By Schraepfer Harvey

Presented by Seattle Improvised Music
Co-presented by Nonsequitur
Made possible in part by support from the Seattle Mayor’s Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs

The Seattle Improvised Music Festival (SIMF) is an annual gathering of improvising sound artists from around the globe. Now in its 27th year, the longest running festival of its kind in North America, SIMF takes place February 8-11, 2012, at the Chapel Performance Space in Wallingford. This year, visitors from Tokyo, Berlin, Arizona, Victoria and Vancouver, BC, Philadelphia, and Portland represent a sampling of the world’s major players, scenes, and movements alongside Seattle artists.

For some guidance navigating the 2012 festival mix of solos, duos and larger groups, I caught up by phone with current SIMF curator and soprano saxophonist Tyler Wilcox in Baltimore, his hometown. Wilcox brings his performance experiences – from Baltimore, New York, the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere – and a careful reflection on the trajectory of improvised music participants to curate a festival with enormous range and potential, from the contemplative and spacious to the more forcefully stated. He describes the events as a “mix of the established and the ad hoc”; that is, musicians and groups with a previous rapport and simply those that Wilcox thought should work together: “I’m excited to see how it goes.”

Among groups with some established rapport are The Seattle Phonographers Union and Jeph Jerman and Jonathan Way – each part of a gestural, textural and contemplative thread that develops in the first two days of the festival. The Phonographers Union re-present field recordings as a collective, to explore our varying and subjective relationships to sound and the world.

With Jerman and Way, we find a “deft and acute manipulation of objects,” Wilcox says. They mix deliberate and fragile sounds, using pine cones or other natural objects, for instance. “It’s an area of work that has developed a lot,” and come to relate to improvised music, Wilcox explains. “Within the contemplative, there’s a huge spectrum.” To open Wednesday night, they join Mathieu Ruhlmann, a frequent collaborator with Jamie Drouin and Lance Olsen.

For Thursday, Wilcox points out Jerman’s historical relationship within the improvisation community. Once active in Seattle in the 80s and 90s, Wilcox says, Jerman performs again with Paul Hoskin, formidable on bass clarinet and one of the Improvised Music Festival’s early founders. They’re with another experienced Northwest improviser, Doug Theriault, to close Thursday.

Another highlight on Thursday is Tokyo guitarist Taku Sugimoto’s composition. Wilcox says guitarist Taku Sugimoto is “truly a restless musician, rigorous.” In the last decade, the guitarist has transitioned from elements of free improv and noise to realms of the sublime and quiet. In this period of austerity, Sugimoto further pursues the performance of composed pieces. He’s a well-known organizer of occasional and monthly experimental music sessions in Tokyo; one past session of note from the turn of the century was called Meeting at Offsite. Sugimoto also runs the label Slub Music. In performance, he brings years of self-investigation to bear, Wilcox says.

By day three, we get deeper into the experience of the history and movements of this music from some severe, humorous and focused artists. Within each night, Wilcox says he’s aimed to include at least one artist with a solid conceptual framework, around which a kind of temporary community might develop. Friday includes one such framework, nearly ubiquitous in the art today, present in Pennsylvania saxophonist Jack Wright, a “force of nature within American improv,” Wilcox says.

Out of Wright’s years of extensive touring and his dedication to the improvising arts comes the common discipline that experience is paramount in improvisation; it’s an occurrence, in a time and place, and often singular. The challenging framework can lead to great exchanges in improvisation communities: take Wright with pianist Gust Burns and Portland drummer and cultural advocate Tim DuRoche, for example, on Friday.

Also Friday, are a Matthew Carlson, Jason Anderson duo, a Sugimoto solo performance, and a Northwest quartet, including Wilcox, Jerman, Way and Seattle violist Mara Sedlins.

The festival wraps up with what’s become a bit of a tradition: a large group improvisation.

The current festival presents an opportunity for the artists to explore the nuance of their particular aesthetic movement and sometimes that of collaborating artists. “I was trying to figure out how to present side by side, but where you have an exchange,” Wilcox says. These evenings are likely to be highly discursive; each of these musicians have challenging and rigorous approaches to improvisation, the result of their artistic self-examination of relationships to sound and silence.

All events are at the Chapel Performance Space, 4649 Sunnyside Avenue, 4th floor, Wallingford. Admission is by $10-$25 suggested donation. A festival pass to all events is $25. More information at seattleimprovisedmusic.us.