Composer Neil Rolnick pioneered the use of computers in musical performance, beginning in the late 1970s. Based in New York City since 2002, his music has been performed world wide, including recent performances in China and Mexico and across the US. Throughout the 1980s and ‘90s he developed the first integrated electronic arts graduate and undergraduate programs in the US, at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Though much of his work connects music and technology, and is therefore considered in the realm of “experimental” music, Rolnick’s music has always been highly melodic and accessible, and has been characterized by critics as “sophisticated,” “hummable and engaging,” and as having “good senses of showmanship and humor.”

Rolnick is joined in this concert by his frequent collaborators, Jennifer Choi on violin, and Kathleen Supové on piano. Both are stars in their own rights, performing regularly around the world with a virtual who’s who of contemporary composers and adventurous ensembles.

Tonight’s program will feature Deal With The Devil, which was written for Jennifer and Kathy in 2017, involving a virtuosic combination of instrumental playing and real time digital processing, controlled by all three players. Rolnick will also perform a couple of his signature “mash-up” pieces, featuring unusual takes on some folks tunes, and on two classic Everly Brothers recordings.

Presented by Nonsequitur.

Doors at 7 PM / Sets at 7:30, 8, 9; no one turned away for lack of funds.

An evening of abstract sentimental music (for lovers and loners alike) featuring work for harp, voice, piano, electronics, live foley and tape collage.

Sontag Shogun is a collaborative electroacoustic piano trio from Montreal and New York City (Ian Temple, piano; Jeremy Young, tapes/oscillators/amplified surfaces/objects; Jesse Perlstein, voice/field recordings/electronic treatments). They’ll perform new works from a forthcoming LP due out in March, folded into improvisations for 1/4″ tape, treated vocals and sine waves, and of course solo piano. Their sound sits in between the emotive solitude of Nils Frahm and the immersive “maximal-ambient” intensity of Tim Hecker and Ben Frost, but with live electroacoustic processing and performed foley tactics, no sampling and no synths. All of which combines nostalgically to depict abstract places in our memory, bringing us back, like a faded passing scent or any emotive trigger, but to where? The wordless journey there will inevitably be more revealing than the destination itself. This is Sontag Shogun’s first official tour of the West Coast.

Dolphin Midwives is Portland-based Sage Elaine Fisher is echo jungle chaos magic moon milk ocean murmurating orchid sleeper holy hands/helping hands interface nodes/architecture/lace gravity doesn’t exist change the laws of physics levitation shapeshift/shadow energy density clarity prismic sound microtonal vision quest whirling rainbow vortex portal opening reverberating witch sister who plays harp/zither/voice/noise/electronics and everyday objects.

Blessed Blood is an electronics-based project by Seattle’s Rachel LeBlanc. Utilizing hardware effects to expand upon the natural resonances of singing, she processes harmonies into ecstatic hymns, wherein ethereal vocals glide above pulsations and sharp angles. The sound is informed by the artist’s life-long home of the PNW, traditional music forms and choral assemblies, and the exploration of history both personal and cultural, resulting in what is at once familiar and unsettling.

Chloe Harris (aka Raica) has been an integral and influential figure in the Pacific Northwest music community for over two decades. Her contributions as a musical artist, producer, DJ, mentor, record label owner (Further), and record shop owner have helped lay the groundwork and build the foundation upon which rests the current success of Seattle’s underground electronic music scene. Chloe and her husband Mark Cullen have three beautiful children, and Cameron, their youngest, was recently diagnosed with stage 4 cancer (Neuroblastoma). All ticket sales and artist fees from this show will be donated to their GoFundMe campaign to help with Cameron’s medical expenses. If you can’t attend, please donate anyway.

Emerging from a love of early electronics, concrete/tape music, soundtracks and early new age, Norm Chambers (aka Panabrite) creates worlds of sound that touch on many elements and moods, from spatially motivated ambient to aspects of minimalist composition and improvisation. Chambers utilizes an array of synthesizer equipment to achieve his sounds, in addition to field sounds and occasional acoustic elements.

Hair and Space Museum is the duo of David Golightly and Emily Pothast, who are also the co-founders of the band Midday Veil and the record label Translinguistic Other. Their music combines rapturous new age textures and dark, dramatic incantations for synthesizer and voice. Previous Hair and Space Music projects have included a 12-hour improvisation and a custom-built meditation pyramid full of sound.

Leo Mayberry has been working with video for over 18 years, in forms from edited documentary to live performance. At events such as Seattle’s Decibel Festival, he performs improvised sets to accompany experimental and ambient music. Working with multi-media performance groups such as Degenerate Art Ensemble, he expanded into a designer’s role.

Presented by Nonsequitur.

World premieres of works written by and for the groundbreaking clarinetist and composer William O. “Bill” Smith will be performed by Bill with flutist Jeffrey Cohan and violinist Sharyn Peterson in seven performances around the Pacific Northwest. Seattle composer Huntley Beyer and Slovenian composer Igor Dekleva (Ljubljiana) have written works for the occasion.

Smith recently turned 92 and is well known not only to Northwest audiences but to jazz fans and clarinetists throughout the world. A founding member of the Dave Brubeck Octet, Smith pioneered the use of contemporary techniques on clarinet in the 1960s and has continued to experiment with them throughout his life, both in his jazz improvisation and classical composition. Bill was professor of clarinet, composition and contemporary music at the University of Washington for 30 years.

The program will include Session for clarinet, flute and violin, Jazz Set for flute and violin and Five Pages for solo violin by William O. Smith, along with It’s Personal by Huntley Beyer and Nostalgic Fantasy by Igor Deklevaoth for the trio. All world premieres!

Seattle Modern Orchestra offers a program bringing to our present past experiences, people, and ideas, and that remembers, commemorates, and empathizes with the invisible. Pre-concert conversation with composer Yigit Kolat and co-artistic director Jérémy Jolley at 7:30 pm

Program:
YIGIT KOLAT, Kav Yankıları/Echoes of Tinder for ensemble and electronics
GEORGE CRUMB, Eleven Echoes of Autumn for violin, alto flute, cello and piano
CHINARY UNG, Still Life after Death for amplified soprano and instruments
REBECCA SAUNDERS, A Visible Trace for eleven soloists and conductor

Saxophonist and composer Sarah Manning‘s Transmuting Anger is a series of melodic fragments cued by alchemy symbols and tied together with improvised music, focused on the exploration of women’s anger around #metoo, sexism and sexual harassment. Featuring Manning (alto sax), Briggan Krauss (guitar), Peggy Lee (cello) Dylan van der Schyff (drums). Manning’s playing is “like a blade cutting into Viscera” (WBGO). She fights for creative sustainability by building empathy between artist and fan through performing and writing.

Manning has released four critically acclaimed albums. Her most recent release, Harmonious Creature (Posi-Tone, 2014) received 4 stars in Down Beat Magazine and was chosen as a top ten Jazz album of 2014 by the LA Times. In addition to a Fellowship in Composition from the MacDowell Colony in 2012, she has received grants from the Northampton Arts Council and the Puffin Foundation to support performance residencies that break down the barrier between artist and audience.

Presented by Earshot Jazz Festival.

Triptet is a meeting of minds and spontaneous electrical impulses between Michael Monhart (saxophones and electronics), Tom Baker (fretless guitar, theremin and electronics), and Greg Campbell (percussion, french horn and electronics).

Jesse Myers (piano) and Leanna Keith (flute) collaborate in this concert to present two of Nicole Lizée’s etudes for glitch film. In her Hitchcock Etudes, the composer glitches and stitches scenes from “Psycho”, “The Birds”, “Rope”, and “The Man Who Knew Too Much”, all while superimposing live piano music on the soundtrack. In a similar manner, Lizée pulls from Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs”, “Pulp Fiction”, and “Kill Bill”, while a virtuosic bass flute solo is used to seam them all together. Check out what we believe will be an unforgettable audio-visual, avant-garde, cult film experience.

Called a “brilliant musical scientist” and lauded for “creating a stir with listeners for her breathless imagination and ability to capture Gen-X and beyond generation”, JUNO-nominated composer Nicole Lizée creates new music from an eclectic mix of influences including the earliest MTV videos, turntablism, rave culture, Hitchcock, Kubrick, 1960s psychedelia and 1960s modernism. She is fascinated by the glitches made by outmoded and well-worn technology and captures these glitches, notates them and integrates them into live performance. Nicole’s compositions range from works for orchestra and solo turntablist featuring DJ techniques fully notated and integrated into a concert music setting, to other unorthodox instrument combinations that include the Atari 2600 video game console, omnichords, stylophones, Simon™, and karaoke tapes. In the broad scope of her evolving oeuvre she explores such themes as malfunction, reviving the obsolete, and the harnessing of imperfection and glitch to create a new kind of precision.

Seattle-based pianist Jesse Myers is an adventurous explorer of music that expands the possibilities of the piano. With a strong interest in performance that pushes piano music into new realms, Myers frequently performs music for prepared piano, new music for piano and electronics, as well as traditional classical literature. He is a performer, educator, and composer with a goal of giving the audience a fresh perspective of the piano and an imaginative understanding of the music. His solo concerts have been featured in City Arts Magazine, KingFM’s Second Inversion, Seattle Weekly, The Live Music Project, and were a part of The Stranger’s Best Concerts of 2017 for three seasons. His recent work with the prepared piano and electroacoustic music has led to tours across the country including artist residencies and guest performances at Cornish College of the Arts, Capital University Conservatory of Music, Bowling Green State University, Lewis University. Myers has a Master of Music degree from the University of Washington in piano performance. He also attended Bowling Green State University, where he earned his Bachelor of Music in piano performance. His important teachers have been Robin McCabe, Virginia Marks, Valrie Kantorsk, Frances Burnett, and Marylin Shrude.

A freelance flutist, improviser, and composer in the Seattle area, Leanna Keith delights in creating sound experiences that make audiences laugh, cry, and say: “I didn’t know the flute could do that!” She actively performs around the country in concert halls, bars, cafes, and classrooms, bringing along a menagerie of flutes that include her bass flute, alto flute, dizi, and shinobue, as well as a variety of electronics. She also is dedicated to playing music by composers who are still living, and advocates for the usage of music as social activism. She currently performs with the vocal/flute duo Stack Effect with vocalist Kaley Lane Eaton, Keith/Larson Duo with guitarist Zachary Larson, Crows at a Crosswalk with bouzouki player Daniel Husser, experimental chamber troupe Kin of the Moon, and the Japanese drumming ensemble Dekoboko Taiko. Ms. Keith is often sought as an clinician and private lesson instructor. She has taught masterclasses and workshops on a variety of subjects including: flute technique and tone development, extended techniques, composer collaboration, electronics and music creation, improvisation, and world flutes. She currently serves as the flute instructor for Cornish College of the Arts, as well as a teaching artist for the Seattle Symphony. She has a BM from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and received a MM from the University of Washington.

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An impassioned tenor player “who combines mysticism with ferocity” (DownBeat) and half of the adventurous Seattle sax/drum duo Bad Luck, Neil Welch presents a new, large ensemble. Concepcion Picciotto is his homage to the late homeless peace activist’s 35-year White House vigil for nuclear disarmament. Welch’s solo work Puhpohwee opens. Presented by Earshot Jazz Festival.

Marcus Fischer is a first generation American musician + interdisciplinary artist based in Portland. His work typically centers around memory, geography + the manipulation of physical audio recording mediums. Slowly unfolding melodies and warm tape saturated drones have become a trademark of his recordings + live performances alike. These sounds have found their way into multimedia installations, short flims, and even into the award-winning public radio program Radiolab. Fischer has released a number of recordings on the widely respected 12k label including his photographic + sonic collaborations with label founder Taylor Deupree. In 2017 he was an artist in residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation/Rauschenberg Residency where he completed Loss, his most recent album (2017). Fischer performs solo, in collaborations, and as a member of unrecognizable now, secret drum band and wild card.

Since a young age, Thomas Meluch has been fascinated by natural sounds and the textures of decay. He began playing piano before his feet could reach the pedals, and for more than a decade has sought to create a unique sonic environment by combining remnants of pop song structures with the lushness and unpredictability of field recordings. A veteran drummer of a half dozen bands and an avid collector of instruments and analog devices, Meluch relies on guitar and voice as the bases for his work as Benoît Pioulard.

Hotel Neon is the Philadelphia-based trio of Michael Tasselmyer, Andrew Tasselmyer, and Steven Kemner. Together they create immersive and atmospheric soundscapes aided by projected film and images. Known for its heavy emphasis on enveloping walls of sound, Hotel Neon also utilizes subtle melodies and improvisation to create a richly layered musical experience, rewarding any level of listener scrutiny. Since forming in early 2013, the group has released four full-length albums through the Home Normal, Fluid Audio, and ARCHIVES labels. Hotel Neon has toured extensively throughout the U.S.A. and collaborated with a global roster of talent, bringing its unique brand of dense, layered drone to a wide range of performance spaces including basements, radio studios, and cavernous cathedrals.