7:30 PM Pre-concert conversation with guest artist Robert Aitken and co-artistic director Jérémy Jolley

PROGRAM:
Robert Aitken: My Song for 2 flutes
Robert Aitken: Lalita for solo flute and ensemble
Toru Takemitsu: Bryce for flute, 2 harps, marimba, & percussion
Iannis Xenakis: Phlegra for 11 instruments
Brian Cherney: Die Klingende Zeit

This concert stars legendary flutist, composer, and conductor Robert Aitken. Instrumental in developing the playing of the modern flute, Aitken has worked with numerous composers such John Cage, George Crumb, Elliott Carter, Toru Takemitsu, and Iannis Xenakis, to name a few. In this unique collaboration with SMO, Aitken will be playing some of his own music and Toru Takemitsu’s Bryce, and conducting works by Iannis Xenakis and Canadian composer Brian Cherney.

Morsel Trio is a new Seattle-based ensemble, comprised of young artists that have performed all over the United States. Made up of Emily Acri (violin), Chris Young (cello) and Steven Damouni (piano), Morsel Trio is dedicated to performing works by a wide assortment of composers and in a wide variety of places. This concert takes a traditional genre with a rich history and explores many new ways it can be enhanced using twentieth century techniques and aesthetics.

This concert is a great representation of this group’s diverse musical influences and their abilities to expand on the traditional technical abilities of their instruments. This concert will involve three commissions from local Seattle-based composers. Luke Fitzpatrick‘s trio titled Morsel reflects on his earlier composition for the Partch Ensemble; the 44-tone scale is incorporated, as well as the use of improvisation, the voices of all performers, and a varied orientation for the instruments involved. Charles Corey‘s evocative work, Memories from Within a Valley Fog combines sonorous, hazy sounds with sweeping, technically dazzling gestures. Daniel Webbon‘s The old is dying and the new cannot be born provides a third distinct character, one of intensity in rhythmic demand and cohesion. Throughout this work a wide variety of textures and extended techniques are explored. The program will close with the renowned composer Kaija Saariaho’s 2014 work for piano trio entitled Light and Matter.

Earshot Jazz is pleased to present Brooklyn bassist Stephan Crump and his Rosetta Trio. Led by Crump on acoustic bass, the trio is a “string ensemble for the new century” (Donald Elfman, All About Jazz), with Liberty Ellman on acoustic guitar and Jamie Fox on electric guitar. The lack of drums is unexpected, and the ensemble embraces the rhythmic flexibility and challenges it presents. The result is a sound that sits within the liminal space of jazz, avant-garde, and contemporary folk. Formed in 2005 as a response to the aftermath of 9/11, the Rosetta Trio has been exploring deeply personal themes of individual and collective experiences ever since. The trio continues to expand their vision, having released several albums, their latest being Outliers (February 2019, Papillon Sounds).

(photo: Nathan James Leatherman)

We’re back!

An evening of music and discussion with Seattle composers:

Ha-Yang Kim
Neil Welch
Kaley Lane Eaton
Blake Degraw
Lily Shabbabi
Liam Hardison

Curated by Tom Baker.

The Seattle Composers’ Salon fosters the development, performance and appreciation of new music by regional composers and performers. At bi-monthly, informal presentations, the Salon features finished works, previews, and works in progress. Composers, performers, and audience members gather in a casual setting that allows for experimentation and discussion.

Don Berman and his Big Band Thing celebrate the release of their new CD with a performance of Ascension Northwest. Berman’s work is dedicated to the feeling of deep spirituality in John Coltrane’s music that heavily impacted Don when he first encountered Trane’s Live at Birdland and the Village Vanguard recordings during the summer of his sophomore year in college. The eleven-person ensemble includes Kenny Mandell, Dick Valentine, and Jenny Ziefel on tenor saxophones and bass clarinet; Seth Alexander and Jim Paul on alto saxophones; Jim Knodle and Christian Pincock, trumpet and valve trombone; Matt McCluskey, piano; Abbey Blackwell and Jeff Johnson on basses; and Don Berman on drums.

Opening the evening will be the excellent trio CHA. Carol J. Levin (electric harp), Heather Bentley (violin, viola, electronics), and Amelia Love Clearheart/the Indigo (spontaneous poet, vocalist, dancer) make up the improvising trio CHA. Each artist incorporates loops and effects, interwoven in a synergistic, immediate performance ranging from tender to wild.

Proceeds from the door will be donated to the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center (KCSARC).

An evening of free improvisations based on Kurdish rhythms featuring percussion virtuoso Ahmad Yousefbeigi joined by Arrington de Dionyso and Amy Denio.

Ahmad Yousefbeigi is an inspired and sought-after Kurdish Iranian percussionist. Born in Kurdistan-Roj Halat, Sanandaj (Iran), his passion for rhythm was fostered by the musical nature of Kurdish community life and his brother’s guidance. At the age of twelve, he began the formal study of Tonbak and Daf. Since moving to Seattle in 1998, Ahmad has captivated audiences in the Pacific Northwest, singing and drumming to the energetic, nomadic folk songs of his native Kurdistan. Ahmad’s versatility, love of cultural exchange and collaboration has led him to perform with many musicians and bands outside of traditional Kurdish and Iranian music. His most recent acoustic, ambient, improvisational collaboration, YESOD, began in September 2010 with composer Bill Wolford.

Arrington de Dionyso (Old Time Relijun, Malaikat dan Singa, This Saxophone Kills Fascists) integrates ancient soundmaking techniques with trans-modernist inquiries into the nature of consciousness. His propulsive improvisations utilize voice and reeds (primarily bass clarinets and his invention the Bromiophone) as multiphonic tools in the navigation of liminal spaces between shamanic seance and rock and roll ecstasy. While deeply rooted in the punk inclination to tear down musical standards in an effort for liberation, Arrington’s music weds no-wave iconoclasm with the spiritual searching of Albert Ayler era free jazz along with more indigenous approaches to improvisation, reaching for an unveiling of primordially potent universalities to evoke an “Ancient Future”, sometimes shocking and hallucinatory, always aiming to channel Spirit.

Multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Amy Denio has produced over 50 recordings solo and in collaboration with artists worldwide. She has played concerts and taught musical workshops in festivals, clubs, squats, prisons, churches, sanctuaries, subways, and abandoned buildings on 6 continents. A commissioned composer for modern dance, film and theater, Denio’s music has been heard at Carnegie Hall, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and by 40,000 people on New Year’s Eve in Piazza del Plebescito in Naples, Italy. She co-founded Tone Dogs, The Entropics, all-women sax quartet The Tiptons (1988-present), joined Bosnian folk metal band Kultur Shock in 1999, and has been playing with Abel Rocha and Madeleine Sosin in Correo Aereo/Ama Trio since 2003.

An evening of works investigating the natural relationships of overtones over long durational structures. Presented and written by Noel Kennon, joined by John Teske.

in 2 parts : {

region no.2 and unison (prelude/postlude) . viola and double bass

magenta/pasture : { catalogue ( harmonics one through four hundred and fifty six) } for sine tones and filtered white noise.

(intermission)

Dreams of Uriel (just fog and burning lilacs) for solo viola and voice

}

Stefan Maier (b. 1990) is an artist and composer based in Vancouver, Canada. His compositions, installations, and performances, examine emergent and historical sound technologies and the modes of listening which they might engender. His work has been presented by Vancouver New Music, Ultima (Oslo), Forecast Festival (Berlin), SPOR Festival (Aarhus), Musik der Jahrhunderte (Stuttgart), Inter Arts Center (Malmö), Experimental Studio SWR (Freiburg), G(o)ng Tomorrow (Copenhagen), Kunsthal Aarhus, Kunstlerhaus Dortmund, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin). Stefan will present his work Arranger. Originally commissioned for the opening of Haus der Kulturen der Welt’s Radiophonic Spaces exhibition, the work uses custom Machine Listening software to rearrange Maier’s computer-assisted improvisations in real-time. More information can be found here.

Chloe Alexandra Thompson is a Cree, Canadian artist and curator, living and working in Portland, Oregon. Using Pure Data, Arduino, hardware, and voice, Thompson creates unique sonic experiences and expressions through the spatialization of isolated frequencies. Thompson’s work has been shown at Unity Gain: High Density Loudspeaker Array, Corridor (Seattle), Littman and White Galleries, Compliance Division, Bronco Gallery, and Variform Gallery. She has also presented in collaborations for Convergence45, Disjecta, Out of Sight (Seattle), PICA T:BA:17, Subharmonic: A Music and Sonic Arts Symposium (PICA), and Nationale. Thompson has given lectures and workshops at T:BA:17 Institute in dialogue with Tanya Tagaq, Subharmonic (PICA) with France Jobin and Burke Jam, Open Signal, home school pdx, Portland State University and PNCA as guest faculty. Thompson’s written work has also been featured in publications including Art In America, Zero Cool, Provision, Cig Thesis, and Blankstairs.

Marcus Price is a stalwart veteran of Seattle’s experimental electronic music community. In his process-based performances, atomized sound files constellate into unstable rhythms that bend and crack under the force of their own velocity until they shatter again into prismatic clusters of noise and tone. His most recent LP, Brain Job, is published by Happy Accidents, and recordings of his live performances are extensively cataloged on his SoundCloud page.

Don Immel performs in Seattle for the first time in a decade, appearing with his critically acclaimed Australian contemporary music group Ensemble Three, in a side by side concert with local art-ensemble extraordinaire, Torch.

Ensemble Three was founded by Melbourne-based musicians unified in their goal to diversify and expand the chamber music repertoire for trumpet, trombone and guitar. Noted as “an inspiring example of forward-thinking classical music culture” (CutCommon), over the past six years the group has curated a significant and unique collection of cutting-edge new works, many of which can be heard on an ever-expanding catalogue of recordings. With influences ranging from jazz and popular music to traditional “classical” and avant-garde contemporary music, performances showcase the musicians’ “Virtuosity to burn.” (classikON).

Torch is a contemporary chamber music ensemble whose original compositions play with our heady intellects and our groove-craving souls. The group’s name is a reference to Tomas Mann where he proclaimed the aesthetic mantra, “Art is the sacred torch that must shed its merciful light into all life’s terrible depths.” In 2012, we asked, “Is it possible to create music that could exist as both intellectually rich and crafted with precision while maintaining a palpable groove without using a drummer?” TORCH was born to answer the question with series of self-composed, original programs of music. Rooted in contemporary classical composition, modern tango, and jazz improvisation, TORCH bridges gaps between genres, re-imagines works from master composers of the 20th century, and demonstrates an indie-band model of self-composition as a contemporary chamber music ensemble.

“Experimental Love” – A collective exploration of drone, free improv, abstracted song and electroacoustic composition by SIGE Records artists Nordra, William Fowler Collins, Faith Coloccia, Daniel Menche, Marshall Trammell and Aaron Turner.

Nordra is the solo project of Zen Mother’s singer and guitarist Monika Khot, on label SIGE Records. Cinematic in nature, Nordra has utilized the trumpet to evoke an uncommon feeling of dread, along with sequenced beats, vocals, and guitar loops.

Originally from rural New England and now living in New Mexico, William Fowler Collins is an American composer, recording artist, and performer of dark minimalist music and drone music. Collins will perform material based on his new release, Field Music (SIGE). “Field Music isn’t a soundtrack for the bomb itself, but for the land that bore witness to its inception.” -THE WIRE

Faith Coloccia is an artist and composer/musician. She performs in Mamiffer, Mára and Barnett+Coloccia. She is the co-owner of SIGE records.

Daniel Menche is an experimental musician and multidisciplinary artist from Portland who has been performing and recording since 1989. He will be performing an electro-acoustic set of string drones reflecting the nature of his most ambient recordings on Sige Records — atmospheric and ominous drones that defy gravity.

Marshall Trammell is a critical Creative Music percussionist in the post-Max Roach continuum. He has performed with the likes of John Tchicai, Pauline Oliveros, David Murray and many others from Oakland to Amsterdam. He is a fellow with Intercultural Leadership Institute, a researcher with Solidarity Research Center, and consults with a newly formed collective of solidarity economics trainers for artists.

Aaron Turner is a musician and artist known primarily for his participation in groups such as SUMAC, ISIS, Mamiffer and Old Man Gloom. His work has been informed by a lifetime involvement with metal/heavy music, often materializing in highly abstracted forms utilizing improvisation and longform composition. Turner is the founder of the Hydra Head Records label and co-founder of SIGE Records with partner Faith Coloccia. This event will mark his first collaboration with Marshall Trammell.