July 9
Jim Norton Quartet

Jim Norton’s musical career has taken him all around the world. He plays with great skill a range of common jazz instruments – saxophones, flutes, and clarinets – as well as some less often-heard ones, such as bassoon and contrabassoon.

In Seattle for five years, Norton has nonetheless been little heard on the local jazz scene. Rather, he has been heavily involved in musical-theater productions, particularly with the Village Theater

But prior to his move north, he recorded and performed with a host of Bay Area luminaries, including Fred Ho, Jon Jang, Anthony Brown, and other members of The Asian American Orchestra. He has also performed around San Francisco and Oakland with George Lewis and ROVA, and appeared with Steve Lacy, John Lewis, James Moody, and James Newton.

For the Second Century performance, he will present his Seattle quartet.

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Although still a year shy of high-school graduation, Andy Clausen has been making a big splash on the local scene. The Roosevelt High stand-out plays trombone in the school’s acclaimed jazz band, and also composes for his own sextet and performs on laptop in the electro-pop band This Sporting Life. And, he plays bassoon in the Roosevelt orchestra, and subs for big bands around town. His big-band composition “Fly” was honored with the 2009 Gerald Wilson Award for Jazz Composition from the Monterey Jazz Festival, and was included on a KPLU School of Jazz album, performed by the Roosevelt Jazz Band with Cuong Vu on trumpet with electronics.

Clausen will, for the Second Century series, present Sjenka, his ambient electronic trio. He performs on laptops using such devices as “musolomo,” a computer program that allows performers to sample and recombine sections of performance.

His co-conspirators in provocative creation of the new and the fresh are two fellow Roosevelt students, Corey Dansereau (trumpet, vocals, electronics) and Max Williams (guitar, electronics), along with 2008 Roosevelt grad Xavier McHugh, who is Berklee bound, on percussion. Luke Bergman, 2008 UW grad who performs with Speak alongside Cuong Vu, will join them on bass. The band, says Clausen, “synthesizes diverse musical styles into dynamic layered soundscapes filled with striking juxtapositions of sounds and textures. A gentle trumpet melody might be manipulated and transformed into an eerie wash of shifting harmony and pitch, or might sing over the top of a relentless wall of electronic noise. A simple pop tune might feature jazz-styled solos and then be carried on a driving rock pulse into an apex of cascading synthesizers. Sjenka aims to contribute to the advancement of jazz not only as an art form but also a reflection of the current trend towards cultural globalization.”

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The Seattle Phonographers Union is a collective of Seattle sound artists who improvise from their libraries of field recordings from around the world. Their credo is to forego processing their raw sound materials with software and hardware, and instead to strive to create compelling juxtapositions of everyday and esoteric sounds to arrive at surreal soundscapes. So, they say, “a flock of pigeons may alight near water and distant temple bells while a long wire fence shimmers and thwaps in the wind.”

The members of the group are Steve Barsotti, Pete Comley, Christopher DeLaurenti, Doug Haire, Susie Kozawa, Dale Lloyd, Perri Lynch, Robert Millis, Toby Paddock, Steve Peters, and Jonathan Way. Barsotti explains the group’s relation to jazz: “While the SPU may sonically sound distant from the traditional jazz intrumentarium, our unusual approach honors the core of jazz and all improvised music: listening.” They proceed without a predetermined format, scores, charts, or even cues. “Collectively, we wait and listen,” says Barsotti. “Without conferring, we trust our ears to listen to ourselves and each other, fashioning immediate juxtapositions, gradual contrasts, and subtle layers.”

The uncanny results are strangely provocative. And, as Barsotti says, “some members do not believe what we make is music; others within the SPU stoutly do.”

More: http://www.accretions.com/artists/phonographersunion.asp

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July 30
2nd Century Savage

2nd Century Savage is saxophonist, flutist, and composer John C. Savage with electronica artist, vusac (aka Isaac Peachin). Their mission, they say, is to expand the definition of jazz to include electronic instruments and live production techniques in tandem with contemporary jazz improvisation. The results are haunting, transporting, and strikingly novel. Their performances give the impression of swirling planes of sound, some melodic and familiar, some protean and mysterious, folding through untold dimensions of space and the mind.

They say: “Although we are a duo, we have the potential to suspend a single note in space, or to summon the power of an orchestral wall of sound. We achieve this dynamic range with interactive software sampling, effect processors, and virtuosic instrumental technique.”
Vusac, who arrived in Seattle recently from Brooklyn, was a founding member of the electro-rock combo Lution where he developed a transporting style of acoustic collage locked down by drum-and-bass grooves. He pulled material from TV and online media and created a trance-inducing sense of collective unconscious.

John C. Savage has won high praise for his performances from his performances from such publications as Down Beat, which called his flue sound “yearning”; The Guardian (UK), which praised his “exquisite” soloing; and Willamette Week (Portland), which called him “an extremely thoughtful and rigorous improviser” and “a badass, knock-down-drag-out force.” A PhD candidate in flute performance and improvisation at New York University who also teaches at Western Oregon University, Savage collaborates often with musicians, poets, dancers, painters, and technologists. He has performed and recorded with the late, great jazz pianist, Andrew Hill, and with the Kitsune Ensemble, his duo Cartridge with Will Redmond (aka BlipVert), Groove Revelation, The Savage 3, and poet Claudia F. Manz.

More: www.myspace.com/2ndcenturysavage

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