The good ship Tentacle is experiencing rough seas at the moment. We'll be back in touch with shore as soon as the storm is over.
For adventurous music in the Seattle area, check out the marvelous Cog-Dis Calendar.
ALL artists! I am very, VERY happy to announce that IMPROVIJAZZATION NATION is ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS again. I have been granted a (possibly long-term) stay of execution for my trip to Iraq. I will still be traveling all over the U.S., so new issues may be a little less timely, but (as always), we will review your materials as soon as possible after we receive them. Please look at the guidelines for submisson" MUSIC: All formats accepted. Snail mail to: Zzaj Productions, c/o
Dick Metcalf, 5308 65th Avenue, Lacey, WA 98513 The only criteria for music you submit is that it MUST HAVE high performance energy... if you submit lacklustre material, it will be reviewed accordingly.
François Houle, Polestar Music Gallery, and Washington Composers Forum announce a call for scores. Scores are requested for performance by François Houle at Polestar Music Gallery in Seattle on Sunday, October 17, 2004. The scores will be adjudicated by the performer. Submissions are due September 1, 2004. Composers may submit scores for clarinet solo. Sunmissions are open to the general public. Duration should be from 5-7 minutes. Electroacoustic works are welcome, but composers should make arrangements for any equipment required. Please inquire for specifics. For more information contact Washington Composers Forum at (206) 985-7003 or orange@seanet.com or see www.washingtoncomposers.org.
Starting in June 2004, Cognitive Dissidents will be
changing from a weekly to a monthly series. This
famous presentation of experimental music combined
with caffeine and religious iconography will be now
limited to the SECOND WEDNESDAY of every month. Over
the past three years, Cog-Dis has been proud to
feature a diverse array of outstanding talent and
creativity. http://cog-dis.org will remain online.
All are still encouraged to attend the now
even-four-times-more exciting shows at the Coffee
Messiah, again, every 2nd Wednesday of the month.
Full Pass prices for the 10th Annual Olympia Experimental Music Festival have now been set!
They are available on a reservation basis for a mere $23. That's 73 cents per act! To make your reservation by phone call festival organizer Arrington at (360) 402-6263 or e-mail him: relijun@hotmail.com
The ensemble Sorelle and Washington Composers Forum announce a call for scores. Scores are requested for performances by Sorelle throughout their season. Sorelle will perform a program in June 2004.
Eligibility
The call is open to members of Washington Composers Forum. Membership must be established by the time of the submission. Annual professional membership is $40, and $30 for students and seniors. Checks should be made payable to Washington Composers Forum. Membership forms may be obtained by contacting WCF at the address below or at the web address www.washingtoncomposers.org.
Submission
Composers may submit scores for soprano, flute, piano and cello with a duration of 8-10 minutes in length that have not been premiered. Only scores which use all of the ensemble members will be considered. Composers must have written permission for any text or translation to be used, performed, and reproduced in the concert program.
Submission packets must contain the following:
1) One performing set of score and parts. Duration, page numbers, and instrumentation must be clearly indicated. Scores and parts must be marked with a pseudonym.
2) Contact information envelope containing name, address, phone number, e-mail address, and pseudonym. If you wish to have your materials returned, please also include a self-addressed stamped envelope.
Submissions must be received by May 1, 2004 (not postmark dates). The results will be announced ten days after this deadline.
For more information contact Washington Composers Forum at (206) 789-3628 or orange@seanet.com. Send submissions to:
Sorelle Submissions
Washington Composers Forum
7352 16th Avenue NE
Seattle, WA 98115
From our kissin' cousins up North: "Oscillations has a new site offering a comprehensive online source of new music events in Vancouver, BC. You may already be familiar with Oscillations as an email newsletter providing event listings for the new music community in Vancouver. The Oscillations website is intended to enhance and expand this service by providing a searchable calendar which can be accessed at any time to keep you and the public up-to-date on new music happenings. New music artists, organizations, and presenters can post listings free of charge, as long as they meet listing guidelines. See http:// www.oscillations.ca To subscribe to the Oscillations list and receive electronic notification of upcoming new music events in Vancouver, BC send an email to majordomo@oscillations.cawith "subscribe oscillations" (no quotes) in the body of your email message.
Improvisational noise duo Noancer (Jeff Mueller and Casey Jones) seek Butoh dance artists for upcoming Seattle area performances. For Noancer bio, decriptions, and mp3's visit www.xaxiswye.com/noancer.htm or contact noancer@xaxiswye.com.
Now running over two and a half years, Cognitive Dissidents is still proud to be featuring great performances of all brands of creative music. As many of you already know, it steadfastly takes place every Wednesday at the Coffee Messiah on Capital hill. It has a reputation for being a great space for putting on a cozy, intimate show. It's also a great opportunity for newcomers to showcase their work as well as established artists to indulge in rare projects and collaborations. Many dates are still open in February and beyond. ll interested in performing can e-mail Ffej at ffej@ffejsite.com. Demos can be dropped off at the Coffee Messiah itself (1554 E Olive Way) as long as the material is clearly marked as being for Ffej. http://www.cog-dis.org
Iain Edgewater, longtime host of KBCS 91.3 FM new music program Prisms recently announced the program's final broadcast from midnight December 17 to 2 am December 18. In an email Edgewater commented, "I won't forget what I've been privileged to enjoy in the making of Prisms. Incredible music; great feedback from the community and from around the world; the opportunity to feel like I played a small part in the amazing evolutionary current of music and sonic arts, by recapitulating and juxtaposing various portions of it in public space. I have enjoyed this more than you could possibly guess."
Those of us aboard the Tentacle know firsthand the rewards and occasional pitfalls of promulgating new music and sound art. We extend a hearty tip o' the Tentacle to Iain for his dedication to intrepid Seattle-area listeners by broadcasting the adventurous music of our time.
Foz Montoya seeks calendar listings for the Holiday/New Year/New Season issue of "411:Improvisation As An Aspect Of Community." Send listings for Portland area performances (date, artist moniker & relevant short description, venue location, time and price) to carnaljazz@yahoo.com.
The 19th Seattle Improvised Music Festival will take place from February 11 to 22, 2004. This year the festival will present more than two dozen leading improvisers from throughout the U.S. and Europe, many in their first-ever appearances in Seattle. Performers include Pauline Oliveros, Dave Tucker, William Roper, Sean Meehan, Angelina Baldoz, BNSF, Ivar Grydeland, Ingar Zach, Annie Lewandowski, Eveline Muller-Graf, Paul Hession, Wally Shoup, Mike Bisio, Tim Perkis, Kelvin Pittman, John Krausbauer, Kathleen Keogh, Mark Kaylor, Leif Sundstrom, Bryan Eubanks, Paul Rucker, Tari Nelson-Zagar, Tom Swafford, Les Poules, and others. New for this year's festival, two workshops on improvised music will be presented, free and open to the public.
The festival will take place at Consolidated Works, Velocity Dance Studio, Cornish College of the Arts, Lo-Fi Gallery, Jack Straw, and CoCA (Center on Contemporary Art).
From the Tentacle mailbox: "LO_FI performance gallery is currently booking forward thinking artists/musicians for life altering future performances. LO_FI is located in downtown Seattle at 429 Eastlake Ave E, on the corner of Eastlake and Republican. The current hours with regard to shows are Thursday through Saturday 9 pm - 2 am (adding Wednesday shortly).
LO_FI is a combination gallery and music venue with a tavern license allowing it to sell sake, beer, and wine (all shows 21+). LO_FI's booking criteria is not genre specific, however it aims to retain a forward thinking, conscious, and eclectic line up with a focus on unique, solid shows. A plethora of information awaits at www.lofiseattle.org. Booking contact is Michael Leone, leone@lofiseattle.org.
Please send demo/promo info to : LO_FI performance gallery c/o marks art, attn: booking 429B Eastlake Ave E Seattle, WA 98109"
Those aboard the Tentacle wish to extend a hearty tip o' the Tentacle to DeepSea Diver Ben Larson, who has recently set sail for balmier waters. Ben wasinstrumental in revising the Tentacle website and steadfastly fashioned the Tmail week after week for the last year. We'll miss his input and fresh ideas!
"We're starting to put the next Big Sur Experimental Music Festival together, and are seeking unusual improvising musicians (avant garde, noise, "ambient", free-jazz & "other") who want to collaborate with folks they might not know yet. The festival is the first 2 days of Memorial Day weekend (May 29 & May 30, 2004). As the title suggests, it's in Big Sur at the historical Henry Miller Memorial Library, http://www.henrymiller.org/ nestled in a redwood lined canyon, a beautiful coastal location about 4 hours south of San Francisco.
This will be the 5th year of the Big Sur Experimental Music Festival, and the second year it's presented in a Sound/Shift format. Sound/Shift, the idea of Baltimore music organizer John Berndt, brings together huge amounts of musicians (70+) to contribute to 7 hour improvisations forming a single "piece" (or a subset of a larger piece that never ends. We're seeking musicians who will be conscious of the ongoing flow of the overall collective composition, entrances and exits, etc. Each musician plays for approximately 40 minutes, sharing the stage with 3-5 others. Every 10 minutes, a shift begins and ends. So as each person performs, her collaborators gradually get replaced. The result is an unpredictable exercise in cooperation & spontaneity.
This festival is an artist-run/grass-roots DIY effort. It IS NOT a funded festival. We can't pay musicians. (With the number of performers, the share would amount to about 50 cents per person.) We don't offer hotel accommodations, car rides, and there isn't an acoustic piano. This will be a benefit for the Henry Miller Memorial Library."
For more details see http://www.paxrecordings.com/News_events/soundshiftbigsur.html
"Financial/aritistic/personal situations are bringing the much loved, improvisation dedicated space at 6th and Oak to a close in the very near future. However much we would love to keep this space, it is at this point out of reach for our small, money-strangled collective.
But what some of us would like to see is this beautiful space become of service to the entire fringe art community. There are many small art groups in Portland and a centralized performance space seems like a good idea.
If you haven't been to 411, it is a large (2200 sq. foot) space, wood floors, daylite, kind of a weird design (a pole in the middle sort of puts a kink in certain performances) amazing acoustics. It is great for music, dance, films, lectures, gatherings, theater, and I don't know what else.
Contact bryaneubanks@411collective.org and I can give you more details, but essentially what I am proposing is a larger, more comprehensive use of the space and a chance for "us" to all have a home in Portland."
"The Seattle Composers' Salon announces its Commissioning Project #1. We invite all composers from King County (no age limit) to submit representative scores for consideration. The composer of the selected entry will be commissioned to compose a new work of 8-12 minutes in length for violin and piano. The commission fee will be $2000 and will include the premiere performance of the work. In October of 2004 the Seattle Composers' Salon will produce a concert by pianist Ann Cummings and violinist Eric Rynes, who will play a program of solos and duets featuring Seattle area composers. This concert will feature the newly commissioned piece by the composer chosen from this call for scores. Submission Deadline: November 15, 2003 See http://www.composersalon.com/call.htm for more details."
It is with a heavy heart that the Tentacle reports that Anomalous Records, a Seattle-basedinternational purveyor of unusual, intriguing, and otherwise hard-to-find and indeed anomalousmusics, is closing up shop.In a farewell email, proprietor Eric Lanzillotta wrote, "Basically the stress of doing this hastaken its toll. I have realized that I need to stop now while I can, and not just completelyburn myself out." Additionally, Lanzillotta suggests, "if you want it, buy it now before we runout. Please get any orders in before August 25th, as we will likely spend the last week ofAugust packing everything up to put in storage."According to Lanzillotta, the label will continue. Releases on deck include work by AMM, AndrewDeutsch Ellen Fullman, RLW, and Robert Millis' SE Asia field recordings. The Anomalous websiteat http://www.anomalousrecords.com will continue. Those of us aboard the Tentacle extend ahearty tip 'o the tentacle to Eric and Rachael and wish them well along with time for some R&R.
This just in from Polestar Music Gallery's Henry Hughes & Peggy Sartoris-Belaqua, proprietors of Seattle's lone gallery exclusively devoted to adventurous sound art have issued a fundraising appeal for a PA. Hughes and Sartoris-Belaqua write "For over a year now, Polestar has borrowed or rented PA equipment for the music and sound art that requires it. We've presented electronic and electroacoustic artists like Japan's Otomo Yoshihide and England's Hugh Davies; the luscious noise of Portland's Daniel Menche; German laptoppers KMH; and the list goes on. We must have sound reinforcement to make shows like this happen. In addition to the expense of renting, the time required to set up and take down the equipment has become a burden. Now that we've experimented enough to know what will work in the space, it's time to purchase a PA system. We need to raise well over $3,000 to do it, and we'd like to get it installed very soon - before our Fall Season commences on September 3. Please consider mailing or dropping off a generous donation to the not-for-profit Polestar so we can make this happen. If your gift needs to be tax deductible, you can write your check to Jack Straw Productions; make sure to note that it's for Polestar in the memo section of your check. We thank Jack Straw for serving Polestar as fiscal agent for this funding campaign."
Polestar Music Gallery 1412 18th Avenue (at East Union) Seattle WA 98122
The Tunnel, heard Friday nights 10 pm to 1 am on KSER 90.7 FM, seeks local noise and performers. The show, co-hosted by Robert Emery and Mair Atkinson, airs a variety of electronic music ranging from techno, downtempo, and drum n'bass to more Tentacle-friendly sound collage and experimental soundscapes. KSER is heard in North Seattle and throughout much of Snohomish County. Contact emeryrs@ciunetwork.com, or 425 257-9222 for more information.
It is with a heavy heart that the Tentacle reports the passing of bassist and composer Matthew Sperry. On thursday morning June 5, while riding his bicycle to work, he was hit and killed by a commercial truck on the Oakland and Emeryville border. In addition to being an excellent free improvising musician, Sperry was also a co-organizer of the long-running Other Sounds Series from 1996 to 1999. Deeply enmeshed in the Seattle adventurous music community from 1991 to 1999, Sperry is treasured not only for his profound musical contributions to ...kagel..., Brainstun, Ellen Fullman's Long String Instrument, The Black Cat Orchestra, Seattle Experimental Opera, Gamelan Pacifica, Seattle Creative Orchestra, and iv bricoleurs, but also for his sunny, welcoming personality. He is survived by his wife of three years, Stacia Biltekoff, and their 2-year-old daughter.
Seattle movement artist Sheri Cohen is organizing an informal memorial. She writes, "I plan to go to Volunteer Park in Seattle at 9:30 pm on Tuesday, June 10 to remember Matt. I invite all who would like to join me to meet at the 'donut' and we can go off to a quiet place together. I was thinking of some silent time and some time to share stories about Matt. If you would like to participate some other way (with music, for example), please feel free."
Fresh from organizing a successful show featuring Evan Parker, Paul Lytton, and Alex von Schlippenbach, the 411 Collective is a new space for the free improvising community in Portland. Bryan Eubanks, one of ten co-founders of the collective, descibes it as "...an attempt to solidfy this constantly evolving and mutating group of people who use this method we call Free Improvisation in their work whether it be sound based or not. Our group includes performance artists, instrumentalists and dancers. It is not an attempt to create a scene, but an attempt to create a space devoted to this method and foster community. We will do peformances, workshops, and also use the space for open sessions and collective private sessions. We are working towards providing a resource center for improvisors and like minded artists which will include: printing and computer services, screenprinting/production capabilities, and a lending library of Improvised and New Music. Plus the space will be available to traveling and local improvisors for performance, they should contact booking@411collective.org." A calendar and FAQ can be found at www.411collective.org; the space is located at 411 SE 6th in Portland.
One of the key instigators of Northwest out music in the 1960s 70 and 80s, Al Hood, died of lung cancer recently. We aboard the Tentacle remain grateful for his pioneering efforts. An excellent obituary can be read at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/obituaries/134686080_hoodobit29m.html
(Seattle) As of May 1, Wall of Sound will relocate Capitol Hill to 315 E. Pine Street, a few doors east of Bauhaus Café. After 13 years at 2nd and Bell, the venerable shop was forced to move. Wall of Sound and Anomalous Records are Seattle's chief purveyors of local and international adventurous contemporary and experimental music, so those aboard the Tentacle are pleased that "The Wall" will continue in a new location.
Josh Ronsen, sound artist and co-editor of ND magazine, has embarked on the Pierre Boulez Project. Years ago, French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez wrote that "All art of the past must be destroyed." Before and since writing that statement, Boulez has made a living in presenting many art works of the past, from Handel to Beethoven to Wagner to Stravinsky. In his project, Josh is collecting recordings of Boulez's work as a composer and a conductor. Once he has assembled a sufficient number of recordings, books, and scores, they will be destroyed through various means in a performance creating a new work of art of the Present. You may submit any unwanted Boulez recordings for this project. Josh will duly credit all submissions on his web site and as well as in the programs and final documentation of the project. Donation may be anonymous, at the donor's option. See http://home.flash.net/~jronsen/boulez.html for more information.