAllister’s compositions for the Guitar Cult. They are utterly unique, indisputably cutting edge and most importantly — effective.

Crystal Beth uses wailing vocals, amplified clarinet, beat-boxing and electronics to weave a sonic universe all her own. She has been described as “world music from an imaginary planet..quite compelling & magical” (Seattle Times), ”a supremely versatile and virtuosic maverick” (The Stranger), and “one of the most fearless and innovative musicians in the city…” (Earshot Jazz). Known for crafting aural rituals that encompass industrial chants, alien disco breaks, heart gushings, and robot love songs, Crystal Beth redefines the possibilities of the voice and clarinet in tight experimental pop songs and undulating, cathartic noise cries.

Hypnotic jams for the discerning listener, High Right Now features the programmatic, minimalist music of composers Brian Lawlor and Benjamin Marx (tov). Lawlor is known locally for his musical work with theater artists Saint Genet and Marx for work with durational choreographer Alice Gosti, among others. A supergroup of local players will perform a seamless evening of their work. Experience an auditory high in an otherworldly, ritualistic environment.

With:
Rose Bellini | cello
Storm Benjamin | percussion
Beth Fleenor | clarinet
Aleida Gehrels | viola
Erin Jorgensen | percussion
Rebekah Ko | percussion
Leanna Keith | flute
Brian Lawlor | piano, synths
Benjamin Marx | keyboards
Rachel Nesvig | violin
Alina To | violin

Production & design:
Erin Jorgensen & Charles Smith

(photo: Kelly O)

Known for his stunning video projections and beguiling soundscapes, Rob Angus directs his latest full-length evening work with well-known collaborators Jeff Greinke (electronics) and Joan Laage (Kogut Butoh) with dancers Kaoru Okumura and Shoko Zama.

Rob Angus builds kinetic ambient-industrial soundscapes using a variety of acoustic instruments and toys to generate sounds that are manipulated, layered, and sent out into a multi-channel surround-sound system. Rob has done scores and sound production work for dance, video, and multimedia installations, and has recorded and produced music by other musicians. His photography is based on mirroring ambient details, lending an aesthetic quality to things that would normally go unnoticed.

Jeff Greinke is a renowned composer of dark ambient, electro-acoustic, and experimental music who was an integral part of the Seattle music scene before relocating to Tuscon. His work blends electronic and acoustic instruments and textures to produce haunting yet inviting soundscapes. He has released more than twenty recordings on various U.S. and European labels. He has composed music for film, video, dance, theater, radio, and art installations.

After studying with Butoh masters Kazuo Ohno and Yoko Ashikawa in Tokyo in the late 80s and performing with Ashikawa’s group Gnome, Joan Laage settled in Seattle and founded Dappin’ Butoh in 1990. A co-founder of DAIPANbutoh Collective, she performed at many international butoh festivals and a Butoh symposium at the University of California (LA). She creates site-specific work for Seattle Japanese gardens annually.

Presented by Nonsequitur.

(photo: Kaoru Okumura)

Inverted Space welcomes guest artists Dr. Brendan Kinsella and Charles Corey for a night of solo instrumental and voice music.

Inverted Space welcomes Dr. Brendan Kinsella to present his groundbreaking music for piano and voice. Featured on the program is the world premier of Luke Fitzpatrick‘s Infinite, Frederic Rzewski’s De Profundis, and the Seattle premier of Kinsella’s SAD!. Charles Corey and Luke Fitzpatrick will also present the music of Harry Partch in a set of solo works for adapted guitar and adapted viola.

Lost Chocolate Lab is the Solo project of Damian Kastbauer and his ever-expanding effects pedalboard and guitar-noise-making system. Ambient Guitar for Active Minds. Respect the Vibrations.

After successfully Activating Ambient Acoustics last year in a multi-amplifier, spatial maelstrom of resonating frequencies, Lost Chocolate Lab returns to bring a new slice of dynamic ambient guitar acrobatics in conjunction with the projected visuals of exotic geological anomalies. Expect billowing delay-clouds, stuttering-drones of instrumental undulation, and a fluid-thread of guitar histrionics processed through the universal consciousness cascading amidst the columns, windows, and walls of the Chapel in an enveloping audio/visual experience.

The evening’s performance coincides with the release of Serious Frosting Batch 1 – The Space Between Two Notes (They Grow Up So Fast), recorded in Seattle during sessions that produced over 5 hours of improvised guitar-based soundscapes.

Kin of the Moon will present a new commission, No house on fire, no. by Seattle saxophonist/composer Neil Welch, with Abbey Blackwell, bass. KOTM encores composer Ewa Trębacz’s Winter After Times of Fire. KOTM will also premiere Leanna Keith and Em Piro’s interactive work “imagination is an act of rebellion”. Thanks to 4Culture for their generous support.

“No house on fire, no. for improvising quintet explores phonetic text painting and my reflections on physical landscape. Through this piece, I attempted to channel the collaborative spirit of Kin of the Moon — a virtuosic ensemble committed to engaging in creative dialogue with one another. Throughout this piece you will hear breathing, undulating wind currents, unified melodic passages and solos for each member of the ensemble. It was composed from late 2017 through early 2019. After initially completing the piece in late 2018, I was inspired to re-compose major sections after a journey through the mountains and valleys of New Zealand. While in country in early December, 2018 I traveled to a remote location in the central South island. With a crew of traveling companions I walked among tall, dry grass waist high that rolled unbroken over hill after hill throughout a 2 day journey. As the wind picked up the grass would take on new forms, winding and coursing in every direction around me. In these long days a new vision of this composition began to take form in my mind.

The work is segmented into four sections (Introduction, I, II, III) and is intended to progress between sections without pause. All instrumentalists use extended techniques to create undulating sounds of air and wind through various means, such as: fingers sliding on the keyboard with plastic picks, flute and saxophone blowing directly into their instruments without engaging pitch, bows sliding on the body of the instrument, amplified bow swirls and pulls, feet and hands brushing against the floor, clothing, or instrument. The work is dominated on the whole by graphic score language I developed for the piece, however many selections are also notated in pitch. These notated passages are often dichotomous in their pitch content, blending tempered and non-tempered tuning. No house on fire, no. is a work that must be sonically sculpted by each member of ensemble in order to bring the composition to completion. The rhythms and phrasing are taken from the poem Drawn Together, by Joan Naviyuk Kane. The poem is reinterpreted throughout the duration of the composition.” — Neil Welch

Drawn Together

Shot through with white, error—
A dream of birds of prey returned
Dropping glyptics, baskets.

Last night’s lopped moon
Couldn’t put into words
The ink around it.

Split and cleft,
I no longer weaken into sleep.
I no longer ash,

Ache. No carrion bird
Blown into the city,
No house on fire, no.

— Joan Naviyuk Kane