SMO players and guests perform a concert of Luciano Berio’s Sequenzas, featuring flutist Sarah Pyle, harpist Sophie Baird-Daniel, soprano Maria Mannisto, pianist Cristina Valdes, oboist Bhavani Kotha, violinist Micheal Lim, and clarinetist Angelique Poteat.

Luciano Berio’s fourteen Sequenzas span more than forty years, an essential catalogue of twentieth century performance. Each work is an astonishing exploration of the experimental potential of modern instruments, and places Olympian demands on the performer. In this concert of seven Sequenzas, witness incredible feats of musical athleticism that push the boundaries of virtuosity and possibility.

Sequenza I for flute (1958, rev. 1992) | Sarah Pyle, flute
Sequenza II for harp (1963) | Sophie Baird-Daniel, harp
Sequenza III for voice (1965) | Maria Männistö, soprano
Sequenza IV for piano (1965) | Cristina Valdés, piano
Sequenza VII for oboe (1969) | Bhavani Kotha, oboe
Sequenza VIII for violin (1976) | Michael Lim, violin
Sequenza IX for clarinet (1980) | Angelique Poteat, clarinet

Jim Knapp’s unique ensemble of chamber-strings, symphonic harp,+ jazz-inflected guitar & bass in its 10th year — old favorites plus new versions of Moonlight, Seven Up-Then Down, and a precocious March Waltz.

An evening of improvised and arranged music, including sound, dance, and live drawing.

CASCADIA TRIO | Neil Welch (sax), Greg Campbell (percussion), and a special guest TBA. A fiery avant jazz trio, Cascadia performs original pieces composed by each member, deep listening free improvs, and imaginative reinterpretations of a Scott Joplin rag and a cowboy song.

Band Practice | Noel Kennon (sound), Christin Call (performance). A dance/viola duo exploring emotion in movement over a sonic floor of burning sand. In their ongoing improvisational practice they are influenced by classical and avant-garde forms of art-making, compositional theory, visual art, and books they happen to be reading.

MILLER-ADAMS-SCULLY TRIO | Miller-Adams-Scully Trio: Gregg Miller (sax), Casey Adams (percussion), Tom Scully (electric guitar). This improvising, avant trio, born out of the Racer Sessions, produces original music by means of close listening and parallel play. The trio will be joined by visual artist Anjali Grant who will project her live drawings.

Seattle-bred, Brooklyn-based brass quartet The Westerlies return home to present the second annual Westerlies Fest, a multi-day music festival featuring Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye, Celisse Henderson, Robin Holcomb, and Troy Osaki. Westerlies Fest will include evening performances, an all-day open-to-the-public creative music jamboree, and workshops in local schools, including a residency in Highline Public Schools. The performances will take place over four evenings, each with a different guest artist and The Westerlies. Every performance will feature exclusive, one-off collaborations, showcasing the cutting edge of genre-defying contemporary music. The Westerlies created Westerlies Fest to make a meaningful contribution to the rich musical ecosystem that raised them by engaging local students, highlighting local talent, and facilitating explosive collaborations between artists from Seattle and beyond.

Friday evening’s performance features Seattle-based pianist, composer, and songwriter Robin Holcomb. Says The New Yorker, “Attempt to define her music if you care to, but Holcomb has defied strict categorizations since her emergence on New York’s downtown scene, more than thirty years ago. Now living in the Pacific Northwest, this fascinatingly eclectic pianist, composer, and singer has few qualms about mingling folk, jazz, chamber music, and points between and beyond in arresting original music.” Holcomb will perform a variety of her music, including compositions for solo piano and original songs for piano and voice. The Westerlies will delve into a wide swath of their repertoire, including original compositions and arrangements of songs by Ellington, Ives, and more. Their set will feature their new arrangement of Holcomb’s Wherein Lies The Good, the title track of The Westerlies’ forthcoming new album.

The Sound Ensemble presents Come Together, a musical celebration of our community and the ways in which we interact as a society. We will use music to explore the many ways we can support, love and affirm one another. You won’t want to miss the world premiere of Ya’ar by Assaf Shatil! There will be refreshments provided during intermission and plenty of opportunity to chat with composers and performers.

Bagatelles for flute, cello and piano – Dorothy Chang
Ya’ar – Assaf Shatil
Eleven Portraits Suite – Sarah Bassingthwaighte
Upon Weightless Wings – Grace-Evangeline Mason

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.