Sounds Outside: experimental jazz at Cal Anderson Park on Saturday

Now in its fourth year, the Sounds Outside music festival on Capitol Hill is becoming a more familiar spectacle on a summer day in Cal Anderson Park.

From its inception, Sounds Outside has been a curious, attention-getting diversion for those who happened upon the series of concerts that celebrate various forms of experimental jazz and improvised music. The last concert of the season will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday.

"People seem to be catching on," said John Seman, director of the Monktail Creative Music Concern, which hosts the festival. "We like to do the stealth thing and have people happen upon it. Otherwise, people might be either intimidated or have certain ideas about it, that it's unlistenable or that it's not a good time. And really, we have such a good time all day."

Sounds Outside amounts to two festivals. The first was held in July and attracted about 800 people even as the event competed with the Capitol Hill Block Party. That was simply one of the few Saturdays available when Seman went to reserve space in the park in January.

"That's good because it means more people are using the park," Seman said, "and that helps us promote creative music in a way that is novel and have it available to people who might not otherwise encounter it."

The music runs until nearly dusk with five concerts of about one hour each. Headlining tomorrow's festival is saxophonist Bert Wilson, 69. The Olympia resident was a fixture on the New York free-jazz scene in the 1960s.

Stricken by polio at age 4, Wilson has used a wheelchair almost all his life. He is a master of "multiphonics," a process of fingering and breathing that allows Wilson to produce more than one sound at a time. He worked the technique for hours in his Manhattan walk-up in the 1960s. Since the building didn't have an elevator, he didn't leave the building much and had plenty of time to practice.

Known as "endless fingers," Wilson cuts an interesting figure, round and low to the ground, full of sound, racing and catapulting to surprising ends. A standard-bearer of his genre, he has taught many local saxophone players but does not frequently perform.

Opening the festival is the Melbatones, a quartet led by violinist David Skip Milford. Pianist Steven Fandrich, drummer Mark Ostrowski and Seman, who plays bass, complete the group, which is part of Monktail, a collective of avant-garde musicians and artists based in Seattle.

Figeater, a trio led by clarinetist Beth Fleenor plays at 2:30 p.m.; woodwind player Greg Sinibaldi performs at 4 p.m. The Syncopated Taint Horn Quartet plays at 5:30 and features one of Wilson's students, Craig Flory, and saxophonist Hans Teuber, well known to local audiences of straight-ahead jazz. Wilson takes the stage at 7 p.m.

"We thought we'd have obstacles this year because of the economic situation," Seman said. "But it was just the kind of thing that helped us promote a free concert in the park. People are looking for inexpensive ways to spend the weekend and they seem a little more engaged in the community."

Hugo Kugiya: Hkugiya@yahoo.com