The second week of the Earshot Jazz Festival brings the homecoming
of Seattle pianist Aaron Parks (Thurs Oct 23, Triple Door, sets
at 7 and 9:30 pm, $22). A teenage prodigy, Parks left the Seattle jazz
scene at the turn of the decade to study in New York; he returns with a
quartet and a probing new album, Invisible Cinema (Blue
Note).
“It’s the first time I’m coming back to Seattle playing my own
music,” says Parks by phone from New York. Although he thrives in the
“focused intensity” of the Big Apple, “I’m totally a nature child,” he
adds with a slight laugh. “I grew up on Whidbey Island and really miss
it,” which may account for Cinema‘s arresting
oscillation between rhythmic urgency and pastoral melancholy on
songs like “Peaceful Warrior” and “Nemesis.”
Earshot also embraces non-Western approaches to improvised music.
I’m eager to hear Amir ElSaffar (Sat Oct 25, Triple Door, 7:30
pm, $20). The Iraqi-American trumpeter’s Two Rivers Ensemble deftly
blends ripples of the dulcimer-like santur, sinewy microtonal
scales—one ElSaffar tune is titled “The Blues in E
Half-Flat”—and incantatory, John Coltrane–inspired
saxophone lines by Rudresh Mahanthappa.
Among the festival’s slate of living legends, you must not miss
Cecil Taylor (Sun Oct 26, Town Hall, 8 pm, $25/$32). Taylor
commands the piano, unleashing tectonically churning tidal waves of
bass while strafing the rest of the keyboard with sparks of the blues,
Anton Webern, Rite of Spring–era Stravinsky, and
bebop.
In the mid-1960s, Taylor’s notorious Blue Note albums Unit
Structures and Conquistador! established the pianist as a
visionary composer who hitched the 20th-century avant-garde to
ferocious, passionate group improvisation. Those who dismiss Taylor as
well as “free jazz” as disorganized cacophony should compare the master
and alternate takes of “With (Exit)” on Conquistador!; you will
hear impossible-to-notate passages repeated precisely. Taylor
and his comrades made extraordinary experimental music.
A generous and intense performer, Taylor garlanded his last Seattle
appearance in 2000 with multiple encores. I still kick myself for missing his stand at the Iridium in New York during my travels east
last summer. By all accounts, the 79-year-old’s volcanic presence at
the piano has neither dimmed nor cooled.
If most jazz fans love or loathe Taylor, Georg Graewe (Mon
Oct 27, Chapel Performance Space, 7:30 pm, $18) remains a cult pianist.
A master of freely improvised music, Graewe, like Taylor, refracts
multiple styles of music through a turbulent and serpentine touch. Two
kindred spirits, Seattle pianist Gust Burns and percussionist/French
hornist Greg Campbell, open. 
The Earshot Jazz Festival continues through Sun Nov 9, see
www.earshot.org for a complete
schedule and venue locations, $12–$350.
Thurs 10/23
TOM VARNER QUINTET
If you’re intrigued by Earshot but live with an early bedtime, this
noontime concert is a treat. Varner, who makes the French horn sound
cozily at home in a jazz setting, debuts new pieces for his quintet,
including saxophonists Mark Taylor and Eric Barber, bassist Phil
Sparks, and Byron Vannoy on drums. Seattle City Hall, 600 Fourth
Ave, 684-7171, noon–1 pm, free.
SEATTLE SYMPHONY
Ignat Solzhenitsyn, son of the great novelist, captains this “Mainly
Mozart” concert of two Haydn symphonies, the early Symphony No.
16 and Symphony No. 82, nicknamed “The Bear.” In addition to
the mandatory Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Mozart’s Horn Concerto
No. 4 rounds out the program. The soloist, the Symphony’s own John
Cerminaro, certainly riled some of the members of the band back in the
1990s when Gerard Schwarz hired him, though not for his musicianship;
Schwarz made an end run around the usual hiring process. Nonetheless,
Cerminaro was and remains a world-class soloist. Also Sat Oct 25 at 8
pm and Sun Oct 28 at 2 pm. Benaroya Hall, 200 University St,
215-4747, 7:30 pm, $17–$97.
Fri 10/24
LAKE UNION CIVIC ORCHESTRA
Copland’s jazz-inflected Clarinet Concerto shares the bill
with the regal Symphony No. 4 of Brahms. Conductor Christophe
Chagnard leads the premiere of Cortège for Father
Marquette by Patrick Stoyanovich. I haven’t heard
Cortège; a quick perusal online of some of the Bainbridge
Island–based composer’s scores reveals a penchant for direct
rhythms and emphatically lyrical orchestral writing. Town Hall, 1119
Eighth Ave, 652-4255, 7:30 pm, $10/$15.
DEAN MOORE
A feast for the ears: Moore’s hushed and often-glacial
improvisations with gongs, chimes, cymbals, and bells resound
beautifully in the Chapel. Here, he collaborates with three
choreographers, Christy Fisher, Vanessa Skantze of Death Posture, and
Yoko Murao. Mike Shannon contributes field recordings to the mix.
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside Ave
N, 8 pm, $5–$15 sliding scale donation.
Sat 10/25
MONC AUDITIONS
Decades before the advent of American Idol, New York’s
Metropolitan Opera began holding annual auditions to roust promising
singers out of the hinterlands. These district auditions for MONC
(Metropolitan Opera National Council) serve as a stepping-stone to next
year’s “regionals” where singers vie for a top prize of $10,000.
Recital Hall at Benaroya, Third Ave and Union St, 215-4747, 10
am–4 pm, $6/$12.
Sun 10/26
COMPLINE CHOIR
Circa AD 530, Saint Benedict prescribed music and manual labor as an
antidote to the excesses of monasticism (self-flagellation, standing on
a pillar year after year, vermiform mortification, etc.). Benedict
outlined seven offices to be spoken and sung. Compline, the last holy
office of the day, is sung after dinner, hence the late Sunday start
time. The cathedral gets chilly this time of year, so dress warmly; a
fluffy coat can cushion your rump in the butt-flattening wooden pew.
St Mark’s Cathedral, 1245 10th Ave E, 323-0300, 9:30 pm,
free.
Tues 10/28
MELIA WATRAS
I adore the tender, sometimes morose, tone of the viola. UW faculty
violist Watras offers relatively new works for the violin’s rum cousin
by Betsy Jolas, György Ligeti, and Joan Tower. Also on the docket:
J. S. Bach, Henri Vieuxtemps, Rebecca Clarke, and George Enesco, along
with the premieres of Andrew Waggoner’s “Elle s’enfuit” and “Flexible
Parts” by Anna Weesner. Meany Hall, UW Campus, 543-4880, 7:30 pm,
$10/$15.
