NEW VENUE: Zero-G Concerts 5.27.17: Elgar

Saturday, May 27

Zero-G Concerts presents:

Elgar

NOTE: This concert has been relocated from the Chapel Performance Space to Teatro de la Psychomachia because the former turned out to be closed for the holiday weekend. Also appearing: CJ Boyd • Cruel Diagonals • Twin Sibling

Teatro de la Psychomachia • 1534 1st Ave S, Seattle • 8 p.m. • $5-15 donation

Elgar (9 P.M.)
Distinguished Swiss trio Elgar makes its first Pacific Northwest appearance, heading up a bill of simpatico Seattle improvisers. “The trio feels most at home in the midst of a conflict, in the twilight zone between brute power and fragile sound structures, between highly compressed sound and transparent lines, between pulsating beats and free improvisation. With their endless curiosity and appetite for new sounds, every concert is new research on the edge of the possible.”

Zero-G Concerts at the Chapel, Friday 12/9: Jan Koekepan / Steve Fisk / Ffej / Tempered Steel

Friday, December 9 ● Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center ● 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N, 4th floor (map), Seattle ● 7:30 p.m. ● $5-15 suggested donation

Zero-G returns with a synapse-stretching lineup of maverick electronic musicians whose singular yet complementary approaches offer a refreshing antidote to the ubiquity of mainstream EDM.

NOTE 7:30 PM START TIME (set times approximate)

Jan Koekepan (7:30 p.m.)

Jan Koekepan studied classical guitar from an early age, developing his ear and learning the limitations of his physical performance talents. His exposure to influences such as Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, and Klaus Schulze led him to combine his early training with electronic synthesis as a transhumanist exercise in pursuit of a musical quintessence. He spends more time on composition than in performance, seeking to blend free-flowing electronic impressionism with the lessons of classical form, substituting timbral complexities for the high arts of technique. website

Steve Fisk (8:00 p.m.)

Few people have as wide a bandwidth as Steve Fisk. His background in analogue audio technology and synthesizers, music history, and production techniques, his years in beats, looping, and programming, his two indie labels, as well as “pre-surround” audio composition and environmental work provide a unique palate of skills to the artists and musicians with whom he he has worked. A veteran of vanguard bands including Pell Mell, Halo Benders, and Pigeonhed, Fisk early on earned renown as a producer, helming sessions for numerous bands and musicians. He was the recipient of a 2015 Stranger Genius Award for his influential legacy as a musician and producer.  website

Ffej (8:30 p.m.)

Ffej makes innovative music spawned from the love of electronic sound. He has performed at random and obscure venues around Seattle for over 20 years. Currently, he’s developing his live shows into elaborate multimedia presentations. Boldly taking the stage solo (sometimes in front of video backdrops of his own creation), he sings and plays a keytar from the 80s. He’s backed by sequences and synth patches that represent countless hours of programming. website

Tempered Steel (9 p.m.)

Tempered Steel features Ffej, Frank Junk, and Dennis Rea playing amplified, electronically processed thumb pianos. The trio’s seamless improvisations conjure everything from phantom harpsichords and subterranean percussion to as yet uninvented stringed instruments and vintage musique concrete. Recommended to partisans of Harry Partch and John Cage’s prepared piano music, the trio has played Seaprog, the Olympia Experimental Music Festival, Northwest Folklife Festival, Zero-G Concert Series, and numerous underground venues in the Pacific Northwest. website

Zero-G at Chapel Performance Space, 3.26.16: Empty Boat / Driftwood Orchestra / Tempered Steel

Saturday, March 26, 2016

Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center ● 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N, 4th floor (map), Seattle ● 7:30 p.m. ● $5-15 suggested donation

Tempered Steel (7:30 p.m.)

Tempered Steel features Ffej, Frank Junk, and Dennis Rea playing amplified, electronically processed thumb pianos. The trio’s seamless improvisations conjure everything from phantom harpsichords and subaquatic percussion to as yet uninvented stringed instruments and vintage musique concrète. Recommended to partisans of Harry Partch and John Cage’s prepared piano music.

“…a strange strain of otherworldly exotica, a metallic-insect symphony of disturbing beauty” – Dave Segal, The Stranger

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Driftwood Orchestra (8:15 p.m.)

“The point is not to create music, or to showcase instrument playing skills; more so it is a way to give a voice to the trees – all that they have survived to grow and exist and everything that has happened to a piece of wood before it became an object in Driftwood Orchestra. As one listens to Driftwood Orchestra players struggle to find solutions to creating sound in a live improvised setting, imagine that the message could be simply ‘we all live and thrive together or we all suffer and die together.’ Driftwood Orchestra is not concerned with perfection or standards of artistic success – Driftwood Orchestra is interested in creating a way to communicate with the forest with the intent to somehow, someday apologize.”

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Don Berman’s Empty Boat (9 p.m.)

Empty Boat is a quintet formed by drummer Don Berman and featuring Jim Knodle (trumpet), Dick Valentine (saxes, flutes), and for this performance, guitarists Simon Henneman and Rik Wright. Empty Boat presents original compositions by group members as well as pieces containing influences from contemporary jazz, world musics, new chamber music, and a healthy dose of improvisation. Owing to the variety of compositional concepts coming from each of these highly idiosyncratic players, an Empty Boat performance takes the listener to many different places, with sonic surprises and depth coming from the members’ years of relentless dedication to their art.

 

ZERO-G AT THE ROYAL ROOM, WEDNESDAY 02.10.16: THE OCULAR PROOF / RIK WRIGHT’S FUNDAMENTAL FORCES / CRYSTAL BETH & THE BOOM BOOM BAND

Wednesday, February 10th, 2016
The Royal Room ● 5000 Rainier Ave. S, Seattle ● 8-11 p.m. ● Donation ● All ages before 10 p.m., 21+ after

7 pm – the Ocular Proof (formerly QuinTetDeJoie)
The Ocular Proof presents original music that is both jazz and not jazz. The Ocular Proof dives into world rhythms, textures and exploratory improvisations. These microcosmic shimmers and luminescent diversions function as observational details, adding layers of empathy to the emotions conjured and trailed by the group’s invigorating solo flights. Collectively, the ensemble displays a decidedly modern approach to original composition within a somewhat traditional Jazz context. Each tune finds new ways to surprise you. The Ocular Proof features James DeJoie (reeds/voice), Steve Kirk (trombone), Matt McCluskey (keys), Walter White (bass) and Greg Campbell (drums).

8 pm – Rik Wright’s Fundamental Forces
Guitarist Rik Wright’s Fundamental Forces is an innovative collective of modern progressive jazz players who are known for their genre-bending performances – world beat one minute, rock the next, a touch of jam band and back to the core of jazz. Fundamental Forces blends forward thinking arrangements with grooves that allure at every turn. That allure has propelled them all the way to #1 on the CMJ Jazz charts. This evening Fundamental Forces will be celebrating third CD, “Green”, reaching #3 and staying there for the month of January. Fundamental Forces features Rik Wright (guitar), James DeJoie (reeds), Geoff Harper (bass), and Greg Campbell (drums).

9 pm – Crystal Beth and the Boom Boom Band
The Boom Boom Band is a ferociously powerful and psychedelic clarinet and primal scream fronted rock band. Bandleader and clarinetist Crystal Beth (Beth Fleenor) spins her own brand of positive hardcore, purge-pop-punk-hop — a sweaty trance psychedelic ritual. The Boom Boom Band features Beth Fleenor (clarinets/voice), Tristan Gianola (guitar), Michael Owcharuk (keyboard), Isaac Castillo (bass) and Adam Kozie (drums).

Zero-G at Chapel Performance Space, Friday 12.11.15: A Tribute to the Compositions of Charles Mingus

Friday, December 11
Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center ● 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N, 4th floor (map), Seattle ● 7 p.m. ● $5-15 donation ● all ages

(note early start time)

Charles Mingus was one of the most important figures in twentieth century American music. He was a virtuoso bass player, accomplished pianist, bandleader, author, poet, civil rights activist, and a prolific composer. His number of jazz compositions is second only to those of Duke Ellington. He recorded over 100 albums and wrote more than 300 scores. His compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music and blues while sometimes drawing on elements of free jazz and classical music. Yet Mingus avoided categorization, forging his own brand of music that fused tradition with unique and unexplored realms of jazz.

During his lifetime, Charles Mingus was widely recognized in jazz circles as one of music’s most talented contributors. It was only after his death that his brilliance as an indomitable creative force began to be fully realized. Mingus’s legacy is enormous, but this evening’s program focuses specifically on Mingus’s impact as a composer. Mingus’s compositions pioneered new and extended forms in jazz: changes of tempo and meter, open vamps, blurred lines between composition and improvisation, advanced harmonic explorations, aggressive sounds, and idiosyncratic voicings. These innovations have fueled the compositional efforts of every generation of musicians since, and surely many (if not all) generations to come.

Guitarists and longtime Mingus devotees Rik Wright and Jason Goessl have organized a night of music to pay tribute to the man and his music. The concert will showcase groups led by Wright, Goessl, James DeJoie, Simon Henneman, Jim Knodle, and Kenneth Mandell. The participants have selected and arranged a dozen different Mingus compositions, featuring performances by Robby Beasley, Don Berman, Dave Bush, Greg Campbell, Jose Carillo, Alicia DeJoie, Geoff Harper, Doug Lilla, Mikel Rollins, Pete Turner, and Dick Valentine. The night will end with a group improvisation of “Canon,” a quintessential Mingus theme in which, as the title suggests, the melody can be superimposed upon itself. A fitting tribute to a compositional legend.

Zero-G at Chapel Performance Space, Friday 9.18.15: Spite House Band / Ask the Ages

Friday, September 18
Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center ● 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N, 4th floor (map), Seattle ● 8-10 p.m. ● $5-15 donation ● all ages

 

Spite House Band (8pm)

The Spite House Band blossomed out of weekly sessions of improvised music organized by composer/pianist/vocalist Stephen Fandrich with the Monktail Creative Music Concern. Fandrich now hosts these weekly events at his home, a longtime oasis for artists on Capitol Hill, in spite of manic high-rise development. Curated by a community of local musicians, the Spite House Series explores performer/artist intimacy and immediacy; music as energy, acoustic, kinetic, precise. Each week’s performance opens with an invocation by the Spite House Band featuring Stephen Fandrich (piano), Beth Fleenor (clarinets), and Bill Monto (saxophones). In celebration of Monktail’s 15th anniversary, they will perform a special set in the acoustic womb that is the Good Shepherd Chapel.

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Ask the Ages (9pm)

Ask the Ages is a Seattle-based avant-jazz band. Formed in 2010, the group includes Greg Campbell (drums and percussion), Steven Bell (vibraphone), Brian Heaney (electric guitar), Kate Olson (saxophone/woodwinds), and John Seman (contrabass). The band has also collaborated with an international cast of stellar musicians including Stuart Dempster, Melissa Walsh, Archana Bennur, Bora Ju, and Dale Speicher. Among their influences are Sonny Sharrock, Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane, and Pharaoh Sanders.

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About Zero-G Concerts

Fulfilling the need for an outlet for music that blends modern jazz, progressive rock, and the unclassifiable,  Zero-G Concerts is a co-presentation of leading Seattle instrumentalists Jason Goessl, Dennis Rea, John Seman and Rik Wright.

With a focus on forward-thinking instrumental music, Zero-G Concerts spotlights a multifarious selection of the region’s most adventurous instrumentalists from diverse scenes, from accomplished scene veterans to head-turning emerging artists.

The first Zero-G event was held in October, 2010 at the venerable Mars Bar (RIP) in Seattle WA. The organization has since expanded to present events at numerous venues in the Seattle area, including the Comet Tavern, Egan’s Ballard Jam House, The Mix, Lucid Jazz Lounge, White Rabbit (RIP), Lo-Fi Performance Gallery, the Royal Room, and the Chapel Performance Space.

Zero-G at The Royal Room, Friday 7.17.15: Skerik/Trimtab

Friday, July 17
The Royal Room ● 5000 Rainier Ave. S, Seattle ● 8-11 p.m. ● donation ● All ages before 10 p.m., 21+ after

Skerik – solo set (8:00 p.m.)
http://skerikmusic.com
Skerik is an American saxophonist from Seattle, Washington. Performing on the tenor and baritone saxophone, often with electronics and loops, Skerik is a pioneer in a playing style that has been dubbed saxophonics. He is a founding member of Critters Buggin, Garage a Trois and Skerik’s Syncopated Taint Septet. He is also an original member of both Les Claypool’s Fancy Band and Frog Brigade and has toured with and played with numerous others in a variety of genres. Skerik also worked with Grunge band Mad Season.

Trimtab (9:00 p.m.)
http://parlourtrick.com/artists/trimtab/
Trimtab is the concept of guitarist Jason Goessl, who being heavily influenced by the ideas of Buckminster Fuller, saw an intrinsic link between architecture and musical form – a link he sought to express in sound. Sweeping dynamic changes, woven through hypnotic musical tensions, all set against persistent grooves, the music of Trimtab is a unique blend of the concrete and the sonic, the physical and the ephemeral. Trimtab features Jason Goessl (guitar), Phil Cali (bass) and Brian Oppel (drums).

ZERO-G AT THE ROYAL ROOM, THURSDAY 6.18.15: FUNDAMENTAL FORCES / SAMANTHA BOSHNACK 5TET / MICHAEL OWCHARUK 4TET

Thursday, June 18
The Royal Room ● 5000 Rainier Ave. S, Seattle ● 8-11 p.m. ● donation ● All ages before 10
p.m., 21+ after

Rik Wright’s Fundamental Forces (8:00 p.m.)
http://www.rikwright.com
Guitarist Rik Wright’s Fundamental Forces is an innovative collective of modern
progressive jazz players who are known for their genre-bending performances – world beat
one minute, rock the next, a touch of jam band and back to the core of jazz. Fundamental
Forces blends forward thinking arrangements with grooves that allure at every turn. That
allure has propelled them all the way to #1 on the CMJ Jazz charts. Fundamental Forces
line-up for this evening features Rik Wright (guitar), Geoff Harper (bass), Greg Campbell
(drums) and special guest Greg Sinibaldi (saxophone).

Samantha Boshnak Quintet (9:00 p.m.)
http://samanthaboshnack.wordpress.com
Sam Boshnack is quickly gaining acclaim as a composer, her “open voicings, jaunty tempos
and buoyant timbral mixes have a friendly monster feel that achieve a bittersweet and
elegiac mood of orchestral grandeur” (Downbeat). A classic jazz instrumentation that
does anything but standard music, the Quintet packs a power punch. Boshnack’s primary
small ensemble as a leader, this band thrashes and bounds through tightly woven twists,
tunnels and cliffs with the deftness and precision of a chamber ensemble and weight of a
rock band. The Sam Boshnack Quintet features Sam Boshnack (trumpet/voice), Beth Fleenor
(clarinets/voice), Alex Chadsey (piano), Isaac Castillo (bass), and Max Wood (drums).

Michael Owcharuk Quartet (10:00 p.m.)
http://www.owcharukmusic.com
Michael Owcharuk is a very talented and entertaining pianist who has collaborated with
almost all of the leading figures in our productive and accomplished jazz scene. His work
pairs an experimental edge with a strong sense of swing, and is sure to perk up the ears
of eager listeners. Michael’s quartet performs original, widely-influenced tunes by
Michael and other Seattle composers. Featuring Kate Olson (saxophone), Nate Omdal (bass),
and Jacques Willis (drums).

Zero-G at Chapel Performance Space, Friday June 12: Vlatkovich 5tet / Robert Millis

Thursday, May 14

Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center ● 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N, 4th floor, Seattle ● 8-10 p.m. ● $5-15 donation

Robert Millis (8 p.m.)

Robert Millis is a founding member of Climax Golden Twins and AFCGT, a solo artist, and a frequent contributor to the Sublime Frequencies label. Millis has scored long and short films, created sound installations, produced and designed audio projects, and released many LPs and CDs. His work veers haphazardly between sound art, music concrete, instrumental, improv, field recording, song, and collage. Millis has a deep interest in folk and traditional music, so imagine Pete Seeger trying to cover Revolution 9 by the Beatles. http://robertmillis.net/contact/

Vlatkovich 5tet (9 p.m.)

The Vlatkovich 5tet is an ensemble whose focus is to explore and create new possibilities: The possibility of five musicians moving the jazz tradition forward by their nontraditional interactions of melody, accompaniment, harmony, and rhythm. The quintet explores the relationships between each of the instruments in the group. The possibility of changing the orchestration. The possibility of instrumental roles expanding and contracting. The possibility of possibilities is the quest. Creating new music that changes with each listening. Changing not to make the composition unrecognizable, but to develop the core ideas and concepts, to explore all the possibilities. The 5tet demonstrates that the possibilities are infinite.
Michael Vlatkovich (trombone), Jim Knodle (trumpet), Jared Burrows (guitar), Clyde Reed (bass), Greg Campbell (drums, French horn). https://michaelvlatkovich.wordpress.com/

Zero-G at the Royal Room, Thursday 5.14.15: Focus on Sanity (Ornette Coleman’s “Free Jazz” revisited) / Helix / Being John McLaughlin

Thursday, May 14

The Royal Room ● 5000 Rainier Ave. S, Seattle ● 8-11 p.m. ● donation ● 21+

Helix (8 p.m.)
Helix explores the multiplicity of the quartet: two tenor saxophones and two drum sets. Six duos, four trios, one quartet. The quartet explores and exploits the combination of these relationships through improvisation in real time – no musical property is out of the question as they navigate each moment as a unit. The relationships of the instruments, coupled with a ‘helical’ approach to improvisation, results in 100-percent acoustic music that is honest and earnest in its pursuit of spontaneity. Note: This will be one of the final performances of Eric Barber’s tenure in Seattle, as he readies to pursue bright new opportunities in California – Eric is a singular, truly wonderful musician and human being who will be sorely missed by all in the Northwest creative music community!
Eric Barber (tenor saxophone), Greg Sinibaldi (tenor saxophone), Greg Campbell (drums, percussion), Thomas Campbell (drums, percussion)

Focus on Sanity – Revisiting Ornette Coleman’s “Free Jazz” (9 p.m.)

Ornette Coleman’s role and importance in the jazz canon is well established. Among his many innovative compositions is “Free Jazz.” Created spontaneously, with a minimum of cues and without any discernible repeated themes, “Free Jazz” helped change the way jazz was approached, considered, and played, especially for large ensembles.

Nine Seattle-based musicians will revisit this seminal piece, recreating the double-quartet format albeit with different instrumentation and an extra voice. Coleman’s “Mob Job” will also be performed. Group members include Jim Knodle (trumpet), James DeJoie (alto saxophone), Dennis Rea (guitar), Ken Masters (guitar), Stephen Thomas Cavit (drums), Don Berman (drums), John Seman (bass), Ryan Berg (bass), and Matt McCluskey (keyboards).

Being John McLaughlin (10 p.m.)

Being John McLaughlin impressively re-creates the epochal music of John McLaughlin and the early Mahavishnu Orchestra albums (circa Inner Mounting Flame and Birds of Fire). Formed by keyboardist Ryan Burns and a supremely talented crew of like-minded cohorts. Being John McLaughlin is rounded out by Tristan Gianola (guitar), Alicia DeJoie (violin), Geoff Harper (bass) and John Bishop (drums). Prepare to be mowed down by “Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love”…