Sounds Outside concert series sounds a little different

To the uninitiated passers-by in Cal Anderson Park, the sounds coming from the shallow, grassy bowl Saturday might induce a bit of confusion at first.

Instruments clearly will be involved. People clearly will be in control of them, and expertly so. Harmony, melody, arranged in bars. Music, for sure. Jazz of some kind. But it will arrive upon the ears of most as something different and unnamable — and certainly unlike anything heard in a typical, free summer concert.

But this is Capitol Hill, the intersection of bohemian and high culture in Seattle, where the work of a run-of-the-mill blues or pop cover band might go underappreciated, and where something fresh and challenging might just take hold and grow.

At least, that's the hope of the organizers of the Sounds Outside concert series, in its third year.

"It's music that most fans aren't exposed to in everyday life," said musician and concert organizer John Seman. "We're trying to promote discovery. If it's outside and it's free, maybe people will give it a chance, encounter it in a way they wouldn't otherwise."

The first Sounds Outside concert of the summer starts at 1 p.m. Saturday, with a set by Paul Harding & the Juju Detective Agency, the first of five freestyle jazz performances that will last almost eight hours in the park's amphitheater. The performance space, where outdoor movies are also played, was part of the city's recent re-creation of the formerly dull and dusty playfield near Seattle Central Community College.

The concert series (a second Sounds Outside concert is set for Aug. 23) is the work of the Monktail Creative Music Concern, a self-described musicians' cooperative made up of about a dozen active composers and musicians, many from the Cornish College of the Arts. Monktail was started by Seman and drummer Mark Ostrowski, high-school classmates from Reading, Pa., who went their separate ways for college (Seman went to Oberlin, Ostrowski to Berklee) but reunited in Seattle. The musicians of Monktail, according to its Web site monktail.com, "thrive on the atypical and exigent; the real weirdo stuff."

For instance, Paul Harding & the Juju Detective Agency describes itself on MySpace as a "mix of free Motown, post-hardbop, snakeskin Miles Davis, cubic country ... We call it free hop."

"Harding is like [saxophonist] John Coltrane but with words," Seman said. "He totally blows."

The Owcharuk Sextet (rhythm section, violin, trumpet and clarinet), led by pianist Michael Owcharuk, follows the Harding group at 2:30 p.m. Slavic liturgies and classical piano formed Owcharuk's musical upbringing and are discernible in his group's music.

Then at 4 p.m., guitarist Bill Horist takes the stage with a solo performance that promises to deliver sounds rarely pulled from a guitar.

"He uses implements on the strings and body of the guitar," Seman said. "He's not just plucking away."

Grammy-winning trumpeter Cuong Vu, a jazz-studies professor at the University of Washington, performs at 5:30 p.m. The former Pat Metheny sideman is known for playing what might best be described as a soundscape of electronically enhanced, arrhythmic jazz.

Ending the concert is Blue Cranes, a saxophone quintet slated to start at 7 p.m. The Portland crossover band joins indie rock with experimental jazz.

All five performers will play for one hour with 30-minute breaks in between. Concert-

goers should bring their own food and drinks.

Seman guessed that perhaps as much as a third of last year's audience "happened upon it."

"I'm sure some of them wondered, 'What is this? This isn't music,' " said Seman, 34, a trained ethnomusicologist who works as a preservationist for Experience Music Project. "There will be some people who will need a little finagling to get on board ... This isn't exactly lawn-chair music."

Hugo Kugiya: hkugiya@yahoo.com