Avante-garde classical composer, freak-folk singer-songwriter and postmodern jazz interloper Kaley Lane Eaton performs her sophomore album, Lookout, live with an all-star orchestra of Seattle’s most beloved genre-bending musicians.

For artists like Kaley Lane Eaton who paint outside the lines, there are seemingly endless boxes to check, but few name-brand comparisons. Joni Mitchell, Björk, Kate Bush, Laurie Anderson. 

On her latest album Lookout, Eaton regularly makes pressure-testing trips from the vast cosmos down to the particular details of home in the Pacific Northwest. In her words, “It’s a behemoth.” From the ever-expanding space of jazz cymbals, flute, and harp, down to the folksy pluck of her banjo — a prized recent acquisition — and the grounding chords of her great-great-great grandmother’s piano, which shipped up the Missouri River to the family homestead in Montana. 

There are no electronic instruments to be found here, but many trees. The sequoia on the hillside, aspens quaking, cedar, and Jeffrey pine.

With her experience in electronic music, Eaton’s choice to exclude digital instruments from the palette is immediately felt. It’s not that technology doesn’t exist here. It’s a conscious focus on human beings with time-tested tools. Ancient technology.

Eaton composes with the full command of her four music degrees and classical training, but there’s an American-ness that can’t be shaken on Lookout. A sorrow, wildness, and expansiveness, not of the European classical tradition, but of jazz, blues and folk. Kaley Lane Eaton is all of these things and more. And none of them precisely.

Eaton (on vocals, banjo, and piano), is joined on this live performance of Lookout by Chris Icasiano (drums), Kayce Guthmiller (voice and viola), Moe Weisner (bass), Samantha Boshnack (trumpet), Heather Bentley (viola), Leanna Keith (flute), Neil Welch (saxophone), Rian Souleles (guitar, bouzouki, and baglama), Lily Press (harp), Simon Linn-Gerstein (cello), Alina To (violin), Maria Scherer-Wilson (cello), and Aleida Gehrels (viola), Ray Larsen (trumpet).

Kin of the Moon teams up with gong artist Stephanie Wood to present new works and psychedelic improvisations.

Kin of the Moon returns to the Chapel Performance Space to perform two works inspired by the natural world: "delicate balance," an ode to the fragility of the ecosystem on the Galapagos Islands by Kaley Lane Eaton, and "Ichneumonidae," a song cycle about insects by Heather Bentley. They’re joined by gong/percussion artist Stephanie Wood for an exploration of the Ganzfeld concept in improvisation.

We finally get to share a bill with our buddies Neil Welch and Chris Icasiano and their out-of-this-world band, Bad Luck. So of course the evening needs to be called BAD MOON. Thanks to Earshot Jazz and Clockout Lounge for hosting us! https://www.earshot.org/event/bad-luck-kin-of-the-moon/

KOTM will be streaming on Facebook Live surrounded by Heather's magnificent garden. For this performance, we are returning to nature and performing Atmokinesis (written by Kaley and Heather), Orcas (by Kaley, with the recorded sounds of mother Tahlequah mourning her calf), and Hildegard von Trap - an electro-acoustic reimagination of O ignis Spiritus paracliti.⁠

Watch on https://www.facebook.com/kinofthemoonseattle/live_videos/

Want a recap of what this music might be like? Check out our recording of Atmokinesis:

New commission, “No house on fire, no.” by Seattle saxophonist/composer Neil Welch, with Abbey Blackwell, bass. KOTM encores composer Ewa Trębacz’s “Winter After Times of Fire.” KOTM will also premiere Leanna Keith and Em Piro’s interactive work “imagination is an act of rebellion”. This project is made possible, in part, by a generous grant from King County’s 4Culture.

Artist statement from Neil Welch:

No house on fire, no. for improvising quintet explores phonetic text painting and my reflections on physical landscape. Through this piece, I attempted to channel the collaborative spirit of Kin of the Moon—a virtuosic ensemble committed to engaging in creative dialogue with one another. Throughout this piece you will hear breathing, undulating wind currents, unified melodic passages and solos for each member of the ensemble. The work was composed from late 2017 through early 2019. After initially completing the piece in late 2018, I was inspired to re-compose major sections after a journey through the mountains and valleys of New Zealand. While in country in early December, 2018 I traveled to a remote location in the central South island. With a crew of traveling companions I walked among tall, dry grass waist high that rolled unbroken over hill after hill throughout a 2 day journey. As the wind picked up the grass would take on new forms, winding and coursing in every direction around me. In these long days a new vision of this composition began to take form in my mind.

The work is segmented into four sections (Introduction, I, II, III) and is intended to progress between sections without pause. All instrumentalists use extended techniques to create undulating sounds of air and wind through various means, such as: fingers sliding on the keyboard with plastic picks, flute and saxophone blowing directly into their instruments without engaging pitch, bows sliding on the body of the instrument, amplified bow swirls and pulls, feet and hands brushing against the floor, clothing, or instrument. The work is dominated on the whole by graphic score language I developed for the piece, however many selections are also notated in pitch. These notated passages are often dichotomous in their pitch content, blending tempered and non-tempered tuning. No house on fire, no. is a work that must be sonically sculpted by each member of ensemble in order to bring the composition to completion.

No house on fire, no. includes musical themes that use non-pitched breathing through phonetic text painting. The rhythms and phrasing are taken from the poem Drawn Together, by Joan Naviyuk Kane. The poem is reinterpreted throughout the duration of the composition. —Neil Welch

Drawn Together

Shot through with white, error—

A dream of birds of prey returned

Dropping glyptics, baskets.

Last night’s lopped moon

Couldn’t put into words

The ink around it.

Split and cleft,

I no longer weaken into sleep.

I no longer ash,

Ache. No carrion bird

Blown into the city,

No house on fire, no.

—Joan Naviyuk Kane

A New Phase --  with Ewa Trebacz

This program explores three ways of improvising: by responding to pre-recorded sound, to a graphic score and forgotten sounds, and to the moving imagery of an original film.

World Premiere of Ewa Trebacz's Winter After Times of Fire, a surround sound collage of improvisations from the Fort Worden Cistern and Bunkers, Satsop Nuclear Power Plant, Thomson Hall at the UW and the Missionaries Church in Krakow, Poland. In live performance, the work features improvised responses to the audio collage. Commissioned by Kin of the Moon through a grant from King County's 4Culture. EWA TRĘBACZ is a Polish-American composer living in Seattle. Her works range from purely instrumental compositions, to compositions with computer realized sound with live performance, to sound tracks for animated films, to experimental stereoscopic video. Her current artistic explorations are oriented towards immersive media. She often uses space as a catalyst for improvisation, working through Ambisonic recording sessions in acoustically inspiring spaces. Graduating from the UW's Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) with a Ph.D. in 2010, Ewa currently works at DXARTS as a Research Scientist and teaches courses related to digital sound and immersive media.

Violist/composer Heather Bentley's new graphic score Amage #2 begins the program and is followed by Daniel Husser's stunning new film Synthetic Evolution depicting urban and natural landscapes in juxtaposition.

Kin of the Moon musicians Heather Bentley, Leanna Keith, and Kaley Lane Eaton utilize acoustic and electronic sounds to craft improvised sound worlds.

Kin of the Moon presents the electroacoustic opera lily [bloom in my darkness] (music by Kaley Lane Eaton, libretto by felicia klingenberg and choreography by Karin Stevens Dance) alongside the immersive multimedia work LUNG (co-conceived by Eaton and Karin Stevens). Together these pieces explore issues of migration, connection, and finding one’s voice.

Performers:

Kin of the Moon (Heather Bentley, viola; Leanna Keith, flutes; Kaley Lane Eaton, voice and electronics; and guest Rachel Yoder, clarinets)

Strange Interlude (Lily Press, harp, and Simon Linn-Gerstein, cello)

Karin Stevens, choreography, movement

Amelia Love Clearheart, movement

Tickets are available here.

KOTM commissions a new work from Chicago composer Renée Baker: Tyaga: Divine Life Suite. With guests Gretchen Nicole, cello, and Greg Campbell, percussion and horn. Some of it is written down. Some of it is improvised. All of it is magic. Renée is in residence in Seattle for a week and will also present her original recorded film scores (with films) at the Seattle Public LIbrary main branch on Wednesday, June 14 at 6:30 pm.

Donation $5 - $15 sliding scale

Kin of the Moon and Karin Stevens Dance present Atmokinesis at the Seattle International Dance Festival.

At-mo-ki-ne-sis | noun | the psychic ability to influence the weather. Atmokinesis is a collaboration with SuperCollider composer Kaley Eaton, Violist/composer/improviser Heather Bentley and Flutist/improviser Leanna Keith and serves as an opportunity as a chance to explore the five elements of Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Aether. It is a musical alchemical experiment involving live improvisation of acoustic instruments, pre-recorded sounds, real-time audio synthesis and digital signal processing written in SuperCollider.

Adding to the alchemical magic is Karin Stevens - re-imagining the elements through movement. 

Tickets may be purchased here.

A unique music program featuring film scores by award-winning composer Renee' Baker. The night will feature scores for "Body and Soul" (1925) by Oscar Micheaux and the Baker's film "Dinner: Race, Greed, Abuse and the Priority of Social Justice" (2017). 

As an artist with a vision of racial unity, Baker's music brings people together. Her wide-ranging portfolio covers films from the 1920s to the present, rescored with her original music. As the director of Chicago Modern Orchestra Project music, Renee' moves fluidly through narrative and experimental films. She unites aficionados of classical and avant garde music, early film lovers, and people who want to see and hear more inclusivity in cinema and music. Along the way, Baker welcomes in new audiences by inspiring us to have new and more compelling conversations about how we can challenge stereotypes while writing people of color and women into histories that often excluded them.

Library events and programs are free and everyone is welcome. Registration is not required.