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Sound Currents 2 Press Release Category: Music/Arts Listings Kill date: October 22, 2003 What: Sound Currents 2. When: Tuesday, 21 October 2003, 8pm (pre-concert discussion with composers at 7pm). Where: Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101 (get directions). Tickets: Suggested donation at the door of $15 general/$12 Town Hall members/$8 students and seniors. (Everyone is encouraged to attend for whatever they can afford.) SECOND SOUND CURRENTS CONCERT ANNOUNCED The Washington Composers Forum and the Seattle Composers Alliance are pleased to announce the second concert in the new Sound Currents series, featuring new compositions by Tom Baker, Greg Bartholomew, Nathan Grigg, Ben Houge, Scott Selfon, Kevin Siegfried, and Donald Skirvin. Performers include flutist Linda Bailey, guitarist Tom Baker, soprano Beth Ann Bonnecroy, pianist Peter Mack, clarinetist Sean Osborn, and odeonquartet. The program of Sound Currents 2 continues the eclectic survey of Seattle’s creative musical landscape established at the first Sound Currents concert. Tom Baker, curator of the popular Seattle Composers Salon, will present a multi-movement work for fretless electric guitar entitled Deconstructing Steve, examining the ideas of composer Steve Reich. Greg Bartholomew will present two works, The Far North Land: Passages for String Quartet, based on a hiking melody sung by the composer’s father, and Suite from Razumov, for clarinet and string quartet, an arrangement of three scenes from Bartholomew’s opera based on Joseph Conrad’s novel Under Western Eyes. Nathan Grigg, best known for his interactive scores for computer games such as No One Lives Forever 2 and Tron 2.0, will unveil Init for string quartet, which explores ideas and techniques from electronic music production in an acoustic context. Ben Houge will present two works for voice and piano: Stranger Personals, a song cycle on personal ads from the alternative newspaper The Stranger; and Libera me, composed for the computer game Homeworld 2, with a text from the traditional Latin Requiem Mass. Scott Selfon, also active in interactive media, providing audio content support for Microsoft’s Xbox gaming console, will present two new works for flute and string quartet: Minor Divergence, a study in contrary motion, and Khatunah, based on themes Scott composed for his wife on their wedding day. Kevin Siegfried, who has collaborated with the Tudor Choir on a CD recording, will present the Northwest premiere of Arcs and Circles for solo piano. Donald Skirvin, perhaps best known for his choral works during his tenure as composer-in-residence of The Esoterics, will present two instrumental pieces, his Sonata for Violin and Piano and Habanera Variations for clarinet and piano. Through this concert, the composers seek to actively engage the community in a conversation about music and its role in our lives. A discussion with the composers, moderated by composer and Seattle Weekly music columnist Gavin Borchert, will precede the concert at 7pm. A presentation to the students at Northwest School about possibilities for music and composition in their lives and careers is also planned. Additional information, including composer and performer bios and program notes, is available on the Sound Currents webpage: www.soundcurrents.org. Sound Currents was established to provide new performance avenues for composers active in the Pacific Northwest. The first concert took place on February 25, 2003, on Mercer Island, with over 100 people in attendance. The concert received favorable mention on the printed press and on the radio. The third Sound Currents concert is already being planned for early 2004. For more information, please visit www.soundcurrents.org.