After a couple weeks of settling back into normal life in Seattle, I've finally begun to unpack the myriad of experiences I had in New York in April doing all three of my time-specific pieces, including the sunrise event in Fort Greene, and my new piece, Blue Hour, which I also presented as guest composer on a concert in Hartford. The Blue Hour event's attendance was hampered by rain earlier in the day, but the event itself was still a success as evinced by the interactions exhibited and community that sprung up as a result. After the event people were sharing slices of pizza and chatting readily with total strangers, and some people talked and connected at a nearby bar for hours after that. One of the attendees, Kyle Lynch, wrote a review for The Glass, which you can read here.

    Towards the end of my trip I headed to Hartford to be the guest composer on Scott Comanzo's Private Works Music Festival. We did Blue Hour out on a large grassy mall in the center of the University of Hartford's campus, and it was interesting to observe people's inclinations in regards to how to particpate. With fair weather prevailing and an expansive and calm campus setting, after the cue to press play was issued participants drifted away to take things in on their own or in small groups - some laying down, others circumambulating the field, and still others twitching nervously and pulling out hunks of grass.
    The Blue Hour events were wonderful on the east coast, and I was able to connect with a lot of people whom I rarely see or have only ever interacted with on the internet, but  now it's time to get ready for a few Blue Hour events back home on the west coast. I'll be announcing the details about these events in the coming months.

    I'm really excited to share some news about a new site-specific work that has been commissioned by the 100 Acres Sculpture Park in Indianapolis. This new work is called Hungry Ghosts, and will debut on September 20th.  Throughout Asia there are various festivals that are based around the idea of deceased ancestors coming to visit the human realm from the hungry ghost realm. Offerings to ancestors are given in the form of food, and at the end of the festival lanterns are lit and set out en mass on a body of water, often carrying an inscription of the ancestor’s name and well wishes. Hungry Ghosts is an interpretation and dialogue with this tradition as a result of my own interaction with Chinese and Japanese culture through Zen practice.
    A dozen or so musicians will be in boats a bit before sunset and will play a new piece that reflects and responds to the grounds of the sculpture park, as well as my own ancestors. As the music goes on for 45 minutes or so, the audience will be able to walk around the lake to hear the music as it changes from different angles. The different sections of the music will be triggered by myself from within a boat via different natural sounds such as Conch shells, rocks, and branches, and the music itself will be divided into different sections based on abstracted ideas or sentiments my own ancestors - musical, familial and otherwise. Composer Michael Schelle has graciously agreed to provide some well-rehearsed players from Butler University's great New Music ensemble - the  JCFA Composer's Orchestra.
    As darkness approaches, people in attendance will then be invited to light a lantern and send it out onto the water as the music is ending. The 100 or so lanterns are being designed and realized by artist Erin Elyse Burns - and as you can see from the photos she took during a test run here in Seattle (above), the lanterns release at the end of the event will be quite spectacular! Imagine those lanterns times 20! Besides the square ones seen above - which the audience will be invited to help make before the event - Burns will also construct a couple dozen lanterns that will be more elaborate that reflect the nature of ancestors, family, and the cultures that this event is derived from.
    It is the aim of this event - and much of my work - to allow people who would not ordinarily enter into the concert hall to interact with music in new ways and to reflect on their familiar surroundings with fresh perspectives. And, in particular with this one I hope that Hungry Ghosts will encourage attention to the moment and to the immediacy of our lives through reflection on their connection to the past.
   

_Experimental ensemble thingNY is thrilled to showcase some very talented out-of-town acts for the third installment of its Seven Immediacies Series, at Brooklyn venue Vaudeville Park. This music series is thingNY's first official foray into curating a series as a group. Each installment of the series will pair local and visiting emerging classical and experimental artists with a new work, difficult to program because of its extreme length or unusual ensemble. This month's program will begin outdoors with Nat Evans' Sunset + Music Event, and followed by the transatlantic Mujô Quartet and new works by composers and performers from both coasts: Doug Laustsen, Nat Evans, John P. Hastings, Rick Parker and Chris Kallmyer.

To participate in Evans' Sunset + Music event, audience members should download the music onto their portable music devices from his website and be at the venue by 7:20pm. Participants will then walk to Cooper Park to to press play and sit back and observe while listening.

For more information on the series or the artists, contact Paul Pinto, artistic director at pfpinto@gmail.com or 201-410-9107.

On May 5th composer Nat Evans will present a program of recent West Coast music by Evans, Christopher Roberts, and Jim Fox that explores the aesthetics of nature and place.

Composer-performer Christopher Roberts will play Last Cicada Singing, his serene, entrancing suite of four pieces for solo qin, the zither-like traditional Chinese poet-scholar’s instrument, which he mastered while living in Taiwan. Recently released on the Cold Blue label, Last Cicada Singing is very unusual music—often mimicking nature’s sounds, as is the tradition with qin music, yet seeming at times Feldmanesque, at times almost delta-blues-like, too.

Nat Evans will present Still Life with Transmigration, a new work that delves into the very essence of place and sound by coupling field recordings, conch shells, and other natural objects with the sounds of three live trombones.

Penned in the winter of 2011–12, Jim Fox’s The pleasure of being lost is a suite of five short piano pieces/meditations designed to be performed with or without a “tape” backdrop. This performance, its premiere in solo form, and will be played by new-music-champion pianist Cristina Valdes.

The event will take place on May 5th at 8:00pm at the Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N, 4th Floor, Seattle, WA; in Wallingford. Suggested donation $5-15.

    This Thursday (3/22/12) is the debut of a new piece for choreographer Catherine Cabeen at Velocity Dance here in Seattle by my myself and Ross Simonini. Ross and I have been working together under the moniker 'Nat and Roos' since 2006 doing scores for dance, a film score, and currently we're working on music that we'll release as an album and use for sound installations in galleries in the coming year.
    Ross lives in New York, but came out here last fall a couple days before his tour got under way with NewVillager. With a basic framework of ideas we spent two days recording ideas we had been discussing, improvisations, wandering the neighborhood collecting sounds and wondering what the hell we were doing sometimes but making new sounds anyway. We sent a whole heap of sounds off to Catherine Cabeen to get an idea of what she felt might fit her vision for the piece she was working on. After that, Ross did an initial assemblage of sounds and added some tweaked sounds, then I went in and added additional layers of percussion, a five-part falsetto choir, and some conch shell. We passed the track back and forth and kept checking in with Catherine until we felt like it was done, but only knew for certain when I went to a rehearsal a couple weeks ago and observed the incredible clarity and detail with which Catherine had perceived the music and the quartet that she had choreographed in response. It's an honor to be able to collaborate with both Ross and Catherine, and I highly recommend coming out to one of the shows this weekend. For more information on the shows at Velocity Dance click here, and to hear the music we wrote for the dance, see below.

About the composer
Seattle Composer Nat Evans writes concert music for various mixed chamber ensembles, distinctive electro-acoustic music, and site-specific music events that fuse nature, community and subjectivity of experience. His music is regularly presented across the United States and has also been performed in Europe, South America, Australia and China. Evans has received numerous commissions including the Seattle Percussion Collective, the Harrison Center for the Arts, ODEONQUARTET, Seattle Pacific University Men's Choir and Percussion Ensemble, Beta Test Ensemble, The Northwest School Chamber Orchestra, among others. His music has been featured on a number of radio stations in the United States, as well as BBC3, and in the 2011 Music Issue of The Believer. He studied music at Butler University with Michael Schelle and Frank Felice.