29th Annual Seattle Improvised Music Festival

Matt Ingalls photo courtesy of the artist

Thursday-Saturday, February 6-8, 8pm
Chapel Performance Space

Four visiting performers – Joe Morris, one of the most renowned creative guitarists from the Northeast, Matt Ingalls, clarinet virtuoso from the Bay Area, and the Bonnie Jones / Andrea Neumann duo – feature on bills with many of Seattle’s finest improvisers, the first weekend in February, at the Chapel Performance Space. 

Reviled for his “shapeless sonic tinkering” by the Los Angeles Times, Oakland musician Matt Ingalls is a composer, clarinetist, concert producer and computer music programmer. His composerly solo improvisations explore extended clarinet techniques that interact with the acoustic space. He opens the SIMF, February 6, 8pm, with a solo clarinet performance.

Bill Horist photo by Daniel Sheehan

Ingalls is the founder and co-director of sfSound, a new music series, ensemble and Internet radio station devoted to new ideas and traditions of experimental music, performance art, live electronic music, Bay Area composition and the various facets of contemporary improvisation. Most active as a clarinetist, Ingalls specializes in contemporary and experimental music, and has worked with composers such as Mark Applebaum, Anthony Braxton, John Butcher, Helmut Lachenmann, George Lewis, Miya Masaoka, Meredith Monk, Hyo-shin Na, Pauline Oliveros, Stefano Scodanibbio, Chinary Ung, and numerous Bay Area composers. He holds degrees in composition from the University of Texas at Austin and Mills College, and studied composition and computer music with George Lewis, Alvin Curran, Chris Brown, Russell Pinkston, Dan Welcher and Karl Korte.

Connecticuter Joe Morris came to the guitar as a teen, gigging within his first year of playing. Primarily self-taught, Morris was inspired to jazz and improvised music with John Coltrane’s Om. In 1970s Boston, Morris delved into free improvisation; later, he spent the 80s starting his own label, Riti Records, and releasing his albums and working with renowned improvisers Billy Bang, Andrew Cyrille, Peter Kowald, Joe McPhee, Malcolm Goldstein, Samm Bennett, Butch Morris and Thurman Barker; during the 90s, he created swirling, dense yet crystal-clear guitar work alongside Matthew Shipp, Joe and Mat Maneri, Rob Brown, Eugene Chadbourne, and others. Since 1994 Morris has recorded for labels ECM, Hat Hut, Leo, Incus, Okka Disc, Homestead, About Time, Knitting Factory Works, No More Records, AUM Fidelity and OmniTone and Avant. He is a former member of the faculty of Tufts University Extension College and is currently on the faculty at New England Conservatory in the jazz and improvisation department. He was nominated as Best Guitarist of the year in 1998 and 2002 at the New York Jazz Awards. In 2000, Morris decided to play bass, too, making of himself a guitarist’s bassist.

Jacob Zimmerman photo by Daniel Sheehan

Morris’ sound on guitar carries a meaty tone, free of distortion, with a mangled way of tying and untying knots, moving in long, sometimes loping, always tireless bursts of creativity. On the SIMF, with guitarists Bill Horist and Jeffrey Taylor (Climax Golden Twins), solo, and with alto saxophonist Jacob Zimmerman and pianist Gust Burns – shazam!

Closing the festival, Bonnie Jones and Andrea Neumann, performing together since 2007, improvise music in contradiction of textures and timbres. Neumann typically performs on a custom-made Bernd Bittmann piano with no-input mixer feedback but will be performing on a modified autoharp for this appearance. Jones plays field recordings and samples and the circuit boards of digital delay pedals. The sounds produced by these

instruments are often jarring and abstract yet equally melodic and complex in a sonic tension that the duo uses to create unusual musical dialogues. The duo released their album green just as I could see on Erstwhile Records in 2012.

Admission is by $10-$25 suggested donation. More information at seattleimprovisedmusic.us.