Doors at 6:00 | Show at 7:00
All ages are welcome.
Children 2 and under get in FREE.
Free parking is available in the lot across the street until full.
Breathing with the Trees is an Earth Day concert event at the Alberta Abbey, featuring The Tree People, Igor and the New Name Band, Bug Toast, Alexa Wiley with Bret Malmquist, Jake Soffer, and Ellie Hartman, all performing original music, songs and poems for and about trees. There will be original art in the form of moving images, photos and drawings projected behind the performers.
TREE PEOPLE
Tree People play creative, melodic, poetic, “freak folk” music. Their 1st album, The Tree People, recorded at a studio in the woods near Eugene, Oregon in 1979, and distributed locally at Eugene record stores, coffee houses, concerts and festivals, was discovered by record collectors around the world in this century and reissued, to international critical acclaim, by record companies in Japan and Spain. Guerssen Records of Spain reissued a second album, Human Voices and then released a third album, It’s My Story, leading to a performance by The Tree People at the Musique Disperses Festival in Spain. The Tree People released a fourth record album in 2022, The Return of The Tree People, along with a hardcover book of drawings, photographs, lyrics, sheet music and stories about The Tree People. The Tree People’s lineup for the “Breathing with the Trees” concert is 3 Hand Stephen (Stephen Cohen)- voice and acoustic guitar; Rich Hinrichsen- double bass and voice; Robin Kallsen- voice, accordion, and percussion; and Liberty Broillet- flute.
IGOR AND THE NEW NAME BAND
Portland poet Igor Bjorn Brezhnev has teamed up with musicians and songwriters Ari Asteri and Old Nick Skaredoff to create an amalgamated music and poetry performance. Igor's poetry is documentary in nature, often taking readers and listeners on a journey through the emotional landscapes of his life. Ari Asteri is a Portland-based musician, songwriter and enjoyer of delicious pastries. She brings the medicine of her songs and improvisational keyboard sounds to the band. Olde Nick Skaredoff is a survivor of the Deep South culture wars of Louisiana in the eighties...the culture wars of Moscow, North Idaho in the nineties...and the culture wars of Red Texas in the oughts. He now resides in Portland, Oregon, where he is no longer at war. Nick is lending his stories to The New Name Band and creating improvisational musical landscapes with his guitar and mandolin. Together they quilt a rich tapestry of life for their audiences and take on a new name every time they perform.
BUG TOAST
Bug Toast defies categorization, playing original, genre-bending, world-influenced, progressive folk on bouzouki, accordion, guitar, bass, violin, cello, and percussion, with field recordings, sound design, textured instrumentation, vocal harmonies, and interesting time signatures. Blended from two musical families, the combination of brothers, father/brother/daughter plus husband and son, makes for familial yet unfamiliar music. The group creates the arrangements together -- richly textured, interwoven pieces with careful attention to counterpoint, voicing, harmonies, and rhythms.
ALEX WILEY WITH BRET MALMQUIST
“Wild metaphorical music that rocks” has been used to describe the music of Alexa Wiley and the Wilderness. Alexa has purposefully searched out that which is unpredictable and wild about herself. And it does mean taking a chance of getting lost in the wilderness of oneself. Longtime Pacific Northwest stellar guitarist Bret Malmquist will add musical lead guitar to Alexa’s meaningful lyrics.
JAKE SOFFER
Known for his uplifting melodies and expressive grooves, guitarist and composer Jake Soffer draws from the sounds of folk/roots, ambient and new age to create a unique, non-lyrical musical voice. While driving through California’s Shasta National Forest — an area plagued by a series of forest fires — new age guitarist-composer Jake Soffer was taken aback when he spotted a single tree thriving amidst the charred remains of the surrounding forest. The powerful image evoked in Jake an ambiguous sense of tragedy mixed with hope, and it inspired the title track for his latest EP, The Tree That Remained Standing. Jake has emerged as an impressionistic composer, a clever arranger, and a multi-talented guitarist, equally adept at complex finger picked passages and dynamic clean-toned electric guitar soundscapes.
ELLIE HARTMAN
Ellie Hartman is an exuberant PNW singer/songwriter whose style is a blend of Indie, Pop, and Folk. Some of her recent performances include the Singer Songwriter Night at the magnificent Walter's Cultural Arts Center and on the stage of the Newberg Lavender Festival, as well as many other festivals, wineries, and places of joyful gathering. This year, she's also had the pleasure of collaborating with her band The Oaks, which includes tenor saxophone, piano, and drums. Whether performing with a band or solo, Ellie's goal is always to give the people around her a boost of energy through upbeat tunes and thoughtful lyrics. As someone who always prioritizes kindness, she wants everyone to feel welcome and at home during her performances.