Seattle Composers' Salon

Composers' Salon | November 9, 2019 An evening of music and discussion with Seattle composers: Carson Farley Garret Fisher Satchel Henneman Clement Reid Curated by Tom Baker Friday, March 1, 2019, 8 pm Chapel Performance Space 4649 Sunnyside Ave N, 4th Floor $5-15 suggested donation Twitter Website 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.

Composers' Salon | March 1, 2019 We're back! An evening of music and discussion with Seattle composers: Ha-Yang Kim Neil Welch Kaley Lane Eaton Blake Degraw Lily Shabbabi Liam Hardison Curated by Tom Baker Friday, March 1, 2019, 8 pm Chapel Performance Space 4649 Sunnyside Ave N, 4th Floor $5-15 suggested donation   Twitter Website 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.

Hello Friends of the Seattle Composers' Salon, I just wanted to put up this post for those who might visit this site... The Salon is taking a short hiatus, but will be back in 2019 with new events and some new ideas. We appreciate all of your support over the years, and we want to thank John Teske for his wonderful curation for the past few years. John is stepping down as curator, and we will be working on a new direction for the Salon in the coming months.

Jay Hamilton My Muse, & Equal Temperament , cello and pre-recorded dialogue These two pieces are part of a work The End and Then…? presented on June 23rd at Velocity Dance Center Seattle. The show is mostly dance with music/dialogues begins with a funeral ends with a murder….and some of it funny. This is a one person performance (7 parts) I will be dancing during in the other 5 pieces sections. soundand.com/ Gavin Borchert Mazurka , for piano Berceuse , for piano Peter Nelson-King The Magpie’s Shadow , for solo piano The Magpie’s Shadow takes its inspiration from a poem sequence of the same name by Yvor Winters. Inspired by a line by Rimbaud - O saisons, o chateaux! - each poem is a single line of six syllables, a form invented by Winters. 28 poems are arranged in three sections, and my work has 28 aphoristic pieces based on each poem and grouped in the same section plan and same order. The poems depict mysterious, symbolic scenes in nature, possibly a dream ...

An evening of music and discussion with Seattle composers: Jay Hamilton Gavin Borchert Peter Nelson-King Jeremiah Lawson Friday, May 4, 2018, 8 pm Chapel Performance Space 4649 Sunnyside Ave N, 4th Floor $5–15 suggested donation

Sarah Bassingthwaighte H20 , for soprano, flute, and guitar My piece is called H2O and will be performed by the Ecco Chamber Ensemble: Sarah Bassingthwaighte, flute; Stacey Mastrian, soprano; Mark Hilliard Wilson, guitar. The piece is written in graphic notation in the shape of a circle and the players rotate the circle as they go through 6 different forms of water: Snow, Droplets, Rain, Storm, Frost, and Ice. There is a lot of guided improvisation used by all of the players. It will be performed on April 21st at SOMA Towers as part of KING-FM’s Resonance Series. sarahbassingthwaighte.com Gavin Borchert Three songs Sagrada noche (4’) Cuando en el sol (4’) Una vez (7’) Gavin Borchert, piano; Michael Monnikendam, baritone Some time ago I discovered the song “Nacht und traume” by Schubert, which is now my favorite of all of his. Researching it I stumbled on a beautiful (anonymous) Spanish translation of Matthaus von Collin’s original German text, which itself seem...

An evening of music and discussion with Seattle composers: Sarah Bassingthwaighte Gavin Borchert Brooke Richey S. Eric Scribner Friday, March 2, 2018, 8 pm Chapel Performance Space 4649 Sunnyside Ave N, 4th Floor $5–15 suggested donation

Carson Farley Film Music , for piano, cello, and flute Film Music was composed for a commercial video project for sculptor R. Carlson. Originally scored for piano, string quartet, and synthesizer, this version has been arranged for piano, cello, and flute. Though I am usually a structural composer, this piece was written quickly and entirely from a visual perspective to conform to the visual content of the video project. It has a very simple surface texture with themes, transitions, and modulations from section to section. carsonicsproductions.com/ Aaron Keyt Music for Wallace , for piano While living in Somerville, MA for a couple years, we adopted an old, neglected spinet piano. We named the piano Wallace. I wrote an album of short, mostly simple pieces for Wallace, a few of which will be played at the Salon. Ian McKnight The Trees Awaken , for alto flute, cello, and piano This tone poem describes a sleeping forest that comes to life with dancing tree folk befo...

An evening of music and discussion with Seattle composers: Carson Farley Aaron Keyt Ian McKnight Patrick O'Keefe Friday, January 5, 2018, 8 pm Chapel Performance Space 4649 Sunnyside Ave N, 4th Floor $5–15 suggested donation

Clement Reid Realizations for Horn and Piano I had written “Realizations” for a friend’s son, Carlin Krause, and it began with the notion of seeing a particular circumstance a certain way when young, and arriving at a different point of view after the passage of time. I had tried a technique of adding attacks, one after another for subsequent phrases, starting with three, and eventually arriving at twenty five. Calvin Senter Colloquies: Moon, Rain, Sun, Wind , for solo guitar This is a work in progress to discover a serious conversation with a subject and guitar. I do this to create a tension between what I present and how it will become or relate to a subject such as the moon and then I go from there while playing my guitar to listen to what is there. Here is a link to a video of me playing in the Seattle Guitar Orchestra, an excerpt of Elegy for a church in Seattle in 2017: http://youtu.be/9J4RcJPLMac Nicole Truesdell Ghost Story , for piano four hands The germ for m...

An evening of music and discussion with Seattle composers: Clement Reid Nicole Truesdell Calvin Senter Mark Wilson Friday, November 3, 2017, 8 pm Chapel Performance Space 4649 Sunnyside Ave N, 4th Floor $5–15 suggested donation

Cole Bratcher Transit Maps , fixed media with projection The series of pieces are called Transit Maps Basically I’m collecting transit maps from around the world and converting them into some form or another of parameters for the music, mostly form and instrumentation. The two pieces presented on the salon will be “San Francisco BART” and “Copenhagen S-Train”. soundcloud.com/colebratcher Blake Degraw Diler , for strings One of my favorite ways to produce variation in live performance is through orchestrated failure: providing the musicians with a clearly-defined objective, and then making it as difficult as possible to reach that objective. The music that I personally want to hear lies in the struggle to find, even if the objective is never met. Diler is the latest in my exploration of this concept. A group of violinists and violists is fed a series of wide-ranging pitches through headphones. Each chooses a single string on their instrument and is tasked with matching th...

An evening of music and discussion with Seattle composers: Patrick O'Keefe S. Eric Scribner Blake Degraw Cole Bratcher Friday, September 1, 2017, 8 pm Chapel Performance Space 4649 Sunnyside Ave N, 4th Floor $5–15 suggested donation

Clement Reid Theater Piece #2 I’ve been putting a group of solo pieces for a program together, and the feeling of this piece is of a long journey, as shown in the first movement, “Narration”, where a particular note series seems to define a road or path. The general sound of the instrument seemed to suggest characterizations, especially in mvt. IV. “Side Shows”, which has a circus-like environment. The piece has been performed on Tacoma New Music and on a concert, At the Western Front , a US-Canada composer exchange program. Jay Hamilton Out Keith Eisenbrey Ghosting Doubles (second sighting) Earlier this year—having been dutifully plodding along, working out yet another overly ornate concept for yet another solo piano piece—I was brought up short by Amy Denio’s lovely solo accordion melody “Ghosting”. I immediately knew I wanted to work with it somehow. Amy graciously gave her permission (thank you thank you thank you!) so I ditched the overly ornate and wrote three se...

An evening of music and discussion with Seattle composers: Keith Eisenbrey Jay Hamilton Jessi Harvey Jeremiah Lawson Clement Reid Friday, July 7, 2017, 8 pm Chapel Performance Space 4649 Sunnyside Ave N, 4th Floor $5–15 suggested donation

Patrick O’Keefe Morning Stroll , a mostly tonal almost-rondo for saxophone quartet There is an emphasis on quartal intervals and harmonies, some indeterminate and/or poly-tonality, etc., but common practice has not been left very far behind. All in all, it’s pretty typical of my music. It’s not really programmatic, but you can picture someone with a very short attention span going for a walk—being distracted by anything and everything seen on the walk. The work will be performed by the Emerald City Saxophone Quartet: Barbara Hubers-Drake, soprano; Molly Pond, alto; Harold Rosenkrans, tenor; Jim Glass, baritone A computer generated version of this piece, along with other pieces of mine, are on Soundcloud . Jeremiah Lawson Guitar Sonata in A major In 2015 I composed a set of guitar duets I called the Zombie Sonata Rags , where I transformed my favorite themes from the guitar sonatas of Carulli, Diabelli, Giuliani, Matiegka and Sor into the core of rags. Naturally if sonat...

An evening of music and discussion with Seattle composers: Patrick O'Keefe Jeremiah Lawson John Kammerer and Rebekah Ko John Teske Friday, May 5, 2017, 8 pm Chapel Performance Space 4649 Sunnyside Ave N, 4th Floor $5–15 suggested donation

ComManD Thaumaturgy ComManD ensemble presents a composition of music and dance enhanced by technology. Accelerometer information is used to digitally shape and alter acoustic music. Movement, electronics, acoustics and improvisation blend together in both subtle and obvious ways in this work seeking to define it’s own poetics and artistic statement. It’s an attempt to present interdisciplinary work beyond the novelty of what the technology offers— greater than the sum of it’s parts—while simultaneously geeking out on new tech and ideas! S. Eric Scribner Tree and Stone The piece I’ll be playing at the salon is an audience-participation piece called Tree and Stone . Since the piece is aleatory, it would work with another piece at the same time, so I’ll play a preliminary version of The Sherványa Nocturnal Music (share-VAHN-yuh), which relates to my fantasy novel Tond . I’ll hand out the scores and instruments for Tree and Stone and I’ll play the other piece on the piano. Ton...

An evening of music and discussion with Seattle composers: Ivan Arteaga Sheila Bristow Blake Degraw S. Eric Scribner Friday, March 3, 2017, 8 pm Chapel Performance Space 4649 Sunnyside Ave N, 4th Floor $5–15 suggested donation

Tom Baker Three Movements 2017 marks 25 years since the first public performance of a piece of mine called "The Green Guitar" for solo guitar. In that span, I have written many works for solo guitar, including this piece to be performed on the Salon: "Three Movements". This piece is in 3 movements, each of which is a study of a different kind of physical movement: Slalom, Butoh, and R.E.M. It will be premiered by Satchell Henneman, a senior performance major at Cornish College of the Arts. Andrew Olmstead Spooky Action Taking inspiration from comics and musicals, draftsman Elk Paauw and composer Andrew Olmstead combine mediums to tell stories. All sound and art is produced by hand in real time. The combination of music and visual art is intended to communicate more effectively with the audience and in more precise ways. The pace of development is tightly scheduled, but there is some room for improvisation is the thematic material. Spooky Action's short s...