Degenerate Art Ensemble Great Big Party / Dance Performance / Music Concert / Guest DJs / CD Release
Seattle, Jem Studios, 6004 12th Ave South, time unknown, $5, all ages.
"The Degenerate Art Ensemble will throw a giant party including a performance of their newest dance work, a set of their newly arranged punk chamber music, DJ's, food, drink and an amazing atmosphere. Degenerate Art Ensemble recently returned from a 6 week 25 city European Tour of the Netherlands, Italy, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland and Germany - this will be their first performance in Seattle since returning home. Last October, DAE threw one of the best parties of 2003 at Jem Studios - this event is sure to live up to the last! DAE will also be releasing their seventh album - an album of complex adventurous music blending influences of punk, jazz, classical, gypsy, rock and beyond. The record includes recordings made this January in Seattle and December in Berlin."
Monday, April 5th
Sound of the Brush presents
Tari Nelson-Zagar / Jesse Canterbury
Seattle, Polestar Music Gallery, 1412 18th Ave (at East Union), 8:30 pm, donation, all ages.
"Violinist Tari Nelson-Zagar and clarinetist Jesse Canterbury began a fruitful collaboration late in 2002. Right away they recognized a depth of communication through free improvisation. When Tari and Jesse work as a duo, their connection is energetic and apparent and they offer an invitation to their audiences to enjoy improvised music in a limber and engaging dialogue. They delivered a set at the 18th Annual Seattle Improvised Music Festival that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer dubbed "astounding." For their Sound of the Brush performance, Jesse and Tari will play around in the murky areas between composition and improvisation... As always, the last set of the evening will open for audience members to join featured performers in spontaneous sound making."
Tuesday, April 6th
Michael Bisio Trio
Seattle, Capitol Hill Arts Center, 1621 12th Ave, 8 pm, $5, all ages.
"Part early Ornette mixed with a Mingus sensibility, Bisio's versatile band swings, floats and stirs things up...In the end, while influences are heard, the sound and approach are clearly Bisio's own." --John Ephland, Downbeat. Rob Blakeslee (brass) Greg Campbell (percussion/French horn) Michael Bisio (bass)."
Wednesday, April 7th
Grapefruits: Performance Works by Yoko Ono and the Fluxus Movement a benefit for the Capitol Hill Arts Center's Community Development Program performed by the Seattle School and a cast of 20
Seattle, Capitol Hill Arts Center, 1621 12th Ave, 8pm, Suggested donation of $10, all ages.
"The Capitol Hill Arts Center (CHAC) is proud to present ½GRAPEFRUITS… an evening of the rarely-seen performance and chamber works by Yoko Ono from her post-Sarah Lawrence College/pre-John Lennon era of 1960-1966. This show contains works originally performed in her Chambers Street Loft Concert Series in New York City, co-curated with composer La Monte Young; from Yoko's infamous 1961 Carnegie Hall concert Works by Yoko Ono, which was attended by John Cage and David Tudor; and from scores that originally appeared in her landmark conceptual art book Grapefruits, published in 1964. Also included in ½GRAPEFRUITS… will be works by her fellow collaborators in the Fluxus art and music movement, including George Maciunas, Anthony Cox, Emmett Williams, and Ben Vautier. For more information go to www.capitolhillarts.com"
Thursday, April 8th
Dan Blunck & Bert Wilson Quartet
Olympia, ArtHouse Performance space, 5th & Franklin, 8 pm, $5-10, all ages.
"Dan Blunck & Bert Wilson will be presenting a concert of composed & uncomposed ferocious saxophony, accompanied by the formidable bass/drums team of Stephen Luceno and Steve Bentley."Solid Eye, Mitchell Brown
Seattle, Polestar Music Gallery, 1412 18th Avenue (at East Union), 8 pm, $7, all ages.
"With an ear for unsettling detail, Los Angeles's Solid Eye leave you suspended in a lurching, oozing, hallucinatory river of sound that unfolds with its own peculiar sense of internal logic. The members of this trio (Joseph Hammer, Rick Potts & Steve Thomsen) have each spent 25-plus years exploring various avenues of music coined by their 1970's collective the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS), as "avant-schmaltz". With such versatile instrumentation as Potts' hinge-necked guitar, electronically treated mystery objects & analog synthesizer, Hammer's real-time magnetic tape loops, and Thomsen's other-worldly sampler techniques, it certainly is tough to pin down exactly where Solid Eye will take us during any given performance. Each one is completely improvised yet partially dependent on the conditions of the space in which the sounds are contained. The lords of all things psychotropic recommended that the listener be physically comfortable and relaxed to properly receive this cerebral "cinema for the ears" experience.Mitchell Brown, also from Los Angeles, will start the evening off performing his "Let the Polyps Play" for various amplified objects and analog electronics. This piece was designed to encourage sound-induced solipsism, inspired by a particular few developmentally disabled children (out of many) Brown has worked with since 1995. Their reduced capability to interact with others, combined with an eccentric focus on detail, allows their acute senses to flourish internally. Brown's equally meditational sound art radio program Glossolalia on KXLU has recently reached the five-year mark, while his rotating sound collage collective Paramecial Wedding has in that time included LAFMS founders Joe Potts & Rick Potts, Joseph Hammer, Leticia Castaneda and Albert Ortega."
Friday, April 9th
Seattle Print Arts and Polestar Music Gallery presents
Artkoamia
Seattle, Polestar Music Gallery, 1412 18th Avenue (at East Union), 8 pm, $6.
"Seattle Print Arts in collaboration with Polestar Music Gallery presents an evening of visual and musical improvisation by visual artists Virginia Paquette and Suiren (aka Renko Ishida Dempster), and musicians/composers William O. Smith and Stuart Dempster. This artist collective, known as Artkoamia, was formed to explore the relationship between image and sound and to celebrate the process of improvisation. In this performance the artists will create visual improvisations in response to the musical conversations and gestures of the musicians, and vice versa. Improvisational painting and printmaking will, like the music, be created in the moment. While improvisation is customary in Jazz, public improvisation in the visual arts is unusual. With this performance, all of the artists take risks, thereby engaging the audience in the creative process."
Saturday, April 10th
Dead Science Yellow Swans, P.A.N.(w/Bill Horist, Noah Mickens, Annie Lewandowski, & Paul Rucker), In Museums, Goatmax1
Seattle, The Vera Project, 1916 4th Ave. (between Stewart & Virginia), 8 pm, $7, all ages.
"A big, interdisciplinary punk rock show feat. The first ever collaborative performance of Seattle's The Dead Science and Portland noise duo D. Yellow Swans. A large-scale performance by performance group P.A.N. accompanied by musicians Bill Horist, Noah Mickens, Annie Lewandowski, and Paul Rucker. Also, Portland's In Museum, featuring former members of polemic art-punks, and The Intima Goatmax1, the super-sparse musical visage of Seattle artists Susan Robb."Transpacific / Asahi
Seattle, The Hideaway (used to be the Sit N Spin)
"Transatlantic Iceflow started in 2001 as a meeting of Robert Henson (guitar) and Stuart McLeod (drums) who were playing in the experimental group SIL2K and Kevin Goldsmith (bass) who performs as Intonaromori. We wanted to take our ideas in the experimental scene and apply it to rock music, in particular the influence of the minimalists Part, Gorecki, Glass and Reich. What started as an ambient rock band began to get louder and heavier until we added fellow experimentalist Carl Farrow (guitar) of inBOIL infamy. To paraphrase the Rev. Stacey Lester: "Transpacific is like looking into the sky and you see this tiny twirling, flashing thing that's very shiny and pretty, and then you see that it's growing larger and larger, and you realize it's coming right for you, you jump out of the way, and it crashes into the ground, leaving a smoking crater in the earth, then you notice that the shiny twirly object is back in the sky, pretty and sparkly as ever."Frieze of Life
Seattle, Polestar Music Gallery, 1412 18th Avenue (at East Union), 8 pm, $6, all ages.
"Winner of the 2004 Earshot Golden Ear Award for Outside Jazz Group of the Year, Frieze of Life is a sextet that seeks to create a new improvisational language drawing on the diverse array of musical possibilities that comprise their individual tastes and influences. Their inspirations include the explorations of the Jimmy Giuffre - Paul Bley - Steve Swallow ensembles of the early 1960s, the jazz-based innovations of the AACM's Anthony Braxton and George Lewis, the harmonic language of Bela Bartok and Arnold Schoenberg, and the textural landscapes of Pierre Boulez and Luciano Berio. Through the shared experience of free improvisation and compositional maturity, Frieze of Life integrates all these elements into a coherent musical aesthetic.The musicians in Frieze of Life are some of the most innovative talents in the Pacific Northwest: Greg Sinibaldi (tenor sax/bass clarinet), Jay Roulston (trumpet), Chris Stover (trombone), Mark Taylor (alto sax), Geoff Harper (bass), and Byron Vannoy (drums)."
Earshot Jazz presents
William Parker Quartet
Seattle, Tractor Tavern, 5213 Ballard Ave, 8 pm, price unknown, $14-16, 21+.
"Noted New York improvising ensemble features Hamid Drake on drums, Rob Brown on sax, & Lewis Barnes on trumpet. Their "O'Neal's Porch" CD was NY Times top of 2001."
Monday, April 12th
Sound of the Brush presents
Mold
Seattle, Polestar Music Gallery, 1412 18th Ave (at East Union), 8:30 pm, donation, all ages.
"Mold is a young Seattle duo exploring the meeting of free jazz performance practices with the sound world of early electronic composition and tape music. It is performed on two Arp Odyssey analog synthesizers, and is freely improvised with a few minimal pre-determined guidelines. The results range from ambient soundscapes to all out noise assaults, slowly unfolding tonal melodies or the random clicks and bleeps of computer dialectic. Mold consists of long time collaborators Eric Yates and Cornish composition student Matthew Carlson. As always, the last set of the evening will open for audience members to join featured performers in spontaneous sound making."
Tuesday, April 13th
Paul Harding / Michael Bisio
Seattle, Capitol Hill Arts Center, 1621 12th Ave, 8 pm, $5, 21+.
"Paul is a wonderful poet and good friend. Over the years our performances, although rare, have brought me great joy. We will be performing works from his new book, Hot Mustard and Lay Me Down, (En Theos Press) as well as new stuff. In Paul's own words, ³I most recently have been completely engulfed in the literary pursuits that all my music lives on, makes and is born from. That thing between the written syllable and musical note is the Middlevoice of all Swing."
Wednesday, April 14th
New Digital Video and Computer Music from DXARTS
Seattle, Meany Theater, UW Campus, 8 pm, $5/$10."
"Electroacoustic music and video works by Bret Battey, Richard Karpen, Ewa Trebacz and others."
Thursday, April 15th
Phillip Greenlief, Tim Perkis / Tom Djll Duo
Seattle, Polestar Music Gallery, 1412 18th Avenue (at East Union), 8 pm, $7, all ages.
"Polestar is pleased to host an evening featuring three of the Bay Area's best creative players. Saxophonist and clarinetist Phillip Greenlief, about whom we hear nothing but raves, is currently focused on solo performance. His live set includes compositions written for him by Pauline Oliveros, Joelle Leandre, Roscoe Mitchell, and Frank Gratkowski. In addition to new works, recent performances have allowed Greenlief to develop his Deconstruction Meditations, an improvisational approach to the works of Thelonious Monk, Luciano Berio and Igor Stravinsky. The saxophonist performs with intellectual acuity, passion, and an ear for the developing language of the saxophone. This April 2004 West Coast solo tour celebrates the release of Greenlief's new solo CD on Evander Music.Since their spectacular debut on radio KZSU's infamous Day of Noise in October 2002, Tim Perkis (electronics) and Tom Djll (trumpets) have evolved a quietly brooding musical ecosystem of unrelenting intensity and kaleidoscopic darknesses. Muted cries, spasmodic rattles, and unnamable yearnings hover thickly in the air like a hive of mutant insects. Air-raid sirens of pop music shards glitter in the frostbite air, while a voice from deep inside a drainage ditch pleads for help from somebody, anybody."
Friday, April 16th
Project W w/ Toshi Makihara, Bill Horist
Seattle, Lo-Fi Performance Space, 429-B Eastlake ave, 9 PM, $6, 21+.
"Project W (Wally Shoup-sax, Brent Arnold-cello, Greg Campbell) will be joined by Philadelphia drummer extraordinaire, Toshi Makihara, who will be coming directly from a Japanese tour. Toshi is well known in Seattle for his amazing dexterity and zen-like humor which merges seamlessly with the convulsive beauty of Project W. Toshi, Brent and Wally have a Leo recording -CONFLUXES - forthcoming (in May), and Wally and Brent are celebrating their 10th anniversary as Project W. Brent Arnold is coming off a triumphant tour w/Modest Mouse, so this promises to be a very special evening. Bill Horist, Seattle's premier guitar soundmeister, will present an opening solo performance. Bill Horist 10PM. Project W w/Toshi Makihara 11PM.
Saturday, April 17th
Toshi Makihara solo, with duos & quartet with Elizabeth Falconer, Susie Kozawa & Tom Swafford
Seattle, Polestar Music Gallery, 1412 18th Avenue (at East Union), 8 pm, $8, all ages.
"Following his stunning solo performance last July, the marvelous Philadelphia-based percussionist Toshi Makihara returns to Polestar in duos and quartet with three of Seattle's finest creative musicians: Elizabeth Falconer (koto), Susie Kozawa (found-sound instruments), and Tom Swafford (violin). Using an extremely minimal percussion set consisting of an ordinary 14-inch snare drum (without snare) and a 12-inch splash cymbal, Makihara explores myriad sounds and improvisational sound-creating processes."
Sunday, April 18th
Prospettiva Plural XIII - trumpeting
Seattle, CoCA, 410 Dexter Ave N, 4 pm, $8/$5CoCA members, all ages.
"Featuring 3 30-minute solo trumpet performances by: Tom Djll (bay area), Ahamefule J. Oluo (montail creative music concern - seattle), Jay Roulston (seattle). Prospettiva Plural is a monthly series of music that presents diverse perspectives and approaches to performing on a single given instrument at each concert. Practitioners of improvised and composed music working from jazz, new music, and improvised music backgrounds are billed alongside each other, encouraging a dialogue between these areas of music-making. Prospettiva Plural takes place every third Sunday at CoCA. sponsored by CoCA, Earshot Jazz and made possible by funding from the City of Seattle office of Arts & Cultural Affairs."Earshot Jazz presents
J. A. Granelli & Mr. Lucky
Seattle, Tractor Tavern, 5213 Ballard Ave, 8 pm, price unknown, $12-22, 21+.
"Former Seattle bassist returns from New York in an Avant-Jazz/Blues Organ group with Brad Shepik and Andy Roth."The Acoustic Reign Project
Seattle, Saint Therese Church 3416 E. Marion St, 7 pm, $10 Suggested Donation, all ages.
"A benefit concert for St. Therese Parish, the Acoustic Reign Project, featuring Michael Bisio (acoustic bass) Brian Kent (saxophone) Jim Knodle (trumpet) Jack Gold (drums, African percussion), will perform two sets of improvisational jazz to raise money for this community's homeless shelter, school, and other programs. All proceeds will go to benefit the parish."
Monday, April 19th
Sound of the Brush presents
Gust Burns / Nathan Levine
Seattle, Polestar Music Gallery, 1412 18th Ave (at East Union), 8:30 pm, donation, all ages. "Recipe for a Duo. Take one avant hip hop piano player intent on creating the truly out shit and one alien double bass player masquerading as a lowly minstrel, mix thoroughly for one year (make sure to take nice long breaks) and Wha-La! A magical evening of out of this world avant r & b duets. DNM! As always, the last set of the evening will open for audience members to join featured performers in spontaneous sound making."Brooklyn Sax Quartet
Seattle, Triple Door, 216 Union St, 7:30 pm, $12, 21+.
"The Brooklyn Sax Quartet performs compositions by the groups co-leaders David Bindman and Fred Ho that unfold in episodes, that change on the spot, that draw on African and Asian influences: warrior music from Ghana, a fishing song from China. A band of improvisors, the BSQs music brings out the possibilities and ranges of the saxophones, melding the sounds of the teeming borough of Brooklyn. Bindman and Ho are joined by John OGallagher and Rudresh Mahanthappa."Jimmy Bennington's Special Trio
Seattle, On the House, 1205 E. Pike St, 8 pm, donation, all ages.
"No-Coast Wildman Jimmy Bennington joins two Seattle-based friends, Jim Knodle (Trumpet) Michael Bisio (Bass) for a night of trio music at On the House, Capitol Hill's congenial gallery/performance space. Bennington has two CD's in release-"Remembering Kobe" and "Midnight Choir". His music fearlessly ventures inside and outside, and serves to remind us that heart and mind are one and the same."
Tuesday, April 20th
Wally Shoup/Michael Bisio
Seattle, Capitol Hill Arts Center, 1621 12th Ave, 8 pm, $5, 21+.
"His textural, expressive art merges the sophisticated with the primitive in much the same way as his music" Garde-Rail Gallery. In recent and various times Wally and I both have been called the godfather, dean, and/or elder statesman of the Seattle avant-garde. Probably none of this is true and curiously enough only elder bothers me. We do share a long love and commitment to improvised music. Wally is a brilliant and heart-felt musician. I am honored to share this journey with him and invite you to do the same."
Seattle Research Institute New Research Lecture Series presents
Amos Latteier & Emily Hall
Seattle, Polestar Music Gallery, 1412 18th Avenue (at East Union), 7:30 pm, free/donation, all ages.
"Amos Latteier (interdisciplinary artist & machine builder, Portland) gives a slide lecture of his art tour of Eastern Europe. Emily Hall (art critic, Seattle) presents a detailed list of projects she would like to start. The Seattle Research Institute is a local collective of writers who publish small books and promote research-based art and thought. The New Research Lecture Series is hosted by Charles Mudede and Megan Purn. An informal discussion follows each lecture. For more information, please visit the SRI website at http://www.seattleresearchinstitute.org"
Friday, April 23rd
Ffej (solo) & with Tempered Steel & Special Fops
Seattle, Polestar Music Gallery, 1412 18th Avenue (at East Union), 8 pm, $6, all ages.
"Please join us for a very special evening featuring Ffej, the synthesizer player, songwriter, and multi-experimentalist who is one of the truly distinctive characters in Seattle creative music. As well as performing his own solo material, Ffej has provided sonic landscaping to projects as diverse as the circuit-bent onslaught of the Mutant Data Orchestra and the space rock of Little LuAnn. He is often involved with the endeavors of the SoniCabal, a local collective of experimental musicians. He is the organizer and host of the weekly weird music showcase Cognitive Dissidents, held every Wednesday at Seattle's Coffee Messiah."the Dead Science / Brent Arnold & the Spheres / the Papercuts / Black Japan
Seattle, the Hideaway, 2219 4th ave, 9 pm, $6, 21+.
"The Dead Science are amazing in case you haven't heard 'em... I've heard great things about the Papercuts and Black Japan... we (BA & the Spheres) have just returned from our West Coast tour with Modest Mouse and are in fine form... To Spring, we say "welcome."
Saturday April 24th
The Rashied Ali Quintet
Seattle, The Triple Door, 216 Union St, 7:30 pm & 10:00 pm, $20.
"The Rashied Ali Quintet features Rashied Ali on drums, Reggie Workman on bass, Ravi Coltrane on saxophone, Jumaane Smith on trumpet, and Andy Coe on guitar. Rashied Ali is making a rare Northwest appearance. He joined John Coltrane's band in 1965 (playing for a time in a two-drummer lineup with Elvin Jones), revolutionizing drumming in the process and making major contributions to the style of percussion known as free jazz. Rashied has also played with Sonny Rollins, Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane, Sonny Fortune, Albert Ayler, David Murray, McCoy Tyner, James ³Blood² Ulmer, and many others.
Reggie Workman is one of the great jazz bassists, having played with numerous legends including John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey, Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard and Herbie Hancock."François Houle & Jesse Zubot
Seattle, Polestar Music Gallery, 1412 18th Avenue (at East Union), 8 pm, $7, all ages.
"François Houle (clarinets, laptop) and Jesse Zubot (violin, laptop) have been performing together on the West Coast for several years. Strong from their respective projects (Au Coeur Du Litige, François Houle 5, Zubot & Dawson, Zubotta), the two have joined forces to perform highly engaging and intricate works that incorporate electronica, experimental electroacoustics, classical chamber music, improvisation, and folk music. The result is a fascinating web of intriguing, relentless textural soundscapes that stay clear of the usual pitfalls of musique actuelle."
Sunday, April 25th
Contact Microphone / Guerrilla Audio Workshop
Seattle, Polestar Music Gallery, 1412 18th Avenue (at East Union), 2 pm, $25, all ages.
"Back by popular demand - limited to 18 participants conducted by: John Bain, Steve Barsotti, David Knott & Toby Paddock. Sound is not just in the air: amplify the sound from deep within! Explore the construction and application of simple contact microphones at this afternoon-long workshop conducted by four of our favorite geeks from Seattle's creative music and sound art communities. Participants will be exposed to alternative methods of collecting audio through a presentation of various vibration sensors. They will also have the opportunity to construct, try out, and take home their very own contact microphone. Cost is $25. Register via email: peggy@polestarmusic.org"
Tuesday, April 27th
Michael Bisio Trio
Seattle, Capitol Hill Arts Center, 1621 12th Ave, 8 pm, $5, 21+.
"Gotta' say it; this is the band so nice I have to do it twice. The passion, fire, inventiveness and integrity these cats bring with them can not be put into words, they are extremely beautiful to hear/experience. I often hear the word treasure associated with Rob and Greg. I am a rich man." Rob Blakeslee(brass) Greg Campbell (percussion/French horn) Michael Bisio (bass).
Monktail Creative Music Concern
Seattle, Coffee Messiah, 1554 E Olive Way, 8 pm, free, all ages.
"The Monktail Creative Music Concern is collective of composers, musicians and artists who thrive on the atypical and exigent; the real weirdo stuff. The folks involved get together under different aliases contingent on their predilection within any situation that permits them to exist. Groups range from 2 to 10 players generally, and have free improvisation/spontaneous composition as their underlying principle. Curating these specialized ensembles presents the group members with the unique opportunity to improvise in many different contexts as a performance of one particular unit organically mutates into another, offering the listener the unparalleled, or at least amusing, experience of live, acoustic, sonic gymnastic hallucinations."Through April 4th
Suspension: Sonic Absorption
Seattle, ConWorks, 500 Boren Ave N, Thurs-Fri 4 pm-8 pm Sat-Sun 1 pm-8 pm, $5 suggested donation.
"Sound installations by Perri Lynch, Steven Vitiello, and 10 others. The works transport the viewer into unexpected aural landscapes from familiar observed surroundings."Through Apr 25th
Christian Marclay
Seattle, Seattle Art Museum Special Exhibition Gallery, 100 University St, hours: TuesdaySunday: 10 am5 pm and Thursday: 10 am9 pm, $7 suggested admission, free on March 4 and April 1.
"The relationship of sound, vision, music, art, and performance is the focus of Christian Marclay. This exhibition, an in-depth retrospective of the innovative artist and musician, follows Marclay's work from 1980 to the present and will be on view in SAM's Gates Gallery on the Second Floor. Organized by the UCLA Hammer Museum, the exhibition comprises over sixty works including Tape Fall (1989), the glass piece Drumsticks (2000), The Beatles (1989), and Recycled Records (1980-1986).Born in 1955 in California and raised in Geneva, Switzerland, Marclay studied sculpture at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston and at Cooper Union in New York. The range of Marclay's work encompasses musical compositions, sculpture, collage, multimedia installations and photography. As a musician, he was one of the first to use records and turntables as a medium for performance and improvisation [notwithstanding the proto-disco DJs of the early 1970s, the work of Pierre Henry and Pierre Shaeffer in the late 1940s, or the regrettably undocumented vinyl explorations of Paul Hindemith and Ernest Toch in the late 1920s - Ed.]. Marclay has also recorded extensively with musicians including the Kronos Quartet, Sonic Youth, Butch Morris, Arto Lindsay, John Zorn, and Fred Frith.
A central part of the exhibition is the critically acclaimed Video Quartet (2002). This large, four-screen DVD projection joins hundreds of old Hollywood film excerpts that feature actors and musicians making sound or playing instruments. The result is both a moving visual collage and a musical composition evoking hip-hop riffs, John Cage, and appropriation art."