Innovation Space — Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center

By Leilani Polk

When Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center opened in 2019, its Artist in Residence, cellist Seth Parker Woods, offered a thrilling glimpse of what the space could do, including a 24-hour marathon of music with visual accompaniment that reflected the entire life cycle of a day. Since then, Octave 9 has become a venue for showcasing unique programming and works by living composers, a place to shine a moodily intense spotlight on a diversity of non-orchestral presentations, and a stage to feature intimate and innovative performances by Symphony musicians.   

While most of its offerings fall outside the box and can only be served to audiences of 85 or less, they’re still accessible, intriguing and oftentimes breathtaking, especially when Octave 9’s many technological marvels are executed along with the music to create a multi-sensory experience. A customizable, visually immersive, 360-degree video projection surface can transform Octave 9 into virtually any environment, its interactive system of motion-capture cameras and short-throw projectors responding to movement and sound. The acoustics are also customizable via Meyer Sound’s Constellation Acoustic System. Users can deliver pre-recorded or live audio into different areas of the space (called sound-mapping); acoustically emulate rooms of varying sizes, from a classroom to a cathedral; customize the reverb strength, length, warmth and brightness; and create different moods, glows and effects with specialized lighting.  

Among last season’s memorable Octave 9 Series performances were Visions of the Season, which featured the world premiere of composer Gina Gillie’s Pale Blue Dot. Her cosmic work for solo horn and fixed media comprised a recorded soundtrack (made up of synthesized string instruments, percussion and other synthetic sounds, animal sounds, and greetings in different languages from the children of Planet Earth to be sent to places beyond the galaxy) and video that included images from the James Webb Space Telescope. Gillie used Octave 9’s customizable acoustics to make different sounds seemingly bounce around the room. According to Seattle Symphony Horn Mark Robbins, “The horn was a solo voice performed live using the microphones in Octave 9 to enhance the acoustics of the room, blending with and sometimes soaring above the synthesized sounds.” He says the video projections were “strikingly effective.” 

The current season has already seen a few intriguing offerings, including November’s Cabins & Hideouts with musician and composer Lauri Porra, a work fusing electric bass, orchestral instruments and found sounds from the natural world. “Cabins & Hideouts was one of those rare creative experiences where the central artistic voice is so open to collaboration that a little island of ideas flourish from everyone involved,” said Seattle Symphony Artistic Administrator Melanie Muradian, who worked behind the scenes to facilitate the production. “The foundation was Lauri Porra’s evocative, nature-based composition, which allowed for a site-specific wonderland to be built around it. From the lighting design to improvised cello solos, to reimagining his film of 24 hours in a Finnish forest and covering the space in Pacific Northwest forest plants, the performances were some of the most memorable to take place in Octave 9.” 

Three exciting programs remain in the 2023/2024 season. March sees Seattle’s own Gretchen Yanover. Yanover weaves warm melodies into spacious string atmospheres and builds layered, expressive compositions on electric cello with a looping pedal. Her Octave 9 performance, Holding / Movement, encompasses selections from her fifth and latest album of the same name alongside other select works, including the world premiere and Seattle Symphony commission of To Solve for Heart, with words by award-winning 2023/2024 Civic Poet of Seattle, Shin Yu Pai. Yanover will be joined by video designer Ahren Buhmann, who has created visual meditations to pair with each piece (Friday, March 8, 2024, at 7 & 9pm). 

Next comes the long-awaited premiere of Han Lash’s The Art of Leaving (Friday, April 5, 2024, at 7 & 9pm). The composer had their Seattle Symphony debut in 2021 with their double harp concerto, The Peril of Dreams, a Symphony commission in which Lash also performed. The composer will also perform in their Octave 9 presentation, minus harp, plus choreography. 

During the pandemic, Lash composed six pieces inspired by J.S. Bach’s inventions for a series called Notes from Exile, then recently introduced six new pieces to the collection. The completed dozen, called The Art of Leaving, is a mix of lecture, theatre and dance exploring how the concept of gender plays a role in both our inner and outer lives. According to Lash, “These observations about how gender is performed through a number of social filters informs the choreography that is interspersed along with recorded text that plays with the idea of the fluidity and mutability of our perception. At times playful and lighthearted and at others seriously presented as a carefully researched and constructed lecture, the piece is intended to invite the audience on an imaginative journey, never to alienate or present a polemical point of view. Instead, the audience is invited to look at something we often imagine as a solid, biologically determined truth as a thing that is socially perceived, and is therefore dynamic, in flux, like our very existence.” 

Finally, Principal Oboe Mary Lynch VanderKolk leads Through Her Window (Friday, April 19, 2024, at 7 & 9pm). The last program in the Octave 9 Series includes pieces written (some specifically for VanderKolk) by contemporary composers from around the world as part of her ongoing commissioning and performance project, its name inspired by the well-known quote attributed to Claudia Alta Johnson, “Art is a window to the soul.” Through Her Window brings together some of today's most eloquent female-identifying musical voices to expand the canon, share stories and reflect on life in the world today. VanderKolk will be joined by pianist Paige Roberts Molloy in works by Reena Esmail, Alexandra Gardener, Althea Talbot-Howard, Lera Auerbach and Helen Grime.  

With the 2024/2025 season announcement this month comes a whole new series of exciting performances in Octave 9. Stay tuned for more info. 

Mark Robbins’ position is generously underwritten as the Stephen Whyte Associate Principal Horn. 

Principal Oboe Mary Lynch VanderKolk’s position is generously supported by Anonymous donors. 

Octave 9 Series programming is presented as part of the Seattle Symphony’s New Music WORKS initiative, which is supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.