This Week’s Wayward Music Shows

From Seattle’s Wayward Music:

Saturday, January 17, 2009
Seattle Improv Fest Benefit: 1-Minute Solos
8:00 PM; suggested donation $10 or more.

Seattle Improvised Music presents its annual benefit concert to raise funds for the 24th annual Seattle Improvised Music Festival. This year’s festival (February 13, 14, 15 and 20, 21, 22) will feature performers from France, Berlin, Beirut, the east and west coasts of the US, and Seattle. And this year’s fundraiser will again feature many, many Seattle area musicians, poets, and dancers performing one-minute solos. It’s a chance to hear a diverse spattering of local performers and contribute generously to the support the longest-running festival of free improvisation in the country.

Friday, January 16, 2009
Transport: MAD Trio
8:00 PM; $5 – $15 siding scale odnation at the door (WCF members attend one concert in the Transport Series free)

Washington Composers’ Forum’s ongoing Transport Series features MAD Trio, an ensemble that stretches the line between composed and improvised music. Alan Lechusza (multi-woodwinds), Christopher Adler (piano), and Colin McCallister (electric guitar), present high energy performances. The trio offers compositions from Alan Lechusza and selections from his multi-media work TRAPA and the symphonic tone poem The Birth of a Butterfly.

Thursday, January 15, 2009
Is That Jazz?: Krispen Hartung + RadioSondeg
8:00 PM; $15 suggested donation.

The Seattle Composers’ Salon announces the first annual IS THAT JAZZ? festival, taking place on three Thursday nights, January 8, 15, and 22. Local and national acts come together for six inspired and compelling sets. The festival also invites artists and audience members to explore the underlying question: Is that jazz? Meet the artists and discuss the music at informal receptions after each concert, and participate in an on-line discussion blog to begin a conversation about music and art in the twenty-first century.

Krispen Hartung (Boise)
Krispen Hartung focuses on the tonal character of the guitar as a basis for random electro-acoustic manipulation via Reaktor, a wide variety of VST effects, and Cycling 74’s MAX/msp. For this performance, he will play a new custom instrument built by San Juan Island luthier Bobby Warren. It’s a one-of-a-kind miniature jazz archtop guitar, only 29″ long but full of amazing tone and punch.

RadioSonde (Seattle)
This company of five dancers and four improvising musicians premiered their first work INVERT to rave reviews last January at the Chapel. Dancer Beth Graczyk and composer Tom Baker have constructed a new score for this event, a structured dance/music improvisation to enliven the visual, sonic and physical space of the Chapel.