Oct 15 Wednesday
The festival honors the artistic edge and the rich history of the art form, celebrates Seattle’s jazz scene with performances, premieres, and special projects by esteemed resident artists alongside international masters.
This year’s lineup includes Christian McBride and Brad Mehldau, Brandee Younger, Arooj Aftab, Makaya McCraven,Ghost-Note, and many more.
In this course wildlife artist, Natasha Terry, will guide participants on how to paint illustrations of local animals (no drawing skills needed). Beginners are absolutely welcome! Natasha will go over the fundamentals of watercolor painting and make sure you have the basics you need to paint within your own style and skill level. The lessons include a range of animals (birds, amphibians, bugs, and mammals), rather than landscapes or environments. We will work on up to 5 different watercolor illustrations over the course of 6 weeks. Weather permitting, we may spend a small portion of our class time in the park area surrounding the community center. This class is meant to be fun and enriching—a beautiful way to connect with the gorgeous urban ecosystems of Seattle.
Sponsored by KNKX. BIMA is proud to partner once again with Seattle’s Earshot Jazz to as part of the most prestigious jazz festival in the Pacific Northwest. Earshot Jazz dedicates itself year-round to cultivating a vibrant, diverse jazz community—championing artistic innovation, honoring the rich history and integrity of the genre, and fostering meaningful connections between musicians and audiences through the annual Earshot Jazz Festival.
The BIMA Annual Within/Earshot Jazz Festival is more than a concert series—it’s a dynamic, living conversation where sound, story, and visual art intersect. For the entire month of October, the Frank Buxton Auditorium transforms into a creative studio, a place where jazz musicians, storytellers, and visual artists come together to explore and celebrate the many facets of jazz.
Each artist brings their own unique voice to the festival, honoring jazz’s deep roots and its ever-evolving future. Some lean into poetic, modern grooves that push boundaries and invite reflection; others revive the exuberance of speakeasy-era swing, capturing the spirit of a bygone era. The pulse of Brazilian folk traditions adds rich textures and rhythms, while fresh voices from the Northwest highlight jazz’s ongoing innovation and cultural resonance.
Whether you attend a single event or immerse yourself in the full month-long experience, you’ll discover a vibrant tapestry of music, culture, and storytelling that showcases jazz’s timeless appeal and its power to inspire across generations and communities.
Stage of Fools Written by Joy McCullough Directed by Amy Poisson
A scrappy feminist theater company is about to go under when they receive an offer they can't refuse: has-been 80s action movie star Jake Stone will endow them with more money than they've ever dreamed of, if they'll produce King Lear, with him in the titular role. Never mind that he's an entitled, egotistical blowhard. These women can survive anything for the sake of the theater they love...right?
Evening and matinee performances.
It’s almost like being in love! Dance your way back in time to one of the most romantic musicals ever written, Lerner and Loewe’s Brigadoon. Americans Tommy and Jeff are hiking the Scottish Highlands, when out of the mists they stumble upon the enchanting village of Brigadoon, which appears for only one day every 100 years. But this dreamlike place is far more than it seems—and those who fall in love there might never be the same.
From the writers of My Fair Lady and Camelot comes this soaring love story, full of glorious ballet and favorite tunes like “Come to Me, Bend to Me,” “The Heather on the Hill” and “Almost Like Being in Love.” This production features an exquisite new adaptation, which enhances all the romance and magic that makes Brigadoon a truly timeless masterpiece.
Drawing on classic Poe tales like “The Black Cat,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” among others, this original story chronicles our Narrator’s dark descent into depravity.After the death of her beloved Eleanora, the Narrator finds herself visited by a conspiracy of ravens who spur her to relive acts of cruelty, revenge, and of course, murder. Driven to the edge of madness, the Narrator must confront her worst impulses and be freed from grief and guilt nevermore.
Welcomed by KNKX. Frank Vignola is one of the most extraordinary guitarists performing before the public today. His stunning virtuosity has made him the guitarist of choice for many of the world’s top musicians, including Ringo Starr, Madonna, Donald Fagen, John Lewis, Tommy Emmanuel, Lionel Hampton, the Boston Pops, the New York Pops, and guitar legend Les Paul, who named Vignola to his “Five Most Admired Guitarists List:” for the Wall Street Journal.
His dynamic genre-spanning music has brought him to 21 countries on three continents – and still growing – performing in some of the world’s most illustrious venues, including the Sydney Opera House, Carnegie Hall, The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, New York’s Lincoln Center, The Blue Note, and the world’s oldest indoor concert hall, Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, Italy.
Pasquale Grasso - It was the kind of endorsement most rising guitarists can only dream of, and then some. In his interview for Vintage Guitar magazine’s February 2016 cover story, Pat Metheny was asked to name some younger musicians who’d impressed him. “The best guitar player I’ve heard in maybe my entire life is floating around now, Pasquale Grasso,” said the jazz-guitar icon and NEA Jazz Master. “This guy is doing something so amazingly musical and so difficult. “Mostly what I hear now are guitar players who sound a little bit like me mixed with a little bit of [John Scofield] and a little bit of [Bill Frisell],” he continued. “What’s interesting about Pasquale is that he doesn’t sound anything like that at all. In a way, it is a little bit of a throwback, because his model—which is an incredible model to have—is Bud Powell. He has somehow captured the essence of that language from piano onto guitar in a way that almost nobody has ever addressed. He’s the most significant new guy I’ve heard in many, many years.”
Threading the ages, New York Voices weaves their vocal arranging and elegant point of view on melody, harmony and shape through composers they admire on their latest outing. Ellington, Corea, Brubeck, Hersch, Porter, Lennon and McCartney, Lins and Cuba’s Cervantes are the welcoming prisms for them to ring their voices into a fine tapestry of color, sound and light. Produced while celebrating their 30th year together as an ensemble, they have gathered this collection into what is a curator’s wish list for an evening’s program. Taking these compositions in their care, they tend to invert, change time signature and reharm, but never so far that the lyric doesn’t sing front and center. And with intermittent a cappella palate cleansers throughout the sequence, the listener gets to experience the set as the artist envisioned. Also included in this fine array of compositions are two from the group, allowing just enough room to insert a few originals to complete their “Reminiscing in Tempo.”
The historic tradition of mariachi music has its roots of origin in cities such as Guadalajara and México City. As the ever-evolving genre's influence spread, it reached Chicago and birthed Mariachi Herencia de México. The 2x Latin GRAMMY®-nominated band has issued five chart-topping albums and has performed all across the North American continent paving the way for a new generation of mariachi musicians. The young, virtuosic band is composed of 14 musicians, ages 18-32, representing a new bicultural generation in the U.S.
