The Score

I loved compilation albums long before the iPod transformed my music
collection (and I bet yours, too) into an encyclopedic “various
artists” archive.

A decade ago, most everyone I knew avoided “comps.” Well-intentioned
benefit discs and artist tributes usually tanked. But comps do
more than open an avenue to discover new artists: The best commemorate
a label’s bold vision (e.g., the avant jazz Red Hot on Impulse!)
or, like lowercase 2002, offer a snapshot of an emergent genre.
And though I hated Ken Burns’s mediocre and musically bigoted
documentary Jazz, the accompanying Ken Burns Jazz CD
series yielded solid and easily recommended anthologies of Miles, Monk,
Coltrane, and other innovators. You can get ’em used for dirt cheap on
Amazon.

Of course, dumb comps like Debussy for
Daydreaming still sell by the truckload. The glut of
collections in all genres makes compilations a risky proposition, even
in experimental music, where new discs let listeners compare and
contrast unknown artists with better-known names.

Released by Elevator Bath, A Cleansing Ascension celebrates
the local label’s 10th anniversary with an alluring set of
experimental, brooding atmospheres. The fine disc mingles several
revered artists, notably Tom Recchion of the pioneering Los Angeles
Free Music Society, and Francisco López, with emerging figures
including Matt Shoemaker, Keith Berry, Adam Pacione, and Jim
Haynes.

I’m enamored with every track on the disc, especially “Waning
Ataraxia,” in which Shoemaker congeals undulating drones into an
anxious nocturne. I also adore the blasé drum machine that permeates Recchion’s “Drift Tube,” and how Dale Lloyd insinuates
hushed, quasi-binaural static in “Our Morphosis.”

In their respective pieces, Haynes and Rick Reed bend swerving
drones into complex ambiances. The raspy tones of Haynes’s “Like a
Thief in the Night” throttle and hum like some mysterious vintage
device gone awry. As if dowsing with synthesizers, Reed employs
blatantly bent tones that careen throughout “The Fiery Sound of Light,”
which eventually dissipates into lovely, vinyl-like pops embedded
within phased pulses. Label honcho Colin Andrew Sheffield contributes
his trademark layers of invisibly looped stringlike sounds in the lush
“For Today.”

Earlier this summer, I ran into Sheffield, who noted that the disc
is not a retrospective, but a collection of artists currently involved
with the label. A clutch of them—Reed, Lloyd, Shoemaker, Pacione,
and the Bay Area–based Haynes—perform live this Saturday.
Don’t miss it.

Elevator Bath celebrates its 10th anniversary Sat Aug 16, Fourth
floor Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside
Ave N, 789-1939, 8 pm, $5–$15 sliding scale donation.

Thurs 8/14

GRETA MATASSA

One of our burg’s finest jazz vocalists, Matassa is a connoisseur of
forgotten tunes; her 2007 disc, The Smiling Hour (Origin),
recasts the antique Victor Herbert clinker “Indian Summer” into a
strutting swing tune. Matassa’s sassy, agile phrasing and pliable
hornlike scatting would make Ella Fitzgerald, one of Matassa’s idols,
proud. Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, 547-6763,
5:30–7 pm, free with museum admission.

BEN HEPPNER

The signature Wagnerian tenor of our time gives a recital. On the
program: Richard Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder, surprising morsels
by Liszt (including Die Drei Zigeuner), and “Dem Unendlichen” by
Schubert as well as songs by Henri Duparc, Luigi Denza, and others.
Perennial Seattle Opera conductor Asher Fisch accompanies Heppner at
the piano. McCaw Hall, 321 Mercer St, 389-7676, 7:30 pm,
$45–$250.

JAZZ: THE SECOND CENTURY

The second installment of this Earshot Jazz project showcases the
exploratory Tony Grasso Saxophone? Quartet! The group’s unusual
punctuation alludes to the presence of a single trumpet among a trio of
saxophones. Expect fun, rambunctious polyphony, spirited unisons, and
delicious chords splaying out in strange directions. Fourth floor
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside Ave N,
547-6763, 7:30 pm, $10.

NICO MUHLY

A protégé of Philip Glass, this New York–based
composer makes music that is spare yet melodically rich, as if John
Adams decided to revise a sheaf or two of Brahms’s chamber music. I
like Muhly’s 2007 disc, Speaks Volumes (Bedroom Community), not
only for the music, but for his use of close-up micing and
compression—tools that
conservatory-trained composers have
waited too long to explore. Two Muhly compadres, Doveman, who under a
cease-and-desist threat yanked his cover album of the Footloose soundtrack, and Sam Amidon, round out this triple bill. The Triple
Door, 216 Union St, 838-4333, 7:30 pm, $15.

METHFEST

I’m always surprised by the complaints about this annual festival’s
moniker, but then again, I remember when meth was a genteel club drug
quaffed nasally by elegant goths, not the common, corrosive substance
it is today. This three-day convocation features noise, grind, black
metal bands including Herpes Hideaway, grind duo Sean (who aim to make
“piano lessons a threat again”), the Sunken, and Trash Stratum. Through
Sat Aug 16; see www.myspace
.com/pcnw for details on additional
venues and times. Rendezvous, 2318 Second Ave, 441-5823, 10 pm,
$5.

Sat 8/16

KIDNAPPING WATER: BOTTLED OPERAS

Performed throughout the month at local rivers, lakes, fountains,
ravines, and other waterways, Byron Au Yong’s cycle of site-specific
operas mingle traditional operatic voices with water-based percussion.
On Sat Aug 16, bass-baritone David Stutz and percussionist Stuart
McLeod perform at sites in Des Moines and Burien. On Sun Aug 17, Emily
Greenleaf and McLeod venture to Kubota Gardens, Coleman Park, Seward
Park North Beach, and other locations in south Seattle. Check www.hearbyron.com for maps, times, and
directions. Various venues, various times, free.

INTERNATIONAL WAGNER COMPETITION

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) had no pity for singers. The
mastermind of the mammoth Ring cycle and a slew of other great
operas (Parsifal, Tristan und Isolde, Die
Meistersinger) demanded greater volume and stamina from the voice
than his fellow composers, which explains why so few singers do well
with Wagner. Here, contestants from England, Australia, Germany, South
Africa, and the United States sing selections from various Wagner
operas for two $15,000 prizes. McCaw Hall, 321 Mercer St, 389-7676,
7:30 pm, $45–$150.