This month in Florida (where Sawgrass meets the sky), there will be two performances of my work. First, in St. Petersburg an organization called New Music Conflagration will present Two Old Ghosts - for saxophone and electronics. This piece was originally commissioned by Evan Smith and The Box is Empty, and is written to be open in regards to instrumentation. So, the presenters have decided to try it with two saxophones instead of one. More information about this concert on January 5th in St. Petersburg can be found here.

Next, on January 12th in Orlando, percussionist Matt Roberts will debut a piece that he commissioned from me entitled LOG.  Although LOG is for the concert hall, it is also a site-specific work. The percussionist is instructed to find some sort of log to perform upon, as well as make a field recording of the place the log was collected. Additionally, I made a custom music box that is affixed to the log which acts as a sounding board. The performer then plays on the log, plays the music box on the log, and all of this is with the field recording from the log's place of origin serving as a counterpoint and accompaniment - a dual presentation and exploration of the sonic environment moved into a nearby space. More info about the LOGstravaganza in Orlando can be found here.

After a brief break following its most recent incarnation at Interstitial Theatre, the aurora borealis-inspired Space Weather Listening Booth returns! We'll be recording entire piece with live performers for KEXP's weekly show Sonarchy with Neil Welch on saxophone, Greg Campbell on percussion and Tom Baker on electronics, guitar and theremin. We're recording it in January, and it'll be broadcast in mid-March - you can stream it any time on KEXP's website after the performance. In other news, you can now buy the entire Space Weather Listening Booth 4-channel sound installation - and it comes with two remixes by John Teske and Yours Truly. Head over to our Bandcamp site to check it out! You can also find our signature 'I CAN HAS SPACE WEATHER?' t-shirts there.

After a successful exhibition of Space Weather Listening Booth at ONN/OF festival in January, composers Nat Evans and John Teske are reprising their aurora borealis-inspired sound installation at Interstitial Theater's temporary storefront location in Belltown, Seattle starting on November 22nd.

The electronic portion of the installation will be playing during gallery hours, with a live performance on December 6th at 8pm featuring multiple performers improvising with the electronic track. Audience members are encouraged to bring pillows, sleeping bags, blankets etc for maximum enjoyment of the immersive surround-sound experience.

Space Weather Listening Booth is an immersive acoustic and electronic performance piece based on the aurora borealis, by Seattle composers Nat Evans and John Teske. Listeners hear the collision of the different space weather events that cause the aurora borealis, realized through an electronic track in surround sound and in performance live musicians encircle the audience. Premiered as a sound installation with miniature private performances at Seattle's ONN/OF Festival, Space Weather Listening Booth has since been adapted for live performance and for other installation spaces.

Teske and Evans used geomagnetic data, information about solar wind and other phenomenon, and interpreted this data through a series of sounds that interact and slowly change over time. Additionally, to represent the auroral band that rotates around the poles of the earth, the composers plotted a course for the sound to migrate and turn slowly around the listeners. Space Weather Listening Booth is a sound experience that allows one to hear and feel the movement of these great forces, and experience time and physical space through a new lens.

"One room mesmerized me: Space Weather Listening Booth." - Jen Graves, The Stranger

"...should be performed again somewhere else as soon as possible." - CityArts

November 22nd - 6-9pm - Space Weather Listening Booth opens at Interstitial Theater - 2231 First Ave, Seattle - Regular open gallery hours 1-7pm Saturday + Sunday

December 6th - 8pm - Space Weather Listening Booth live at Interstitial Theater - 2231 First Ave, Seattle - $5 suggested donation

On July 22nd in Seattle, percussionist Bonnie Whiting and cellist Karl Knapp will be in Seattle to present a program of new works by Nat Evans, John Teske, and others at The Chapel. Knapp and Whiting were both professors at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks for the 2012-2013 school year and are doing a series of joint recitals around the country. Each performer will  present solo works as well as duets. Karl Knapp will be debuting a short new piece by Nat Evans for solo cello and train sounds on vinyl. Instead of a typical configuration for solo instrument with electronics, the performer is instructed to acquire an LP of train sounds of their choosing and structure a series of cells written out by Evans to best accompany the recording. For the performance, a portable record player will be on stage with the performer - a live dialogue with a phenomenon of recording from the mid-20th century.

Percussionist Bonnie Whiting will be playing Evans' work for solo percussionist, field recordings and natural objects entitled The Narrow Aisle to the Deep North. The title is derived from a travelogue by 17th century Zen hermit poet Basho, entitled The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Basho’s work is written in a style that combines haiku with standard prose, and explores the landscape, natural events, societal phenomenon, observation of physical sensations and people he meets along the way. The sound of the spoken Japanese language and ideas are structured in a circular format that continue to mirror and relate back each other throughout his work (see chart). This solo percussion piece is written within a similar structure and is drawn from the same phenomenon, but in the context of sound. Whereas Basho's haiku capture a moment with two juxtaposed ideas, in this percussion solo there are a series of field recordings from Alaska and Washington juxtaposed with different stations that the percussionist moves amidst, playing traditional western percussion instruments as well as natural objects such as tree branches gathered from wherever the piece is being performed. In this way, The Narrow Aisle to the Deep North becomes a sonic travelogue - a record of Evans' work on his own in Seattle as well as his travels to Alaska to work with Whiting on percussion music in the fall of 2012.

The performance will be at 8pm on July 22nd at The Chapel in Seattle. Tickets are $5-15 sliding scale. A few short excerpts from the debut of The Narrow Aisle to the Deep North can be heard below.

On June 15th, composers Neil Welch and John Teske will present a free site-specific concert deep in the woods of Ravenna Park in Seattle. As darkness approaches, the concert will end with excerpts from Hungry Ghosts - a piece by composer Nat Evans - being performed by candlelight.

Inspired by the Chinese and Japanese Ghost Festival traditions featuring offerings to ancestors and floating lanterns as beacons for long lost spirits, Hungry Ghosts was commissioned by and performed last year at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and featured musicians performing in boats on the 100 Acres Lake at the museum. At that event, the audience was invited to listen and view from the shore, and release lanterns into the water as darkness approached. In the woods of Ravenna Park, the audience will listen as the sounds of the park change over time - a counterpoint to the slowly changing music - and audience members will be given candles to hold to help engender a sense of place and community for themselves and the musicians, as well as reflect on their ancestors while listening and exiting the park together after the event.

The concert will take place on June 15th at 8pm in a clearing just north of the main trail in the eastern half of Ravenna Park - the red X in the map below denotes the location. In case of rain the performance will be held under the 15th avenue bridge in the park.

After a successful exhibition of Space Weather Listening Booth at ONN/OF festival in January, John Teske and I decided to take our northern-lights-inspired sound installation back to the realm of concert music. We'll be presenting the complete Space Weather Listening Booth cycle live in surround-sound with multiple performers improvising with the electronic track in Seattle and Portland in March. Audience members are encouraged to bring pillows, sleeping bags, blankets etc for maximum enjoyment of the immersive surround-sound experience. Full dates and details are below...

March 17th - Seattle, WA: Space Weather Listening Booth performed live in its entirety at Hollow Earth Radio as part of the Magma Festival. The show starts at 8pm, and will also be broadcast live on hollowearthradio.org.

March 21st - Portland, OR: Space Weather Listening Booth performed live in its entirety. The show starts at 8pm, and is at a private residence. Email for location.

Space Weather Listening Booth is an immersive acoustic and electronic performance piece based on the aurora borealis, by Seattle composers Nat Evans and John Teske. Listeners hear the collision of the different space weather events that cause the aurora borealis, realized through an electronic track in surround sound and live performers encircling the audience. Premiered as a sound installation with miniature private performances at Seattle's ONN/OF Festival, Space Weather Listening Booth has since been adapted for live performance.

Teske and Evans used geomagnetic data, information about solar wind and other phenomenon, and interpreted this data through a series of sounds that interact and slowly change over time. Additionally, to represent the auroral band that rotates around the poles of the earth, the composers plotted a course for the sound to migrate and turn slowly around the listeners. Combined with live performers, Space Weather Listening Booth is a unique sound experience that allows one to hear and feel the movement of these great forces, and experience time and physical space through a new lens.

"One room mesmerized me: Space Weather Listening Booth." - Jen Graves, The Stranger

"...should be performed again somewhere else as soon as possible." - CityArts

There are three musical events in January that I'm involved with that are all different from one another in some ways, and totally interconnected in others. The first event - a commission from the Seattle Rock Orchestra is a bit of an outlier from what I usually do (they're an orchestra that does arrangements pop music from the last 60 years), but I'm really excited about the working with a new ensemble and getting to explore some new terrain. The piece, I Am a Rock explores the ubiquity, timelessness and intersection of Simon and Garfunkel, their song I Am a Rock, and geology. We’ve all had experiences like standing in an elevator with granite floors and hearing gentle muzak versions of this song tinkling through the speakers above, hot stone massage while hearing a Chinese lute playing Sounds of Silence on a CD, or been at a house with fake rock speakers, Mrs. Robinson drifting over your conversations in the background...and now I'm combing all that together in a concert work. The orchestra will be playing found rocks, a few string soloists will play abstracted song fragments, and an electronic track of people being interviewed about this music blends these disparate elements together. Details here! It's Saturday, January 12th. Come see 40 people playing rocks.

In mid-November I traveled to Fairbanks, Alaska to hear the University of Alaska Fairbanks percussion ensemble - Ensemble 64.8 (yes, that's the latitude there) - play my percussion quintet Unrelated (have a listen to their excellent performance here). While there I worked with visiting professor Bonnie Whiting Smith on a new piece for solo percussionist with electronics. She'll be debuting this new work, The Narrow Aisle to the Deep North, at The Wulf on January 16th, and playing it again at UCSD on January 19th.

The Narrow Aisle to the Deep North is designed so that it can be played at different stations that the player moves to between movements, and this is noted throughout the score, though it is not a limiting factor if this is not an option. The title is derived in part from a travelogue by 17th century Zen hermit poet Basho, entitled The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Basho’s work is written in a style that combines haiku with standard prose, and explores the landscape, natural events, and people he meets along the way interacting with both. This solo percussion piece takes a similar path, but in the context of sound. Whereas haiku capture a moment and potentially juxtaposed ideas occurring in our everyday lives in Basho’s work, here there are a series of field recordings that capture the sounds of a trip I took from Seattle Washington to Fairbanks Alaska to hear some of my percussion music played and also work on this piece with percussionist Bonnie Whiting Smith. And, in place of prose, we have a series of stations of instruments creating a narrative sonic landscape that the performer interacts with and illuminates for the audience. The source of the music as alluded to before is drawn from a few days in Alaska discussing and exploring sounds and instruments, observing the changing of light at a northern latitude, stargazing, and watching the aurora borealis; as well as from everyday life for me here in Seattle. Being a sort of record of a period of time, a similar travelogue title seemed appropriate, and since paved roads, and cramped airline aisles are par for the course for anyone working in music, changing road to aisle seemed like a simple and final way to customize this travelogue format for our modern sonic context, as well as describe, if only casually, where this landscape of sound was drawn from.

I was invited to present something at the ONN/OF festival this year - it's a great festival that features a couple dozen artists who create installations and works based around light in a rented warehouse and runs for just two days. For the festival I am collaborating with Seattle composer John Teske to create a sound installation based on the aurora (aka the northern lights) entitled Space Weather Listening Booth. We're taking geomagnetic data from the earth, information about solar wind and other phenomenon (yes, space weather) and interpreting these things into music and sound. Our allotted installation space is small, so only one or two people at a time will be able to enter and listen. Just as the auroral band moves around the earth slowly, so will our sound shift and move over time, enveloping the listener. In addition to the immersive sound installation, for parts of the festival we'll have private one-minute performances in the booth for one listener at a time - one musician, one audience member. The festival is taking place on January 26th and 27th this year in the old Seattle BMW dealership between Boylston and Harvard on E Pine St.