An Evening in Improvised Sound and Movement
Created and Curated by Alia Swersky and Tom Baker

An evening of improvisation consisting of 4 sound and 4 movement artists joining together in sets of chance occurrences. Groupings of movers and musicians will be determined by aléa (the French word meaning indeterminacy). Decisions will be made by picking out groups of players and durations of time just before they are to begin. As is the nature of improvisation, each group will work with unpredictable conditions, they will meet the moment and see what unfolds.

Performers:
Sound: Tom Baker, Greg Campbell, Jesse Canterbury, Brian Cobb
Movement: Tamin Totzke, Matt Drews, Fox Whitney & TBD

What is B.S.T.S?
What happens when seasoned musicians and movers come together to create variable durations of improvisational performance?

These improvisational events will consist of a varying selection of curated sound and movement artists who will be brought together in purposeful improvisational collaborations. These ongoing performance happenings will selectively group artists with the intention of instigating dynamic collaborations. Each event will consist of a unique set of guidelines in relation to body, space, time and sound, but the constant for each grouping is that they connect in some way before the performance. Selected artists will be introduced, then asked to score and rehearse their piece in accordance with the indeterminacy of meeting one another, the performance themes of each event, and the convening of their shared interests. A goal is to bring together artists in different disciplines, and bridge diverse improvisational aesthetics. Performers will be asked to create structured scores that harness the unknown spontaneity of improvised performance.

Performers to include: Tamin Totzke, Matt Drews, Fox Whitney, Mike Hodapp, Tom Baker

In a striking integration of Deep Ecology, electroacoustic sound art and experimental dance, this performance invites the audience to consider the connection(s) between sensorium and ecosystem, the body and the earth.

The culmination of a 6-week interdisciplinary environmental science and somatic studies workshop, the dancers and musicians in this performance experiment with performing both sonic and somatic choreographies modeled after biological creatures quantum physicist Karen Barad calls “Queer Critters.” These highly intelligent and interconnected beings — from the underwater Brittlestar to the subterranean Mycelium fungal networks — do not posses a central brain and challenge our Western understandings of delineated corporeality. They perceive and understand the world with their body; they make sense of the earth with their skin. This performance asks: How can other-than-human beings illuminate our understandings of embodiment, and how can their dances through the world further enrich our own?

Sound artist Rocco Strain utilizes miniature contact microphones to sense audio vibrations produced by physical contact with the flesh and skin of living plant and fungal organisms such as plants, trees, moss, mycelium, mushrooms, lichens and flowers. Looped seamlessly into into a textural tapestry of sonic transmission, what you hear is flesh-to-flesh contact and cross-species encounters, the rubbing of overlapping earthly skins, the attraction and the repulsion. In this live electroacoustic sound piece, the musicians also incorporate bio-sonification devices that use electrodes hooked up to living, breathing plants to translate the bioelectricity and electromagnetic currents occurring within the plant’s organism into soundscapes.

Choreographer Iván Espinosa, highly influenced by his intensive studies of Japanese Butoh, takes up Nancy Stark Smith’s conceptualization of the “Skinesphere” to explore the intimate links between our senses and the earthly sensuous. An obscure footnote in Contact Improvisation, a postmodern dance form initiated in 1972 by American choreographer Steve Paxton, the SKINESPHERE aims to draw attention to that which is contained within the boundaries of the body and how this inner sensorium leads to bonding with the Earth. In connection to the sensorial modes of perception embodied by the Brittlestars, Mycelium and other “Queer Critters,” the dancers in this performance engage with the SKINESPHERE as a cross-species phenomenon. Breath by breath, pore-through-pore, skin to skin, we invite you to join us as we meditate on what ecologist David Abram calls the “reciprocity between our animal body and the animate terrain…the simple, somatic affinity that entangles our body with the bodies of other creatures, binding our sentience with that of the local earth.”

To learn more about choreographer Iván Espinosa’s electroacoustic sound art and live dance collaborations, you can read about his work here.

Doors at 7 PM.
The performance will be followed by a Q&A and refreshments.

Inverted Space presents a reinterpretation of the music from Twin Peaks. The concert will feature a handful of the Harry Partch instruments and draw upon different elements of improvisation. The goal will be to produce a new sound to an already innovative score.

FHTAGN is an experimental chamber ensemble started by Blake DeGraw in 2015. Since its inception, the group’s amorphous lineup has been joined by over 70 musicians from a wide variety of musical backgrounds. Primarily employing non-traditional means of scoring and conduction, FHTAGN has performed as a string orchestra, surround-sound choir, saxophone quartet, guitar orchestra, and many other formats, often employing large numbers and extremes in spatial dispersion.

Nital Etch is cello and synth based ambient drone and post-classical.

Blood Rhythms is the collaborative umbrella moniker of Chicago transplant Arvo Zylo, who has been living in Seattle for a little over a year. Blood Rhythms began slowly in 2007 as a brass/drone ensemble; which is to say, as many blaring horns as possible, effected in a nonmusical repetitive style. Since then, things did evolve into a sort of synth and junk-metal collective. “Assembly”, an LP out on legendary noise label RRRecords, is the culmination of what Zylo has done in post-production for five horns recorded in a meat locker, and Blood Rhythms has recently made their formal Seattle debut sharing members with FHTAGN, opening for Blevin Blectum this past October. Back in Chicago, Blood Rhythms has included as many as fifteen horn players, or at other times, five drummers, but more recently, the Seattle iteration of the project has focused on studio work, minimal trios and more dense sonic concepts.

ADVANCE TICKETS ARE SOLD OUT! There will be a limited number of tickets available at the door, cash/checks only.

Gamelan Pacifica presents an evening with Darsono, one of the most prominent musicians in Central Java today. Darsono will be making his first appearance in Seattle. Also joining Gamelan Pacifica will be guest pesindhen Jessika Kenney. The concert will feature Gendhing Candranata, Ketawang Gendhing Kabor, Jineman Kandheg and other pieces from the Central Javanese repertoire.

Darsono comes from a prominent family of music and theater traditions in Central Java, Indonesia. He grew up in a small village outside of the court city of Surakarta, long known as one of the major hubs for performing arts in Indonesia. Darsono studied karawitan, a genre of music played with a gamelan (a primarily bronze percussion ensemble) from Central Java. He also learned the revered art of shadow puppetry, primarily from his father and other relatives, until he continued his study of Indonesian performing arts at Institute Seni Indonesia, a national conservatory of the arts in Indonesia. Darsono graduated in 2002 with a Bachelor of Performing Arts, and a major in traditional Javanese court music. Today, he is one of the most prominent musicians inside and outside of the city of Surakarta. At the royal court of Mangkunegaran, Surakarta, he serves as the main drummer for dances performed at the court. In the surrounding villages, he is regularly featured as an accompanying musician at shadow puppet theater performances (wayang kulit). At his alma mater, he teaches and inspires many young generations of musicians who are mesmerized by his improvisational practices on several instruments of the gamelan.

Darsono’s first opportunity to perform abroad was when he joined the original troop for Robert Wilson’s I La Galigo, a musical theatre production based on a myth from Sulawesi, Indonesia, which premiered in Singapore in 2004. Ever since, he has traveled widely as a teacher and performer of music as well as a puppet master (dhalang) in Europe, the US, and Asia. In the U.S., Darsono has been appointed as an artist-in-residence at several institutions, including Wesleyan University, Smith College, Tufts University and Bates College. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at Cornell University. During his residencies in the U.S, he has traveled and performed music with a number of university and community groups. Darsono is proud to watch the traditional arts of his culture — the trade of his family for generations — become a bridge that allows him to travel far, experience various cultures and interact with people from all over the world. Darsono believes that within the domain of the performing arts, there is a “mysterious property” that allows people from various backgrounds to naturally come together, transcend differences, and reach a deeper mutual understanding.

Gamelan Pacifica is among the finest ensembles devoted to the performance of music for gamelan in the U.S. Formed in 1980, it has performed extensively in the Pacific Northwest, as well as Canada and throughout the U.S. Gamelan Pacifica is an active and adventurous ensemble, with a reputation for creating diverse productions merging traditional and contemporary musical forms with dance, theater, puppetry, and visual media. They perform often in the Northwest and have been guest performers at The Smithsonian Institute’s Festival of Indonesia, New Music Across America Festival, Vancouver New Music Society, On the Boards, Walker Art Center, Performing Arts Chicago, and many others. Visiting artists have included some of the most notable artists of Indonesia, including Rahayu Supanggah, Al Suwardi, Peni Chandra Rini, Heri Purwanto, Sutrisno Hartana, Wayan Sinti, Didik Nini Thowok, Sri Djoko Rahardja, I Made Sidia, Endo Suanda, Dedek Wahyudi, Ki Purbo Asmoro, Goenawan Mohamad, and Tony Prabowo.

Director, Jarrad Powell
Karawitan Coach, Jesse Snyder
Guest Pesindhen, Jessika Kenney

Gamelan performers: Noah Colbeck, Michael Dorrity, Stephen Fandrich, Ted Gill, Emily Hockel, Austin Larkin, Will Lone, Deena Manis, Richard Robinson, Sean Ryan, Troy Scheifelbein, Stephanie Shadbolt, Jesse Snyder, Jarrad Powell (Director).

Enjoy an evening designed by Mother Tongue’s Angelina Baldoz, and Katherine Cohen with music, movement, and poetry. Special guests poet Omar Willey, dancer Ezra Dickinson, and trumpeters Greg Kelley and Ray Larsen will join for this one-night-only special offering.

Mother Tongue is a two-headed art making machine specializing in post-disciplinary creation, formed in 2015 by composer and musician Angelina Baldoz and multidimensional artist Katherine Cohen (kt shores) who both have decades of performance experience and now run Studio Current in Seattle.

Presented by Nonsequitur.

it·er·a·tion
/ˌidəˈrāSH(ə)n/
noun
noun: iteration

the repetition of a process or utterance.

repetition of a mathematical or computational procedure applied to the result of a previous application, typically as a means of obtaining successively closer approximations to the solution of a problem.
a new version of a piece of computer hardware or software.

plural noun: iterations

As in math, or computer programming, the concept of iteration is used to express the different versions/steps of an algorithmic process, in the arts it represents an intrinsic characteristic of research methodology. Artists iterate techniques, tools, technologies and forms to create, experiment with and refine concepts, to explore narratives, ask questions and structure collective experiences. In this context, the Research Studio at DXARTS (Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media) at the University of Washington focused on the field of live performance as an iterative technique for PhD students to present their work. The works that will be presented at the Chapel include error-prone improvisational experiments, ritualistic and meditative compositions, contemporary dance with diy electronics, and an archival mosaic of the story behind the Good Shepherd Center.

Participants: Riah Buchanan, Chanee Choi, Cameron Fraser, R.M-TNKRT, Breana Tavaglione and Rihards Vitols.

Organized by the Center for Digital Arts & Experimental Media (DXARTS) at the University of Washington.

An evening of performative experiments by DXARTS PhD students: Riah Buchanan, Chanee Choi w/ Sarah Lisette Chiesa, Cameron Fraser, R.M-TNKRT, Breana Tavaglione and Rihards Vitols. Organized by the Center for Digital Arts & Experimental Media (DXARTS) at the University of Washington.

Works:

Riah Buchanan & Sarah-Jane Vavrin: A Mother is a Clock – Pre-recorded audio from The Good Shepherd Oral History Project, originally collected by archivist Toby G Harris in 1999, including interviews from nuns and girls residing at the Catholic home in the 1950s. Live performance by soprano Sarah-Jane Vavrin of Cornish College of the Arts, who will sing Ave Maris Stella.

Cameron Fraser & Rihards Vitols: The kitten is scratching me – Live performance with synthesized video projection, resonant objects, cassette players and feedback circuits.

Chanee Choi & Sarah Lisette Chiesa, sound by Cameron Fraser: Polaris – Contemporary dance performance with interactive wearables and embedded LEDs.

Breana Tavaglione: Lineage 1 – An audible family tree read by Tavaglione, featuring field recordings and audio interviews with her paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother.

R.M-TNKRT: The Conscious Rhythm Of Her Dream: A Puerto Rican Eulogy – Glitched vocal & piano performance.

A few words about the participants:

Riah Buchanan is a graphic designer currently researching the dissemination of official government images and documents through the lens of speculative design. She is interested in the aesthetics of digital networks that modify and respond to the physical landscape.

Chanee Choi is a multidisciplinary interactive artist. Her artwork combines Korean traditional crafts and new media forming a hybrid genre focused on immersive experiences.

Sarah Lisette Chiesa is an American-born, Seattle-based multimedia and contemporary dance artist. She teaches as a pre-doctoral lecturer and dances with Chamber Dance Company.

Cameron Fraser composes music for unique acoustic/electric hybrid instruments, sculptures and installations. His work employs indeterminate strategies, ecoacoustic methods and feedback systems.

R.M-TNKRT is a Puerto Rican artist whose audiovisual voice illustrates the psychosomatic space between the real and the dream. She sees identity as a spectrum in-flux and has adopted the pseudonym R.M-TNKRT to suggest this paradox. By using strategies of chance to push the boundaries of the self, she explores fractured bodies, dual identity, glitch theory, & new media aesthetics in sound, photo, & video.

Breana Tavaglione is a composer and sound artist from Riverside, California, whose primary musical interest is experimenting with sound, often via field recordings and improvisation. Her work consists of recordings, installations, and live performances which explore the intersections of language, fairy tales, feminism, relation to place, and decolonization.

Sarah-Jane Vavrin is a soprano who recently received her Bachelors of Music from Cornish College of the Arts studying under the direction of Dr. Natalie Lerch. Sarah-Jane’s performances include: … (ellipsis) by Kyle Morrow, A Performance of Myself by Nicholas Mackelprang, and The Three Crowns by Caleb Sapa, The Spring and the Fall, and Faure’s Requiem conducted by Richard Ross.

Since 2011 Rihards Vitols has been working with sound artists providing them with visual element for their live performances. He likes to imagine sound in graphical elements that changes over the time and interacts with audio. Now and then he provides sound artists with fixed time media for their sound pieces.

Composer/guitarist Ben McAllister debuts his new group The Guitar Cult, Evan Flory-Barnes brings original songs with chamber ensemble vibes, and Bill Horist brings the inimitable Bill Horist guitar experience.

The global devastation and human misery wrought by the lack of solid guitar worshipping and noisemaking activities – to say nothing of natural and man-made disasters – is unmistakable. They threaten to rip the social fabric to shreds and in many parts of the world these societal ills have already caused irreparable damage. What is conspicuously lacking in combating these virtually apocalyptic scenarios are effective solutions. To that end, in the course of his decades of research into the mind and spirit, Ben McAllister developed methods by which to address the crises that threaten our world. To bring those solutions to bear, the Seattle center of the Cult has been established to act as a “picking temple.” The result: the Guitar Cult’s revolutionary social betterment and humanitarian programs, reflected in live performances and recorded form. They are utterly unique, indisputably cutting edge and most importantly—effective.

Seattle guitarist Bill Horist has established himself as an internationally known improviser/composer/performer in a wide array of genres including rock, jazz, contemporary chamber, avant garde, folk, new music and several subgenres within each. He has appeared on over 70 recordings and has performed well over 1000 concerts throughout North and Central America, Europe, and Japan. Over the past two decades, Bill has collaborated with a long list of notable musicians from around the world. He has toured and recorded with a number of bands including Master Musicians of Bukkake, Nobodaddy, Phineas Gage, Axolotl, UnFolkUs, Zahir, Tablet, Nervewheel, Ghidra, Rollerball and the Paul Rucker Ensemble in addition to extensive solo activity.

Mandalas | The Guitar Cult | May 26, 2017 from listen faster on Vimeo.

(Originally scheduled for Feb. 9 as part of the 34th Seattle Improvised Music Festival, but cancelled due to snow. The original artist line-up has since changed somewhat due to the number of participants and their conflicting schedules.)

A large group of veteran Seattle improvisers gather to pay tribute to SIMF founder Paul Hoskin, who passed away last November. Various groupings and solos TBD, and an ensemble performing Hoskin’s open score Quietude. Sets punctuated with gongs by Stuart & Renko Dempster. Shrine by Sue Ann Harkey. (The final set list is shown below.)

• Rob Angus, John Hawkley, Eric Muhs
• Johnny Calcagno
• Lori Goldston, Austin Larkin
• Robert Hinrix, Jim Knodle, Neal Kosaly-Meyer
• Charley Rowan, Bradley Stevens
• Gust Burns, Greg Campbell, Mark Kaylor, Kelvin Pittman, Wally Shoup
• Jesse Canterbury, Carol J. Levin, Jenny Ziefel
• Quietude: Greg Campbell, Stuart Dempster, Scott Granlund, Jim Knodle, Dave Knott, Neal Kosaly-Meyer, Pete Leinonen, Carol J. Levin, Fran Lukas, Charley Rowan, Wally Shoup, Bradley Stevens, Jenny Ziefel

A shared evening of electronic and electroacoustic music with recent Seattle transplant Blevin Blectum (Bevin Kelley) and New York-based composer Dan Joseph. Blectum will present a new set of electronic pieces, while Joseph will present Dulcimer Flight, a long-form work for hammer dulcimer and electronics informed by acoustic ecology, ambient music and early minimalism. The evening will conclude with an impromptu collaboration.

Blevin Blectum (born Bevin Kelley) is an electronic musician and multimedia artist whose work explores “polyphasic avitronic wordless sonic worldbuilding.” Currently based in Seattle, Blevin is perhaps most best known as one half of the recently reformed and reunited groundbreaking digital duo Blectum From Blechdom (with Kevin Blechdom aka Kristin Erickson) who received the 2001 Ars Electronica Award of Distinction in Digital Musics for their album The Messy Jesse Fiesta. In 2013 she co-founded the electroacoustic-radioplayers The Traveling Bubble Ensemble with fellow sci-fi enthusiast and sibling Kelley Polar (Michael Kelley). Left to her own devices, Blevin produces turbulent electronics with a more oblique slant on the basic BFB sensation of things-not-quite-right-here – clanking, creaking grooves and anti-grooves as a coal-powered spacecraft from some post-steampunked parallel universe potentiality. She can be heard in radio plays, electronic toys, theater spaces, film/television scores, advertisements, clubs, concert halls, headphones, and galleries. She has releases on labels including Aagoo, Estuary Ltd., Tigerbeat6, DeluxeRecs, Praemedia, Vague Terrain, and Phthalo. (photo: Carlos Cruz)

Dan Joseph is a composer, performer, writer and curator based in New York City. For the past fifteen years, the hammer dulcimer has been the primary vehicle for his music and he is active as a performer with his own chamber group, The Dan Joseph Ensemble, as well as in various improvisational collaborations and as a soloist. He produces the monthly music and sound series Musical Ecologies in Brooklyn, and is a contributing writer to The Brooklyn Rail, Musicworks Magazine and NewMusicBox.org. In 2017, the venerable New York based new music label XI Records released a 2 CD retrospective of his electroacoustic and mixed-media works titled Electroacoustic Works. (photo: Claudia Joseph)