NonSeq: Leanna Keith – 'Rice, Blood, Sugar'
$5-$20 in advance or at the door
- Leanna Keith, flute & voice
- Kaley Lane Eaton, voice, piano, & banjo
- Heather Bentley, viola & cello
- Alina To, violin
Rice, Blood, Sugar is a piece in three parts that explores the experience of heritage language loss through language as food, language as lineage, and language as delight, performed upon the occasion of the Mid-Autumn Festival, a festival of family and ancestral reunion. The composition and soundings utilize homophones in Mandarin Chinese throughout to amplify the somatic experience for the audience of the attempts towards reaching the perfect tones and pronunciation of a mother tongue, sometimes landing just short, sometimes overshot. The performance will interrogate these accidents of sounding as both composing a bodily diasporic loss and also how these mistakes can generate new meanings and possibilities for the future.
Composer/performer/artist Leanna Li Keith teams up with poet/writer/artist Jenne Hsien Patrick to dream up this experience of sound and language. Both with shared backgrounds as mixed-Chinese Americans, Keith and Patrick have been discussing their experiences with heritage language for the past four years. Rice, Blood, and Sugar is the result of that ongoing conversation and process. The performance of the piece features Keith as flutist/vocalist/conduction artist, Kaley Lane Eaton as vocalist/pianist/banjo player, Heather Bentley as violist/cellist, and Alina To as violinist. Additionally, the performance will be opened by a reading of works by Omar Willey.
About Kin of the Moon
Kin of the Moon is composers Kaley Lane Eaton (voice, piano, electronics), Heather Bentley (viola, cello, violin), and Leanna Keith (flutes). The group explores sonic rituals, promotes cross-pollination of genres, emphasizes the communicative power of specific performance locales and celebrates the creativity that multiplies itself through the collaboration of performers and composers. The artists of Kin of the Moon devote their lives to reaching higher vibrational levels through sound creation.
https://kinofthemoon.org/About Wayward Music Series
Each month, Nonsequitur and a community of like-minded organizations and artists present 10 concerts of adventurous and experimental music in the gorgeous Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center: contemporary/post-classical composition, free improvisation and the outer limits of jazz, electronic/electroacoustic music, new instruments, phonography, sound art, and other innovative musics.
https://www.waywardmusic.org/About Leanna Keith, flute & voice
A freelance flutist, artist, improviser, and composer in the Seattle area, Leanna Keith (she/they) delights in creating sound experiences that make audiences laugh, cry, and say: "I didn't know the flute could do that!" Her performance artworks have focused on cultural connection and the breaking of audience/performer boundaries. Leanna is co-founder of the 501(c)(3) arts organization Kin of the Moon and is co-artistic director and flutist of the ensemble. They explore sonic rituals, promote cross-pollination of genres, and celebrate the creativity that multiplies itself through the collaboration of performers and composers. She is dedicated to playing music by composers who are still living, and advocates for the usage of music as social activism. Leanna is the professor of flute at Cornish College of the Arts.
http://leannakeithflute.comAbout Kaley Lane Eaton, voice, piano, & banjo
About Heather Bentley, viola & cello
Seattle-based violist and composer Heather Bentley has trailblazed a career as one of the West Coast's most visible improvisatory musicians, specializing in creating evocative atmospheres and textures. Relentless in her pursuit of creativity, she continues this work as co-founder of Kin of the Moon, a 501(c)3 organization which fosters collaboration between artists in service of creating unique art.
https://www.hbentleymusic.com/