Seattle’s new chamber music series, Kin of the Moon, debuts November 18th at its spiritual home, the Chapel Performance Space, as part of the Wayward Music Series. Composer/vocalist Kaley Lane Eaton, flutist Leanna Keith, and violist Heather Bentley perform an innovative program of new electroacoustic and acoustic music that transcends genre and classification. Featuring Pulitzer-prize finalist Kate Soper’s Only the Words Themselves Mean What They Say, Eaton, Keith, and Bentley’s collaborative electroacoustic improvisation Atmokinesis, and new works from Eaton and others, this program provides a portal into the daring, cutting-edge work of Seattle new music’s iconoclastic women.

Kin of the Moon is an improvisation-centric chamber music series incubated in Seattle's rich musical scene. Headed by violist/improviser/composer Heather Bentley, vocalist/composer Kaley Lane Eaton and flutist/improviser Leanna Keith, the group explores sonic rituals, promotes cross-pollination of genres, emphasizes the communicative power of specific performance locales and celebrates the creativity that multiplies itself through the collaboration of performers and composers. The artists of Kin of the Moon devote their lives to reaching higher vibrational levels through sound creation.
Donation $5 - $15 sliding scale

My fabulous people, Beth Fleenor, songstress, manipulator of electrons and clarinets, and Jessica Lurie, flutist, saxophonist, composer, visionary, and I are putting on a Slingshot at Rhythm & Rye in Olympia - and we'll be joined by Rene Hart and Bill Horist - can't wait.

More incredible music from the legendary Jim Knapp. With my Scrape buddies at the Good Shepherd Center at 8 pm. Chérie sings, and Mark will hold forth on alto sax.
https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=scrape%20with%20ch%C3%A9rie%20hughes%20voice%20mark%20taylor%20alto%20saxophone

Last time Slingshot played the Royal Room I just about busted my face from grinning ear to ear. Some of my favorite musicians in my favorite music venue. Love. With Wayne Horvitz, Greg Campbell and Sam Boshnack.

In June I developed a piece for viola and SuperCollider with her awesomeness, Dr Shizzle, aka Kaley Eaton. Come take a trip through the elements and chakras and leaving seeing out of your third eye!

'I'm happy to be playing Beethoven's Opus 18, No. 4 quartet with Brittany Boulding, Kwan Bin Park and HaeYoon Shin over in Luther Burbank Park in Mercer Island. If I get a gig playing #5 and #6 I will have played all six opus 18s this summer!
http://www.russianchambermusic.org/2017/02/14/concert-in-the-park/

Last gig of the summer, also wonderful: playing with improvising hornist Tom Varner at the Chapel Performance Space. Also featuring Paul Kikuchi and Doug Haire. That waning late August light is so pretty coming in those Chapel windows, too.

May 12, 8 pm at the Good Shepherd Center
Microtonal music by brilliant Bay Area composer Zachary James Watkins. Featuring his string quartet with Tari Nelson-Zagar and Austin Larkin, violin, and Darth Nielson, bass.

May 13, 8 pm at the Good Shepherd Center
Stunning music of Lou Harrison with Gamelan Pacifica, directed by Jarrad Powell, and the Pacific Rims Percussion Quartet. Featuring the gorgeous Threnody for Carlos Chavez for viola and gamelan, and the Double Concerto for Violin and Cello and gamelan. With Maria Scherer Wilson, cello.

May 19 - 21
Northwest Sinfonietta with Eric Jacobsen and Gabriel Kahane. With the Seattle Choral Company directed by Freddie Coleman
Incredible program of the Mozart Requiem paired with
Kahane's song cycle "Crane Palimpsest" with words by Kahane and Hart Crane.

June 2, 8 pm at the Good Shepherd Center
Premiere of the stunning vocalist/composer Kaley Lane Eaton's electroacoustic opera hommage to her great grandmother Lily who fled Europe at the eve of WW1 and traveled to Everett by train, alone, to begin a new life. With my good friend Karin Stevens dancing. Performers are Gwen Franz, viola, Steve Treseler, sax, clarinet, Carol Levin, harp, Wei Yang, piano and Kaley Lane Eaton, vocals and electronics.

June 6, 7:30 pm at the Gesa Powerhouse Theatre, Walla Walla
I'm thrilled to be performing Ching-chu Hu's "Spheres of Influence" at the
Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival along with my viola buddy Timothy Christie!

June 21, 7:30 pm at Town Hall Seattle
New string orchestra music with director/cellist Joshua Roman and members of the Seattle Youth Symphony plus mentors. We'll perform music of Caroline Shaw as well as the premiere of Gregg Kallor's new jazz-influenced work.

I think for many of us this last season has been very difficult. I am just now beginning to recover my enthusiasm for tending the garden of my website. Rather than create detailed posts on all the wonderful projects and collaborations that I've been so fortunate to work on, I will list some highlights from the last ten or so months. If nothing else, I'll have a record for myself!

June 28, 2016 -- my first solo show with my looper at Spite House, thanks to a kind invitation from Bill Monto of the Spite House House Band. This was easily some of the most fun I've ever had

July 30, 2016 -- Secret Forest Show in Ravenna Park with original music by Neil Welch and John Teske. Everyone hiked into a forest glade and sat in trees and on rocks. There was a pair of violinists making birdsong off in the branches.

October 28, 2016 -- Renee Baker at the Chapel Performance Space! One of the greatest things that happened this year was getting to know Renee Baker, first by skype and then in person at this fantastic improvised show she led with so many great Seattle musicians like Beth Fleenor and James Falzone, Cliff Kimbrel-Dunn, Gretchen Yanover, Greg Campbell, Sam Boshnack and many others. I feel like Renee is the viola mentor I never had, and the creativity mentor I so need.

January 20 and 21, 2017 -- Universal Language Project featuring the music of Chris Stover, composer and trombonist from Seattle, now living in NYC till soon, when he takes a new teaching job in Arizona. This was a glorious ensemble with Brian Chin, trumpet, who directs ULP,  Ben Thomas on vibes and bandoneon, Greg Campbell on percussion and horn, Paul Gabrielson on bass and Steve Treseler on saxophone and clarinet. I got to meet and perform with the beautiful vocalist Biddy Healey. Chris' music is deeply influenced by the time and research he's done on Brazilian music. Can't wait to play this stuff again.

January 27, 2017 -- Scrape at Cornish. We've been together a number of years now and this was a wonderful synopsis of much of the music we've played. Cornish honored Jim Knapp's legacy of decades of teaching, performing and composing and it was an absolutely lovely show. Gregg Belisle-Chi returned from NYC to play with us again.

February 2 and 4, 2017 -- Improvised Music Festival at the Chapel. Thank you to Steve Peters (for doing so much for all of us), but in this case for inviting me to play with so many extraordinary musicians. The incredible pianist Robin Holcomb and flutist Nicole Mitchell were my trio partners the first night, and I had a surprise invitation to join Brian Chin, Michaud Savage and Bonnie Whiting for a second group. On the Saturday concert, Bonnie, Catherine Lee and Lisa Cay Miller and I had a really memorable quartet, followed by a group with Steve Barsotti, playing homemade instruments and Douglas Ewart on woodwinds and homemade tops, with the wonderful Lori Goldston, cellist.

February 18 and 19, 2017 -- North Corner Chamber Orchestra (NOCCO). I think a lot of our hearts belong to NOCCO. It has been a fantastic season, and this particular concert was a big one for me as I got to know and work with Davida Ingram, Seattle genius conceptual artist and also with Hanna Benn, the exquisite composer who created a major new orchestral work that we premiered.Called "Sankofa", it is a love letter to her own identity as a biracial woman in America. The concert, called RESONANCE, featured music by Black American composers. We played at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute and at the New Holly Gathering Hall, both new venues for us.

March 10, 11, 12, 2017 -- Aldo López-Gavilán, pianist and composer from Havana, with the Northwest Sinfonietta. I love playing and learning more about Cuban music. Aldo was a joy to work with, his music is infectiously wonderful, and I got to finally meet and play with drummer Steve Korn. And my rhythm always improves when I play Cuban music. Great week.

March 31, April 1 and 2, 2017 -- Sinfonietta again, Art for Art's Sake program with David Lockington, Spectrum Dance Theater and the Tacoma Glass Museum. David asked me to write a piece and Sinfonietta premiered it! Called "Hot Shop", it's scored for flute and piccolo, clarinet, bassoon, two horns, harp, percussion and strings. It was super fun to write and the most gratifying thing was that the musicians liked playing it. My piece wasn't choreographed but the rest of the program was and the dancers were so vivid.

April 8 and 9, 2017 -- NOCCO again, with my dear friend Sean Osborn's major new piece "Concerto for Chamber Orchestra". I am so proud of NOCCO for bringing these two new pieces into the repertoire (also Hanna Benn's Sankofa). Sean's Concerto is compelling, virtuosic and deeply satisfying to perform. We played the hilarious Haydn Symphony No. 60 with the winds hamming it up behind us, and Ben Hausmann played the pants off the Rossini La scala di seta overture.

Coming up, I'm looking forward to Jarrad Powell's Gamelan and Lou Harrison's birthday (5/13 at the Chapel), Kaley Lane-Eaton's DMA project Lily (5/2 at the Chapel), Gabriel Kahane's Crane Palimpsest with Sinfonietta (5/19-21),  and Joshua Roman's Town Music at Town Hall on June 21st, hopefully ushering in summer for real.

Life is good. Also, I'm working on a new album "what Venus told me..." with Steve Layton. It is sounding good.

NOCCO will head across Lake Washington to perform at SOMA Tower's gorgeous new concert hall, Resonance. In the heart of downtown Bellevue, this hall was designed for intimate chamber music gatherings. There's a spiffy Sichaun restaurant, La Bu La, immediately next door, and you can enjoy a glass of wine at cabaret style seating. We'll play Handel, Milhaud and Mozart - definitely a fun night out! Tickets and details here

More fascinating music from the programming geniuses Julia Tai and Jéremy Jolley. This time we're visiting the land of spectral music. "For its season finale, Seattle Modern Orchestra will host composer and Rome Prize winner Anthony Cheung in residency for the West Coast Premiere of his 2011 piece, Discrete Infinity. The piece, borrowing its title from Noam Chomsky’s The Architecture of Language, explores the limitless possibilities of expression with a finite material such as language. Also on the program will be a classic of Spectralism, Gérard Grisey’s Periodes, and a little-known work by Canadian composer Claude Vivier titled Samarkand, in which he continues to work with melodies while exploring harmonies built on Spectralist thinking." At the Chapel Performance Space. Tickets and details here

On May 15th, my dear friend Philippe and I had the distinct honor and pleasure to curate at Racer Sessions at Cafe Racer, thanks to a lovely invitation from Table and Chairs member Neil Welch. We've been improvising together for over twenty years and it was wonderful to offer our living room music in public. Here's what I wrote for the Racer Sessions website:

"Hi Racer Sessions!

I am so honored to be curating this week. Thank you, Neil. As many of you know, I am from the world of classical music, and I started improvising as a way of healing from the abusiveness of the classical profession. This was back in the 90’s. The one person in the world who most encouraged me and also got me my very first non-classical gig at a cafe in Berkeley is my dear friend Philippe Lavoipierre. When I was trying to get out of the written-note box, Philippe would sit and play standards with me and even marvel at my note-reading chops. Which of course seemed ridiculous to me because reading notes is so easy, right?? I have always been stunned by his ability to play for hours on end in complete sentences and paragraphs. We have an ongoing conversation (in words) about music, and when we find ourselves in the same geography, we play, and there isn’t a language barrier. Philippe lives in Barcelona and is often sailing any of the seven seas but Sunday, May 15 he is in Seattle and we will play our jam at Cafe Racer. He’s from jazz, I’m from classical. He’s an electric guitarist, I’m an acoustic violist. He’s a world traveler, I’m a homebody. When we play together, it just clicks and it’s like we found our mutual home planet. As much as anything, this session is about friendship, and the way love makes our music lives work out, because there can be a lot more thin than thick.

In the responding improvisations, I simply encourage everyone to appreciate what an incredible community we have here, because Racer Sessionistas are so aware of the rare beauty of true listening."

Northwest Sinfonietta played the extremely cool Ravel Piano Concerto in G with this phenomenal and very friendly pianist, Lise de la Salle. The first half was all Ravel, with his Mother Goose Suite opening. It was like being in a dream. Then we played Richard Strauss's theater piece Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, in which our concertmaster Brittany Boulding could be heard absolutely killing it.

All good things must come to an end...for now. This concert was definitely the highpoint of our 4 year project exploring the 15 Shostakovich Quartets and making new friends. We'll circle back in January 2017 with our collaborative marathon with Victoria BC's Lafayette String Quartet. Mark your calendars for Jan. 9 - 14 as we make our way through the whole cycle!

In which I and four of my favorite Seattle musicians learned incredible chamber music by Wayne Horvitz (These Hills of Glory for Quartet and Improviser, featuring Beth Fleenor on clarinet), Michael Owcharuk (String Quartet No. 1) and Nate Omdal...and then the wondrous Karin Stevens choreographed a full evening of dance with her stunning ensemble of women. Love the Seattle geniuses...

She writes this:

"An evening of dance and live music ventures into personal and feminist injustices of the earth and the female body, with original compositions by Michael Owcharuk, Nate Omdal and internationally-recognized, Wayne Horvitz.

Full of turbulent exchanges, (re) MOVE: (re) TURN pulls from thousands of years of scientific, philosophical and spiritual writing on connections between women and the earth. Five female dancers weave patterns of separation and alliance, drawing connections between our bodies and the lands we inhabit. Chinese Five Element theory, mythical and mystical stories of the divine female and the current denigration of the female voice inform Stevens’ choreography. This unfolding, evening-length collaboration evokes ancient and forgotten truths as a call to action. Can a loving change be recovered?"

My NOCCO colleagues and co-principals, Victoria Parker and Blayne Barnes, violin and Eli Weinberger, cello, performed ten premieres of winning submissions for Seattle Composers Alliance Call For Scores. There was a great variety of music from all over the globe: the First Place winner was Pippin Kenworthy, who came all the way from Australia to hear us play his Fire Dance and become our friend! Another notable piece was by Victoria BC composer Diane Berry, whose "Chasing the Raven" we liked so much we played it on our Northwest Focus live NOCCO radio show hosted by Sean McLean of Classical KING FM!

This is exciting for the Northwest Sinfonietta, as we don't usually play without a conductor. We played the Brahms Violin Concerto, with Joey, who is an exquisite musician of great poetic sensibility, leading from the violin. It was a huge step forward in an adventurous direction and we look forward to his Prokofiev Violin Concerto next season. Oh, and we also played my favorite Beethoven Symphony - the fourth, which is so sunny and driving, with a simple yet devastatingly beautiful tick-tock slow movement.

There's good old Luciano working with tape. This piece from 1959 "Différences" is for five instruments with a recording of the work itself performed by instrumentalists from the fifties all spliced and diced and degraded in fascinating ways. This is probably my favorite SMO performance to date. Love Berio. And the other electronic/instrumental works were by women! The phenomenal Kaija Saariaho from Finland and Ewa Trębacz who composed a piece for this performance at the Chapel.

I have truly been enjoying our new Artistic Partners at the Northwest Sinfonietta - but special happy feelings and gratitude go to David Lockington who has been a great supporter of me even though I only met him this year. We played a chamber concert together in the Fall: Brahms and Schumann Piano Quartets and I mentioned my opera Ishtar - he wanted to listen to it, and later ended up asking me to write a piece for next season's Art For Art's Sake concerts in March! I am so honored! Plus he diagnosed a pesky weird thing that was plaguing my bow hand and was such a gentleman about it. Truly a wonderful human. The Haydn Mass in Time of War was a moving experience for everyone who participated.

This was a fun one. In the line up, from left to right, that's the Lafayette Quartet: Pam Highbaugh, Joanna Hood, Sharon Stanis and Ann Elliott. Then there Andrew Schloss, percussionist extraordinaire from Seattle. Then my sister, Karen Bentley Pollick, then Steve Creswell, me and Brian Wharton. With the exception of Ann, Andrew and Brian we ALL WENT TO INDIANA UNIVERSITY!! At the same time (except for Steve, who was a few years later). We played a bunch of David Jaffe's music, the highlight of which was "The Space Between Us" for two antiphonally placed surround-sound string quartets and Radiodrum-driven Trimpin percussion played by Andrew. The robots were hard at work. And since the LSQ played Shostakovich's Fourteenth Quartet, we hatched the idea to do the Shostakovich Quartet Marathon as a collaborative endeavor. Which we will do in this very space in Jan. 2017. From the 9th to the 14th.

NOCCO, Seattle's conductorless chamber orchestra (which Tori Parker, Blayne Barnes, Eli Weinberger and I founded in 2014) has an awesome program coming up: Bartok, Barber and Beethoven. We're so enchanted with Jamie Jordan, soprano extraordinaire, who will sing Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with us. Then we're digging into Bartok's Divertimento for Strings and the fantastic Beethoven First Symphony. It is such a cool workplace: all these musicians bring their talent, wisdom and experience to our rehearsals and there is this steady buzzing of participation throughout the ensemble - folks working things out within a section or talking to a different part of the orchestra about how to bring the music alive and make it all cook! It is so different from a group with a conductor. I'm in heaven. Come check us out! We want to see you! Tickets are available at NOCCO's website.

This has been a super fun project. I am celebrating my third seventeenth birthday (math!) and I got the idea a few months back to see if any of my composer friends wanted to write a short piece on the theme 17 x 3. Whatever that means. I put the word out on Facebook, and now we have eleven fantastic new compositions! We'll be performing them on Wednesday, Nov. 18th at the Chapel Performance Space at 8 pm. Sponsored by the Wayward Music Series, the Chapel has a suggested donation of $5 - $15, cash only at the door. And there will be cake. The awesome performers are Paris Hurley, violin, me on viola, Beth Fleenor, clarinet and bass clarinet, and Steve Schermer, bass. And the wonderful Seattle composers are John Coons, Amy Denio, Nat Evans, Evan Flory-Barnes, Brad Hawkins, William Hayes, Jim Knapp, Jessica Lurie, Michael Owcharuk, Michaud Savage and Ben Thomas! I hope to get the video up on this website for people to check out later. Lots of great music came out of this little inkling.

Trio Pardalote does a road trip! Well, sort of a ferry trip, too...concerts over the course a month in Bellevue, West Seattle and Bainbridge Island. We are performing some of our most beloved music plus some new stuff we're working up. I love playing with Tori and Rowena. Beethoven, Jean Cras, Gideon Klein, Hans Krása, Erno von Dohnanyi, Mozart...lots of music.

Friday, Dec. 4 at 8 pm
First Friday Salon
RESONANCE at SOMA Tower
106th Ave NE between 2nd & 4th in Bellevue
www.resonance.events

Sunday, Dec. 20 at 7:30 pm
Trio Pardalote and Friends
Kenyon Hall in West Seattle
7904 35th Ave SW
www.kenyonhall.org

Sunday, Jan. 3 at 4 pm
First Sundays Concerts
Waterfront Park Community Center
370 Brien Drive, Bainbridge Island
www.firstsundaysconcerts.org

The North Corner Chamber Orchestra (NOCCO) continues its second season with a Winter Solstice program at the fairy tale gorgeous Magnolia Church of Christ. Gather with friends and family for some shimmeringly beautiful music to feed your soul and a glass of wine to warm your heart. More info at www.nocco.org

Sinfonietta is having a wonderful time working with our new Artistic Partner, David Lockington. Copland's Music for the Theatre, Mozart's D Minor Piano Concerto with the fabulous Gabriela Martinez, and Beethoven's Eighth Symphony make up the program. Starts at 7:30, but...we are having a FREE short chamber concert at 6:15 on the Friday program at Nordstrom Recital Hall only. Movements from Brahms and Schumann Piano Quartets featuring Gabriela and David Lockington playing cello! He is great! This is definitely a first for me: playing chamber music with a colleague who then conducts my orchestra! Fun. More info here: ​http://www.northwestsinfonietta.org/schedule/events-calendar/mozart-and-beethoven-seattle/2015-10-16-