The Seattle Composers' Salon, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, is among a handful of groups that provide a forum for composers eager to share their newly created music with an audience.
"I started the series with Christian Asplund when I got out of college (University of Washington) and found myself no longer in an academic community with its resources for a critical experience of one's own work," said Tom Baker, a composer, guitarist and teacher. "I wanted something like a laboratory more than a concert, where a work is heard usually just once, then nothing more. Christian and I were involved at the time in the Seattle Experimental Opera. We called it a 'salon' because it felt like that, where people listen, but is less formal than a concert. The name stuck."
The salon, informal in nature, meets on the last Friday of every other month and features completed works, previews and works-in-progress.
For the first three years, the salon met at the Seattle Mennonite Church in Lake City, and later performed at Soundbridge, the educational space of the Seattle Symphony at Benaroya Hall. A year ago the group moved into the Chapel of the Good Shepherd Center, where it opens its new season Friday.
"I am a big supporter of the chapel," Baker said. "There is nothing wrong with Soundbridge, which has a great deal of infrastructure and capability, with presence in the community. But I felt that the mission of the chapel was more aligned with our mission: each dedicated to the performance of contemporary music. The acoustics are better at the chapel, too, especially for electronic music.
"We try to be as egalitarian as possible, with a minimum of curatorship. One just has to come to the salon as an audience member so we know who the person is," Baker said. "We don't listen to any music before programming it, although we always try to have a wide diversity of stuff and as many neotonal composers as avant-garde."
The list of composers over the past decade is impressive: Christopher DeLaurenti, Joel-Francois Durand, Gavin Borchert, Michael Nicolella, Elizabeth Falconer, Stuart Dempster, Keith Eisenbrey, Sean Osborn, Amy Denio, Joshua Kohl, Greg Bartholomew, Jay Hamilton, Gust Burns and Jay Holcomb.
"Some programs work better than others," Baker said. "What might not work in a formal concert will work here because it is essentially an experimental workshop. We often look for shades of the same thing and to experience the currents and trends of composers writing for established institutions like the opera and orchestra. We like to think of ourselves as akin to fringe theater. It is there you see the real variety."
Baker defines avant-garde music as unpredictable. "You don't know where it is going, although any style in the avant-garde can become predictable very quickly. I am interested in music I don't understand immediately."
Baker considers himself an "avant-garde experimental composer," and remains an active part of the Seattle Experimental Opera, which last season produced a chamber opera about the infamous Donner Party. Another opera was based on the Margaret Atwood story "The Gospel of the Red Hot Stars." A new opera will be based on the Patty Hearst kidnapping story.
"I am not necessarily atonal or serial because there are tonal aspects to my music," Baker said. "When I play with my quartet, that is more jazz than classical. We consider ourselves the avant-garde of the jazz movement."
That quartet -- Baker, Greg Campbell, Jesse Canterbury and Brian Cobb -- will provide the music for "Re-Invert: An Evening of Structured Reimprovisations" Saturday night at the chapel. The dancers are Alia Swersky, Beth Graczyk, Ezra Dickinson and Sean Ryan.
"We did our first show ("Invert") in January with four dancers," Baker said. This weekend's performance is a reworking of the same material, thus the title. There will be one piece, but with four sections.
Tickets for "Re-Invert" are $10 at the door, with student/senior discounts.