Tickets $20-40 +ticketing fees
In-person
Doors: 6PM

Sponsored by BECU.

Drummer Ches Smith’s new release Clone Row debuts an adventurous all-star quartet featuring guitarists Mary Halvorson and Liberty Ellman and bassist Nick Dunston. Weaving threads from his varied earlier projects, Smith draws myriad possibilities from this group’s seemingly limited instrumentation.

Ches Smith’s new release Clone Row, out June 6, 2025 on Otherly Love Records weaves together varied threads from his divergent earlier projects in ways that sound not quite like any of them. Marc Ribot writes that this album is like “some post-punk post-Dave Brubeck post-trip-hop experiment with classical form.” On the album, guitarists Halvorson and Ellman, swirl, echo and double-take, squaring off with a bass and drums team that anchors and unhinges through doubling sounds — drum machines and acoustic drums, low-end analog synth and acoustic bass, digital samples and repeated fragments performed in real time. In a dance of coherence and chaos, the four musicians plunge headlong into the feedback loop of composition and improvisation armed with chemistry created by their mutual appreciation and enduring friendships.

Mary Halvorson, Liberty Ellman, Ches Smith, and Nick Dunston photo by Peter Gannushkin.