Seattle artist Jason McGill assembles an evening of four sets of music for one, two, and three:

a. Jason McGill, solo alto saxophone
b. Andrew Olmstead, solo piano
c. Great Bliss: Jason McGill and Tom Scully, electric guitars
d. all of the above

Jason McGill is a Seattle-based (New England born) lifer within sundry less-popular-musics communities. His music of the past few years has mainly explored attention, paradox, love, space, and natural logic. Tonight brings together a few streams of his thought and practice, beginning with solo alto saxophone improvisations: entries to what he calls (and visualizes to be) “tone rooms” – spaces of perfect tonal logic where anything can happen, but only once.

Next, pianist Andrew Olmstead will present a collection of very short songs, documented and available in a book of sheet music. In a tradition dating back to the 16th century, these will incorporate all twelve major and minor keys. These are songs in the sense of Mendelssohn’s Lieder ohne Worte (Songs Without Words). Mendelssohn wrote: “What the music I love expresses to me is not thought too indefinite to put into words, but on the contrary, too definite.” An active part of the Seattle music scene since 2010, Olmstead focuses on intermedia, improvisation, songwriting, and humor. In addition to performing solo, he has explored these subjects in multiple groups, including Spooky Action, Honey Noble, and netcat.

McGill will also present a new guitar piece, I of II, for his revolving-membership group project Great Bliss. This time he will be joined by the Seattle guitarist Tom Scully. The piece, dedicated to the late artist Pauline Oliveros, explores one of the two six-unit whole tone scales (in western temperament) at great length, stretching six notes out to saturated resonance.

Originally from Charleston, SC, Tom Scully moved to Seattle after completing studies in jazz composition and guitar performance at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. He is also guitarist in the experimental rock / free jazz duo Macaw.

Finally, these three will improvise together, as is right and fun.

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

What happens when musicians and movers come together to create variable durations of structured improvisational performance?

These performance events will consist of a varying selection of curated musicians and movement artists who will be brought together in intentional improvisational collaboration. Artists will know their collaborators in advance and be given the opportunity to score and rehearse their piece in accordance with the “chance style” of meeting one another, the evening’s themes, and the convening of their shared interests. A goal is to connect artists in different disciplines, bridging diverse improvisational aesthetics. They are asked to merge structured scores with the unknown spontaneity of improvised performance.

Volume 1:

An evening of scored improvisation consisting of 6 musician/dancer pairings exploring the theme of time and duration. Each pairing will perform for roughly the same amount of time, but arranged into unconventional time configurations. Some pairs will perform one piece over a continuous period of time, where others will perform fragmented sections throughout the evening. Pairings will also consider where in space these uneven time frames will take place, creating an evening of environmental compositions.

In August 2017 musician and artist Matt Shoemaker took his own life. Performing in his honor are long-time friends and collaborators:

Climax Golden Twins
“Timeless super-freaks and masters of suspension” (Doug Haire, Sonarchy Radio). Climax Golden Twins emerge from hibernation for this special show, their first in many years.

Jim Haynes
Internationally exhibiting visual and sound artist, Jim Haynes sums up his work with the phrase: “I rust things”. He does indeed, creating work of strange, abstract and visceral beauty. He runs the Helen Scarsdale Agency, which has released many seminal audio works of experimental, noise and sound art.

Jesse Paul Miller
Jesse Paul Miller is an artist who travels to Southeast Asia, often returning to Indonesia (Java, Bali). He is inspired by what he sees and hears, gathering audio, photography, video, and making paintings and art books during and after these trips. Looking For Number 23 / Masa (Epoch) is a short film inspired by his friendship with Shoemaker.

Dave Knott
Improvisor, string specialist and music therapist.

Eric Lanzillotta
Eric Lanzillotta is the founder of Ri Be Xibalba, Eye Music and Anomalous Records, one of the finest and most uncompromising distributors and labels devoted to experimental music and sound art.

For nearly two decades Matthew Thomas Shoemaker (Born 1974, Seattle, Washington, USA) created unfolding compositions of depth and intensity, reflective of his unique but troubled vision of the world. His audio work has been released on such labels as Trente Oiseaux (Germany), Helen Scarsdale Agency (USA), Ferns Recordings (France), Elevator Bath (USA), and Masters Chemical Society (USA). His presence in the musical world of the Pacific Northwest will be sorely missed.

In conjunction with this performance, an installation of Matt’s paintings and audio will be on view at Seattle’s Jack Straw New Media Gallery, from April 13-May 18 under the title Brain Goreng.

An evening of music and discussion with Seattle composers:

Jay Hamilton, My Muse, & Equal Temperament, cello and pre-recorded dialogue
Gavin Borchert, Three songs, for baritone and piano
Peter Nelson-King, The Magpie’s Shadow, for solo piano
Jeremiah Lawson, Prelude and Fugue in G major, for solo guitar

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. Everyone is welcome!

Blake DeGraw is a composer, performer, bandleader and sound installation artist currently studying composition at Cornish College of the Arts. His primary interest is in large-group performance, often exploring extremes in spatial dispersion and alternative methods of conducting.

“The combined sound of [DeGraw’s] ensemble could be described as if Charles Ives had access to psychedelic mind-altering substances.” – icareifyoulisten

He will present Dissociative Containment: Chamber & Vocal Music – works for twelve violins, six violins, twelve vocalists, and solo voice with fixed media. Each piece explores a common thread of unity through dissociation: all musicians in participation will perform wearing headphones, responding in different ways to aural stimuli heard only by them individually, unlocking harmonies and rhythmic combinations that would otherwise be too challenging and counterintuitive to achieve through listening to one another.

To open the program, Noel Kennon and Greg Kelley will present a moment of music.

AIR celebrates the second CD release and digital drop by MDC in a projected tetralogy of ambient and synthesized soundscapes based on the classical elements: water, air, earth and fire. Incorporating twenty-five years of field recordings from all over the world, “AIR” also includes non-real-time granular synthesis of these recordings and real-time processing of stringed instruments: guitar, bass and moon-harp.

Mark D. Cooper is a graduate of Oberlin College and the Center for Contemporary Music at
Mills College and has previously produced numerous compositions, and sound designs for
museums, and dance and theater companies. He is recently re-emerging from 15 years of
hibernation/parenthood. He is a member of the Seattle Phonographers Union and of XYST, Inc.

Inverted Space Ensemble presents four new works by four eclectic composers. Drawing on an ensemble that was born out of Inverted Space’s Cornish Residency, the concert will feature works for a unique ensemble of violin/viola, sax/clarinet, acoustic/electric guitar, piano and percussion. The concert will feature newly commissioned works by Charles Corey, Yigit Kolat, Luke Fitzpatrick and Ben Levin.

Crippled Symmetry, written in 1983 is the second of three works by New York Jewish composer Morton Feldman for this trio combination. Representing the culminating style of his compositions, with long time frames and somewhat repetitive yet ever-changing and overlapping material for the three players in a subtle quiet dynamic, this period is perhaps his best known through a series of recordings that emerged shortly after the composer’s death, with CDs making recordings of work of such length and dynamic subtlety possible.

The performers, Paul Taub (flute), Matthew Kocmieroski (percussion), and Roger Nelson (piano) have been playing new chamber music together for nearly forty years. They were members of the New Performance Group during the 1980s and 90s and then formed the short lived but significant trio TaNeKo which premiered works by composers such as Nicolas Slonimsky. Over the years they have continued to play together and have performed all three of Feldman’s works for this trio of instruments. They are happy to once again offer the work of this great 20th century American composer.

Note: This work lasts approximately 90 minutes without intermission.

The Drone Cinema Film Festival, now in its fourth year, showcases cutting-edge minimalist works of ethereal beauty that transmute sonic drones into the visual realm.

Drone Cinema (which has nothing to do with obnoxious flying robots) draws its inspiration from a wide range of sources: the mid-century experimental films of Stan Brakhage and Jordan Belson, the sound Of the hurdy-gurdy in Early Music, the tambura of Indian music, the minimalist drones Of La Monte Young and Terry Riley, and the recent film genre called Slow Cinema.

Program:

AUME – Transmission
C130 & Scant Intone – Eye of the Storm
Mike Rooke – Falling Memories
Kat Cascone – LuxLuna
Sequencial – The Foundation
Kris Force – Cloudwalker
Albert Borkent – Moon TV
Don Haugen – From the Dust of

Opening the evening, festival/Silent Records founder Kim Cascone’s new drone composition Pollen & Fragments will be performed by the new ensemble Khem One, with Stuart Arentzon (guitar), Kim Cascone (guitar), Evan Cordes (tanpura), Steve Peters (reed organ), Ethan Sobatta (double bass), Stuart McLeod (drums/percussion), Scot Jenerik (electronics).

Presented by Nonsequitur.

Kin of the Moon’s show What Better Than Call a Dance is inspired by the relationship of dance to music; how music informs dance and dance informs music. We’ll be collaborating with Beth Fleenor on clarinet, vocals, electronics and Karin Stevens; the two will interweave a series of improvisations interspersed with four new takes on some pre-existing dance music forms composed by Kaley Lane Eaton and Heather Bentley, performed by Kin of the Moon (Leanna Keith, flute, Heather Bentley, violin/viola, Kaley Lane Eaton, soprano/piano/electronics). A hybrid of through-composed and improvised music, the retrospective/reworking includes Eaton’s 22 which is a quasi-jig; Bentley’s Waltz for Three and Conventillo, a backward look at tango music and lyrics, and Eaton’s Hildegard of Bingen-triggered EDM piece.