One-Minute Solos

Classical music is an art that deals, at least publicly, with big spans of time, which goes for traditional forms like the symphony as well as for newer ones like free improv. Miniaturists have tended to work in domestic, even private genres: madrigals, songs, keyboard pieces. The art of saying as much as you can in as small a space as possible is an admirable skill. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a greater challenge than expansiveness—but as a composer whose longest work ever clocks in at an epic 22 minutes (for four movements), I’m sympathetic to artful brevity. Tonight, over 50 local artists—poets and dancers, too, not only musicians—will show what they can do, by themselves, in 60 seconds as they perform “One-Minute Solos” on a benefit for the Seattle Improvised Music Festival, Feb. 8-17. (Now try imagine a Seattle Symphony concert comprising 50 one-minute pieces for full orchestra: that’d be cool.) Good Shepherd Chapel, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N., gschapel.blogspot.com, www.seattleimprovisedmusic.com. $5-$15. 8 p.m.

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Sat., Jan. 12, 8 p.m., 2008