Seattle Composers' Salon

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...