The Sound Ensemble is a vibrant and rising ensemble that is redefining what it means to attend a classical music concert. With music from many different styles and composers they create a welcoming space for the audience to experience and respond to the music of our time.

In this evening of monumental works you will experience pieces that represent profoundly transformative times in either the life of the composer, or in the life of a character within the piece. With great works, such as Arnold Schoenberg’s iconic sextet Verkläte Nacht and the incredible Chamber Symphony by John Adams, you will not want to miss out.

Part music concert, part neo-dance jam, part sociocultural lab test, these evenings are designed as a hybrid experience for you to explore what The Antenna Project‘s music inspires you to do. Bring a book, bring a sketchpad, bring a pillow, bring a yoga mat, bring a camera, bring a movement idea, bring a friend… The Nyxology Sessions are all about building a bridge to that next authentic level.

Christopher Hydinger’s The Antenna Project provides instrumental live-scores (improvised, context-specific audio compositions) for all variety of experiences including extended duration performance, yoga, meditation and other movement-based classes, events, performances and happenings, films, fashion shows, ceremonies and gatherings of all kinds. He employs amplified electric guitar, an effects pedal and various methods of interfacing to create full-registered music ranging from subdued waves of droning minimalism to exuberantly celebratory maximalism. Christopher’s held the artist-in-residence position at Punk Rock Yoga, creative directed and performed in the award-winning art-theater group PB_TMOG, curated and produced the quarterly Dance and Music improvisation-based performance series HERE/NOW, performed in graphic novelist Dame Darcy’s band Death By Doll and performed at venues such as Benaroya Hall, Neumos, The Crocodile, Chop Suey, On The Boards, the Henry Art Gallery, Northwest Film Forum and the Triple Door sharing the stage with such acts as Low, Woven Hand, David Bazan (Pedro the Lion), The Gossip, Sun City Girls, The Makers, Tara Jane O’Neil, Kinski, The Dead Science and Climax Golden Twins. He currently owns/operates WCS Art and Design.

Gift Tapes/DRAFT presents the Seattle Phonographers Union & Mesh Collaborative for its first installment of its 2018 program at the Chapel Performance Space, in association with the Wayward Music Series. The Seattle Phonographers Union, a unique collective with an ever-changing lineup, performs site-specific sound works using unprocessed field recordings. Mesh Collaborative is a computer network music collective that creates synthetic sonic environments by means of realtime cross-compositional systems. Both sets of sound/music will be performed over a 4-channel sound system.

Engaging in collective improvisation using only unprocessed field recordings, the Seattle Phonographers Union explores the ways in which we recognize, differentiate, map and navigate our sonic environment. Our intent is to move beyond habitual experience of sound and uncover what is foreign in the familiar and familiar about the foreign; to explore what we hear and relearn what we know. Some sounds will be familiar; others less so. Both novel and familiar sounds are juxtaposed in ways unique to each event. Our intent is to investigate and enrich both our intuitive and analytical relationship with sound. The goal is not to excite, confuse or entertain per se, but to attend to the world, which is much more detailed and diverse than any one person’s perception of it. Performers will include: Steve Barsotti, Mark Cooper, Doug Haire, Jake Muir and Steve Peters.

Mesh Collaborative’s debut performance will feature a single desktop computer performing digital synthesis in response to control messages sent by four human performers with laptops. This system, built using the SuperCollider programming language, is designed to exploit the inherent volatility of the network, complete with lag, race conditions, and possible system crashes. Performers include: a 2007 iMac, Jeff Huston, James Watkins, RM Francis & Jason E Anderson.

Karen Bentley Pollick returns to the Wayward Music Series for an acoustic violin & viola recital of repertoire by New York Women Composers, selected from a call for scores and supported by a Seed Money Grant from NYWC awarded in November 2017. Seattle violist Heather Bentley will join for the Washington premiere of Victoria Bond’s Woven for violin and viola. Also a world premiere of a new solo work by Karen Bentley Pollick, composed recently in Mexico. In addition, Stanford composer Jonathan Berger and his mentor, renowned Israeli composer Mark Kopytman, will be represented as a preview of a future concert at Stanford University’s CCRMA on May 26, 2018.

Marga Richter: Darkening of the Light for solo viola (1978)
Faye-Ellen Silverman: Memories for solo viola (1974)
Adrienne Elisha: Inner Voices for solo viola (2008)
Rain Worthington: Mixed Times of Yearning for solo viola (2014)
Victoria Bond: Woven for violin and viola (2008) with violist Heather Bentley
Mark Kopytman: Cantus IV: Dedication for violin solo (1986)
Jonathan Berger: Sink or Swim for solo violin (2006)
Karen Bentley Pollick: World premiere of new piece for solo violin (2018)

Sarah Pyle offers an evening of experimental music for baroque and modern flute. Inspired by styles ranging from the Early Baroque to musique concrète to noise music and beyond, this program explores tropes of flora and fauna across more than 400 years. The set features three world premieres for baroque and modern flute by Sarah and Seattle composers Andrew Stiefel and Daniel Webbon, and includes works for solo flute by American composers Elizabeth Brown and Vivian Fine, along with improvisations on baroque melodies by Francesca Caccini.

Program:

Elizabeth Brown: Botanical Obsessions for solo flute (2000)

Andrew Stiefel: Let us whisper our names into the trees for flute, baroque flute, and electronics (premiere)

Sarah Pyle: Improvisations on three secular monodies by Francesca Caccini

Daniel Webbon: To Square a Circle for baroque flutist as percussionist (premiere)

Sarah Pyle: Beehive for flute and electronics (premiere)

Vivian Fine: The Flicker for solo flute (1973)’

Sarah Pyle is a founding member of the Seattle and Portland-based contemporary chamber ensemble Sound of Late, where she has premiered more than forty works by American composers at concerts throughout the Northwest.

As a piccolo specialist, she was awarded first place at the 2015 Kujala International Piccolo Competition in Chicago. She has played flute and piccolo with the Oregon Mozart Players and has played substitute flute and piccolo with the Seattle Symphony and the Eugene Symphony Orchestra.

Her current scholarly interests span a wide range of topics and eras regarding music and gender, from promoting current musical voices through artistic planning for Sound of Late to analyzing and interpreting musical iconography of the Late Renaissance and Early Baroque eras.

Sarah studied flute with Molly Barth, Michel Debost, and Kathleen Chastain. She holds master’s degrees in flute performance and musicology from the University of Oregon as well as a B.M. in flute performance from Oberlin Conservatory and a B.A. in environmental studies from Oberlin College. In her spare time she explores forests and fiber arts.

Inverted Space explores the music of three major 20th Century Composers. Pairing the Etudes of John Cage and György Ligeti, the second concert of the season will present Book 1 of Cage’s Freeman Etudes for solo violin (performed by Luke Fitzpatrick) with Book 1 of the Ligeti Études for solo piano (performed by Steven Damouni). The second half will feature Karlheinz Stockhausen’s enigmatic Plus Minus.

The 4th concert of Spontaneous Combustion New Music Festival features Iktus Duo from New York City, performing works by Lou Harrison, Joseph Pereira, Adam Vidiksis, James Romig, and Washington-based composer Bruce Hamilton.

This innovative new touring festival features seven exciting up-and-coming soloists and ensembles who specialize in contemporary art music, performing in Seattle, Portland and Eugene between Jan. 19 and Feb. 3. In addition to tickets for individual concerts, festival passes are available here ($50/3-day, $100/7-day).

Iktus Duo is a strong advocate for new music, heavily active in the commissioning, promotion, and educational outreach of new music. The duo has performed at the Con Vivo New Music Series (New Jersey), Bulgarian Consulate in NYC, Spectrum (NYC), Open Sound Series (Boston), Trans Pecos (Queens) and Noon Concert Series (Williamstown, MA), Hardin Simmons University, University of UT at Tyler, Stephen F. Austin State University, Louisiana State University, Southeastern Louisiana University, and the Versipel New Music Festival in New Orleans. While on tour, the duo has presented workshops, masterclasses and concerts, and collaborated with student and faculty composers on new commissions written for the duo.

Aspiring to develop its repertoire with the audiences throughout the USA and abroad, the duo has commissioned and premiered a diverse list of composers such as Erin Rogers (Canada), Philip Schuessler and Seth Boustead (USA), Ronaldo Cadeu (Brazil), Hiroya Miura (Japan), and Kostadin Genchev (Bulgaria). These commissions are uniquely crafted for Iktus Duo’s performance style.

Iktus Duo features Hristina Blagoeva, flute, and Chris Graham, percussion

An evening with two veterans of the Seattle electronic music scene. There will be two solo sets followed by a duo set.

Marc Barreca will be playing electro-acoustic loop based compositions with a laptop and MIDI accordion. He has been making electronic music in Seattle since the mid-1970s, releasing a number of projects over the years on the Hawaii-based Palace of Lights label. His most recent PoL releases are the solo project Aberrant Lens, and the brand new double CD collaboration with K. Leimer, Dual Mono.

Rob Angus will perform pieces from his recording projects Ethnoloopography and Slow Rain on vintage sampling keyboards. He is revisiting these pieces after years of performing live acoustic ambient-industrial music as a soloist, in a long-running duo with Jeff Greinke, and in a number of ad hoc improvising groups.

Opening night of the inaugural Spontaneous Combustion New Music Festival! This innovative new touring festival features seven exciting up-and-coming soloists and ensembles who specialize in contemporary art music, performing in Seattle, Portland and Eugene between Jan. 19 and Feb. 3. In addition to tickets for individual concerts, festival passes are available here ($50/3-day, $100/7-day).

For the first concert, the festival is proud to present Delgani String Quartet from Eugene, Oregon. Delgani is one of the most active chamber music ensembles in the Pacific Northwest, with over 75 performances and educational programs each year. The quartet curates their own concert series in both Eugene and Salem while also appearing as guest artists throughout the state. Delgani recently completed its first east-coast tour following an invitation to perform at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.

This concert features a new work inspired by the Oregon Cascade Range composed by Benjamin Krause. As the musical basis for Delgani’s Cascade Quartet Project, Krause’s composition will be used in a documentary on the Cascades that explores the formation, preservation, and sacredness of the Range. This unique educational tool will be used in schools and museums to bring awareness to Oregon’s geographical history. This project is supported in part by a Creative Heights Grant from the Oregon Community Foundation.

The concert also includes two contrasting 20th century works, the first string quartets by Seattle composer Alan Hovhaness and Hungarian György Ligeti. This is Delgani’s premiere performance in Seattle.

Canadian singer Helen Pridmore focuses on experimental music and improvisation. She blends formidable classical technique and style (think Anton Webern, Michael Finnissy) with work in extended vocal techniques (think Joan La Barbara ). With a special interest in the work of John Cage, Helen has performed his music widely, including at Carnegie Hall in NYC. She frequently works with artists in other disciplines – dancers, visual artists, software engineers – to create new and stimulating art, asking questions about our voices, our bodies, and beauty.

For her visit to the Wayward Music Series, Helen will perform with renowned Seattle musicians Lori Goldston (cello) and Mark Hilliard Wilson (guitar). The trio will explore graphic scores by Cage and his contemporary Earle Brown — music to see and to hear, with visual interpretation of the score as a crucial part of the performance. For the second half of the program, accordionist, composer and arranger Kyle Hanson (The Murkies) will join the group for improvisation, fresh takes on new sounds.

Seattle Times article.