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.

As part of the Private Works festival, Seattle composer Nat Evans will be presenting an original, site and time-specific music event that fuses nature, music, community, and subjectivity of experience, which will take place just after sunset on April 28th at The Hartt School. Participants will download the music onto their iPods or other portable listening device ahead of time and arrive at the Sukman Foyer (at Millard Auditorium) by 7:30pm. Participants will then walk to the viewing locale, and just after sunset the cue will be given to press play and participants will sit back and observe while listening.

The music for Blue Hour is a mix of new and pre-existing compositions that have been arranged to best compliment the changing of light during the hour after sunset, and is available to download from the composer’s website (natevansmusic.com). This is the third in a series of time-specific pieces Evans has written – his Sunset + Music event was presented across the country in 2011, as well as at a number of festivals. Blue Hour was commissioned by Scott Comanzo for the Private Works festival.

To review...
1. Participants download the music onto their ipods. (Click here to download)
2. Show up Sukman Foyer (at Milard Auditorium) by 7:30pm on April 28th.
3. Press play when instructed to just after sunset!

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.