Check out suggested Zoom settings below for optimal participation.

Emily’s blog post:

As a fairly recent transplant from Missoula to Seattle, Racer Sessions and FreeSessions are close to home. I treasure how this project and the community embodies acceptance and exploration. Every session I attend leaves me renewed in my understanding of presence and the art of improvisation. 

I chose to highlight the NAACP this month because of their historic, longstanding dedication to securing equality and eliminating race-based discrimination. As one of the leading civil rights organizations, it is important to acknowledge not only the work the NAACP has already accomplished but also the ways in which we can now help with the work still left to do. Learn more at: https://www.naacp.org/take-action/

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In this curation, I explore the dynamics between isolation and ensemble in an improvised piece for midi keyboard, electric guitar, and snare drum. 

During the last few weeks, I’ve archived my sonic environment during moments when I am alone  – studying for classes, reading, cooking breakfast, sitting outside my house with a morning cup of joe, responding to emails in my bedroom.

I use those recordings to layer, sample, remix, and improvise upon moments of isolation in order to create a collective ensemble.

It is my intention to speak not only to the efforts involved in maintaining joy while subsumed in months of isolation but also to the ways in which feeling alone is still a feeling full of life even while we are apart from others in time and space. 

I ask each group in the open jam session to also consider the intersection of isolation and ensemble as they improvise. 

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Emily Silks (she/her) was born and raised in New Mexico and is now a Seattle based musician and a graduate student in the ethnomusicology department at the University of Washington. She earned her undergraduate degree in percussion performance from the University of Montana in 2018 and is recognized both as a Presser Foundation Scholar and a University Scholar.

From the organizers:

We are excited to resume our monthly sessions this Sunday 9/6 in collaboration with Seattle’s Racer Sessions online. Online sessions will go from 6-7pm MT. We’ll feature a curator for the first 15 minutes, and open up to improvisations from the community after that. Every month we will highlight and donate to a racial justice organization, encouraging our community to support this organization as well. We are supporting racial justice organizations in order to honor and recognize the profound influence of Black music on our community and the systemic way Black people have not been properly supported by the music industry and our general society. We feel it is important to catalyze our privilege as a community to support Black people and other marginalized communities.

For September, the curators have chosen to highlight the Southern Poverty Law Center. Read the blog post below for more information. Find suggestions below the blog post for optimizing Zoom audio settings.

Sunday, September 6, 6pm MT Zoom link for the session: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82572053587

Blog post by Ed Stalling:

Combined Racer Session (Seattle) & FreeSession (Lakebottom Sound, Missoula) 

September 6, 2020

FreeSessions’ aim is to use improvisation to help bridge the different “scenes” that exist across genres in Missoula.  Sunday’s opening is just that:  two artists from different “scenes” coming together to improvise a piece they call “Through The Window.”

Ed Stalling and John Sporman are no stranger to the Montana music scene.  Combined, they perform over 250 gigs a year in a wide variety of groups, genres and settings. 

Multi-instrumentalist John Sporman creates and performs with national touring groups (currently with Wylie and The Wild West), local bands (Tom Catmull and Clerics, Shahs, NextDoorPrisonHotel, Avant-Garde Alliance), and also writes scores for films, silent movies and dance pieces.  

Percussionist Ed Stalling has been described as having “huge ears and an even larger command of subtle dynamics.”  His performance experience crosses genres ranging from pit-orchestras and big bands to traditional Brazilian combos, covering all points on the musical compass.

They will present an improvisational piece called “Through The Window”

Through The Window

Many of us across the world have loved ones in nursing homes.  We put our hands together on windows — generations separated by glass.  On one side, those at the end of their lives; having lived through the great depression, a world war, the turmoil of the 60’s.  On the other side, their grown kids, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.  Unable to hug or hold hands, communications fraught by bad hearing and dementia, it’s a sad meeting of confusion, frustration, and sadness. 

I’m at such a window in Missoula with my 97-year old mother-in-law.  Pictures alone can’t express how surreal it is so we’ll try music.  We’ll have an improvisational musical conversation exploring: What is it like?  To be confused, tired, isolated, 97 years old, looking out a window at your daughter, your grandkids, your great-grandkids, not quite knowing why they can’t come in and what’s happening.

Invest in Social Justice:

We want to Spotlight and encourage donating to SPLC, The Southern Poverty Law Center.  Hate groups are using social media to grow hate, and this is a group that is a counter-balance to them.  They fight hate from three angles:

1. They monitor hate groups and other extremists throughout the US and expose their activities to the public, the media and law enforcement.
2. They Teach Tolerance by providing educational resources to teachers that emphasize anti-bias and social justice — encourages children and young people to challenge prejudice and learn how to be agents of change in their own lives. 
3. They stand up for the powerless, the exploited and other victims of discrimination and hate.  With a staff of more than 100 lawyers and advocates, SPLC focuses on impact litigation in these practice areas: Children’s Rights, Economic Justice, Immigrant Justice, LGBTQ Rights, Voting Rights, and Criminal Justice Reform.

SPLC also gets the highest rating from Charity Navigator — meaning they are a well-managed, efficient, reputable not-for-profit.

ZOOM AUDIO SETTINGS SUGGESTIONS:

0) TURN ON ORIGINAL SOUND! (details below)

1) Use a laptop if possible (not a phone or a tablet)

a. Use headphones when playing with other people

b. Use external mic if available

2) Settings → Audio

a. Turn OFF: Automatically adjust microphone volume

b. Adjust microphone level

c. Optionally: turn ON “Enable stereo” (this options needs to be activated first on your zoom account)

3) Settings → Audio → Advanced

a. Turn on: ‘show in-meeting option to “Enable Original Sound” from microphone’

b. Disable: both Background Noise options

c. Echo Cancellation: Auto

4) Turn on Original Sound!

a. Turn it on in the top left of the meeting; if it’s on, it should read “Turn off Original Sound”

5) If possible, connect to the internet with an Ethernet cable, not WiFi

The FreeSessions, in collaboration with Racer Sessions, recognizes and honors this critical time in the movement to end systemic racism and police brutality against Black people. Therefore we will not be holding a session on June 7. We hope that you will join us in continuing to learn about these issues and take actions to support Black people and this movement because BLACK LIVES MATTER and we live in a culture and country that continues to systematically deny this fact.

Here are some resources that may be of use on your journey. We are encouraged by how many people are leaning in to this work right now, and we hope you will continue to do so for the long haul.

Education Resources:

bit.ly/ANTIRACISMRESOURCES

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PrAq4iBNb4nVIcTsLcNlW8zjaQXBLkWayL8EaPlh0bc/preview?fbclid=IwAR3K-i7ExSOz7Xd11hB65s6D6Ti4rS3DrbBG65XnSF_uR_zIPtLE8jF0RoE&pru=AAABcqB9QIk*zdgIkwIHaRXLdg5mv1-QkA

https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1a-lzdtxOlWuzYNGqwlYwxMWADtZ6vJGCpKhtJHHrS54/mobilebasic?fbclid=IwAR0i63KwBFE3DNdqZ7MX8DreKZwfTDV4OGpfd3r5Z-DtESXo29He4Fcfix0

https://blacklivesmatter.com

https://www.mpd150.com

https://www.joincampaignzero.org/#vision

https://unicornriot.ninja

https://www.blackvisionsmn.org

https://eji.org

https://www.reclaimtheblock.org/home/#about

Action Resources:

m4bl.org

Montana Places to Donate:

MT BIPOC Mutual Aid Fund: Venmo @mtbipocaid. Cash app: $MTBIPOCAid

https://www.themtrep.org

http://hs.umt.edu/aas/donate.php?fbclid=IwAR07ru-7bWcqMag8rpa1oII81LmirKuQ5k20JBnaQgTaZQpSZneeTsVDg3A

https://www.empowermt.org

National Places to Donate:

https://nymag.com/strategist/article/where-to-donate-for-black-lives-matter.html

National Resource List:

https://linktr.ee/nationalresourceslist

Anti-Racism Resources for the Arts and Nonprofits:

https://blog.fracturedatlas.org

How to Support Black-Owned Small Business

https://www.finimpact.com/blacklivesmatter-support-black-owned-small-businesses/

Please email lakebottomsound@gmail.com to make any useful suggestions for this list.

Mitchell’s Blog Post:

I moved to Missoula last August to study and teach music. Until this point in my life, I had never lived more than an hour’s drive from my childhood home in central New Hampshire. In the absence of the familiar, I became confronted with many unexpected obstacles. The need for honest expression, community, support, and understanding significantly overshadowed much of my need to study and improve at my craft. In response to this imbalance, I found that the act of creating melodies on the piano, an instrument that I held little to no expectation of my technical ability on, was a kind of therapeutic exercise. 

As I did this over time, I began to accumulate the string of melodies and textures that we will be presenting tonight. When applied to quintet I intentionally made key landing points clear but left a lot of ambiguity in how the group arrives at each new groove, melody or texture. This creates a deeply open experience where time, harmony, and texture must be thought of as elastic and shared. The human connection and trust that I have felt though the performance of this music has been exceptionally cathartic.

The amazing drummer/musician/person Matt Wilson performed in Missoula a few weeks ago. During his time here, he brought up the idea that while creating no expectations = no failures. So often I see highly capable people who are dying to create but are paralyzed by the idea of taking an embarrassing or incorrect first step. My hope is that this piece can help show that in any creative/improvisational/life endeavor, steps can just be steps. 

Though I don’t have any specific parameters for how we will create in the following session, I would like to challenge you all to examine what expectations, titles, and identities you hold for your own creation. Do not necessarily reject them, but question them, attempt to find what is driving these associations and weigh out whether it is helpful to you or not. I have found the Free Sessions immensely helpful to this process, so if you are in the room, I guarantee that you’re already on the right track.

The Quintet will be:

Me: Trombone

Ross Strausser: Saxophone

Connor Rocicot: Piano

Kyler Rebich: Bass

Willie Baltz: Percussion