Racer Session #550 | Nat Evans | Sunday October 2nd, 2022

Greetings, Racers!

We’re looking forward to our first of three Racer Sessions this October, kicking things off with a set of music from composer and musician Nat Evans!

Nat is a composer and artist based in Seattle, Washington. His interdisciplinary works range from site-specific events and installations to chamber music, scores for dance and film, conceptual works based in ecology and social practice, to meditations on everyday life. His work is regularly presented across the United States, and has also been presented in Europe, South America, Australia and China. Evans has received numerous commissions including The Henry, Odeon Quartet, San Francisco MOMA, Seattle Art Museum, The City of Tomorrow, Portland Cello Project, ALL RISE, The Box Is Empty, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art, among others.

In addition to his life and work as a musician and composer, Nat is a farmer whose produce is beloved by many in the music and creative arts communities and beyond! He is the steward of Quiet Land Farm, a no-till farm that recently transitioned to Snoqualmie after initially finding its start as an urban farm in 2018. The importance of the earth and natural world often find their way into Nat’s work in thoughtful and beautiful ways.

Nat will be joined on Sunday by friends of the session Neil Welch and Evan Smith on saxophones. Nat has also written us some thoughtful words about his work to be presented, so take some time to read on below, and don’t forget to find yourself at Cafe Racer at 7pm for the session. See you there!

—

Nat Evans

“Mystic Chords of Memory is an ongoing work about our sort of inner worlds as we are continuing to understand them in the wake of the pandemic. I initially wrote this semi-improvisatory work for a performance commissioned by the Seattle Art Museum, which took place at the Olympic Sculpture Park in the summer of 2021.

At the time I thought, “You know, we're all looking backward to a time before the pandemic” - hence the title. We seemed to be spending quite a lot of time picking away at the barnacles of sentimentality. But as a year has passed since that performance the pandemic feels more like a flood that occurred, and we're sifting through everything that has transpired as a result.

For this iteration I wrote some additional material and changed some of the written directions to reflect my current feelings, the way these pre-pandemic memories are ringing out in my head. So, as a semi-improvised piece this work acts as sort of a ritual - a bridge to the past and projecting to the future while unfolding in the present.”

- Nat