Seattle Improvised Music Festival Presents…

Two solo sets and a duo set

Christopher Icasiano is a Filipino-American percussionist and composer from Redmond, WA. His influences include 90’s R&B, hip-hop, contemporary classical, folk, metal and noise, and his music finds intersections between the experimental and the mainstream. He tours internationally with his drum-sax duo Bad Luck, several folk and pop bands, and as a solo artist. As a curator, Icasiano creates mind-expanding experiences featuring unconventional music in club environments. He co-founded and co-organizes the Racer Sessions, a weekly Seattle free-improvisation jam session and performance series, and the grassroots arts organization Table & Chairs. His chicken adobo is delicious, he has run three marathons, and his current karaoke song is Luther Vandross’ “So Amazing.”

Classically trained and rigorously de-trained, possessor of a restless, semi-feral spirit, Lori Goldston is a cellist, composer, improvisor, producer, writer and teacher from Seattle. Her voice as a cellist, amplified or acoustic, is full, textured, committed and original. A relentless inquirer, she wanders recklessly across borders that separate genre, discipline, time and geography, performing in clubs, cafes, galleries, arenas, concert halls, sheds, ceremonies, barbecues, and stadiums.

The jaw-dropping saxophone and drum performances by leading new-generation artists Travis Laplante & Gerald Cleaver embrace all musical styles, from the profane to the sacred; raw, demanding, intimate, emotional. Opening: Keyboardist Wayne Horvitz, a tireless musical seeker essential to Seattle jazz, leads his Snowghost Trio (Geoff Harper, bass; Eric Eagle, drums) with “extraordinary melodic instincts” (The Stranger) and a CD on Songlines just out.

Presented by Earshot Jazz Festival, and welcomed by KEXP.

Watch video of the Snowghost Trio set thanks to elhotrod32.

Amy Denio, the beloved saxophonist, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and co-founder of the singular Tiptons now brings innovative music to the rest of the world. Known as Seattle’s Avant Goddess, Denio will share her compositions and improvisations exploring her 4-octave voice colored by electronics. A born improviser, Denio has written and produced over 400 compositions, large and small. Conjuring up a rich blend of sounds, she occasionally invites the audience to join in. Denio was inducted into the Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame in 2015.

Presented by Earshot Jazz Festival.

New sounds and images connected by unseen roots deep within the darkness. Two sets:

1. Tom Baker (guitar, theremin, electronics) with intermedia and moving-image artist Bob Campbell

2. Matrio = James Falzone (clarinet), Greg Campbell (drums), Ha-Yang Kim (cello)

Through her deep commitment to new music of all periods, pianist Ana Cervantes puts different times, sensibilities and musical voices into dialogue. Impassioned creator of connections, she opens doors for her listeners. She has inspired, commissioned and been the guiding force for major collections of new piano music from the most eminent living composers of the Americas and Europe.

For Canto de la Monarca: Mujeres en México / Song of the Monarch: Women in México (2008-2013) Ana Cervantes asked 16 composers of six countries for a piece for solo piano inspired by women who had transcendental roles in Mexican history. The project’s symbol is the Monarch butterfly: a potent metaphor for persistence and valor in a seemingly fragile body.

Presented by Nonsequitur.

Spontaneous, unrehearsed musical exploration, starring Aaron Keyt, piano, objects, melodica; Bruce Greeley, bass clarinet; Carol J Levin, harp, electric harp; Ha-Yang Kim, cello; Clifford Kimbrel-Dunn, flute; Jim Knodle, trumpet; Karen Eisenbrey, piano, objects, drums; Keith Eisenbrey, piano, objects; Neal Kosaly-Meyer, piano, guitar, voice; and S. Eric Scribner, piano, percussion, field recordings. Others TBA.

The first half will consist of three fifteen-minute quartet sets; the second half will be a longer piece where anything can happen (as long as there are only four people on stage at one time). When someone plays a second time, they must play a different instrument!

CILLA VEE LIFE ARTS is an inter-disciplinary arts organization founded in 2002 in the South Bronx by Claire Elizabeth Barratt (aka Cilla Vee), now based in Asheville, North Carolina. It serves as an umbrella for multiple projects that focus on collaboration and facilitation. With a mission of blurring boundaries and crossing categories, CVLA draws from a diverse pool of artists with a wide range of artistic backgrounds. Performances can include anything from dance, movement, music, sound, text, film and video, visual and performance art to installation and beyond. This Fall Cilla Vee is touring cross-country and the west coast in order to connect and collaborate with area artists in each location.

Definition:
Data transfer capacity of the mind.

Performance:
Psychic Bandwidth – chance operations of cross-disciplinary performance modes.

Improvised collaborations of Sound, Movement, Spoken Word, Performative Drawing and other Performance Art test the Psychic Bandwidth of artists and audience alike.

Duos, Trios, Quartets and All.
Picked randomly on the spot.
Unpredictable.
Each artist could do anything at any moment.
Do we have the Psychic Bandwidth to absorb it all?
To see everything. To hear everything.
To catch and process each interaction.
Casting our psychic net wide and reeling it all in to our consciousness.

Some of Seattle’s finest improvisers have been invited to throw down in this mix:
Vanessa Skantze
Karen Nelson
Alia Swersky
Alex Riding
Bill Horist
Arrington de Dionyso
James Falzone

Please note: Performance will begin promptly at 8pm.

Greg Sinibaldi presents new music for trio with Sinibaldi on saxophone/ewi, Ray Larsen on trumpet/electronics and Remy Morritt on drums. The duo of saxophonist David Pate and pianist Steven Cohn create spontaneous compositions in a free jazz style as openers.

Following his most recent release, Ariel, Greg Sinibaldi continues to develop music and sonic delights utilizing a unique instrument, the Electric Wind Instrument (EWI). Basically a wind driven synthesizer, Sinibaldi creates unique sonic textures. With stellar collaborators Ray Larsen on trumpet/electronics and Remy Morritt on drums expect some interesting suprises.

As they have been doing for 30 years, Florida residents Steven Cohn (piano and shakuhachi) and David Pate (tenor/soprano saxophone) will create spontaneous compositions in a free jazz style, throwing themes back and forth with contagious counterpoint.

Lou Mallozzi (Chicago) is an interdisciplinary artist who dismantles and reconstitutes sounds, images, gestures and language to examine relationships between presentation, representation, knowledge, power, and site. His work is primarily based in sound and takes the form of installations, performances, fixed media works, and improvised music. During more than three decades of interdisciplinary arts practice, he has performed, exhibited, and broadcast in many international venues. He was director of Experimental Sound Studio from 1986-2016, and is currently Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Coordinator in the Sound Department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Tonight he presents an evening of solo sound performances intertwining language, objects, vinyl, whistling, and microphones to explore representation, power, and sound. Among the works presented are La patria partorisce padri partiti, which deconstructs Italian fascist texts through controlled microphone feedback, and Arc, in which the eyes drown in a sea of stardust.

Gyre (Seattle) is an experimental electronics trio of Michael Shannon, David Stanford, and Carl Lierman, formed in January of 2012. Their working method relies on the use of non-standard configurations of a wide cross-section of analog and digital electronics. They create discrete circuits between these elements that, while they can sustain sonic form, are not always stable. Sounds generated entirely with oscillators, internal and external feedback circuits, simple sound generators, microphone captures, digital processing, forming swirling loops of sound layers. Their work is informed by the concept of the gyre, the conical helix or spiral of atmospheric phenomena, and the ideas explored by W.B Yeats. Yeats’ vision of the gyre described it as cycles of creation and disintegration that he used to analyze a variety of subjects from human consciousness to historical patterns.

Presented by Nonsequitur.

Enjoy flute and saxophone music from the 1960s to today performed by Soren Hamm and Cassie Lear. These two award-winning musicians will perform pieces from all over the world including works by Takemitsu, Iannaconne, Crockcoft and more, ranging from impressionist-inspired music to contemporary showpieces to modern minimalist works.

Saxophonist Soren Hamm has been heard on the popular radio programs Performance Today and Northwest Focus Live, and has performed repertoire spanning the Renaissance through the avant-garde in concerts across North America. Whether commissioning new repertoire from rising composers, or collaborating in innovative chamber music projects, Soren strives to push the boundaries of the saxophone as a classical instrument and invigorate audiences with exciting new sound worlds. He was a winner of the 2018 Frances Walton Competition, and competed as a national finalist in the MTNA Competitions. Soren holds degrees in saxophone from Bowling Green State University and the University of Oregon, with additional study at Western Washington University.

Flutist Cassie Lear has played at the NYC Electroacoustic Festival, SEAMUS Conference, the International Computer Music Conference, and LaTex Electroacoustic Festival, where her performance was awarded Audience Choice. She is passionate about representing the music of today and premiering and commissioning new works from living composers. She is also the 2017 winner of both the Seattle Flute Society Young Artist Competition and the Maverick Flute Competition, and holds performance degrees from the University of Oregon and the University of North Texas.