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Scratch Night with Ollella
How Space Shapes Sound
EVENT NOTES
Doors for this event will open at 6:30 PM. Town Hall events are approximately 75 minutes long.
Tickets to this event are free, but please pre-register. All ages are welcome!
Why don’t we often see symphonic music in rock venues, or rock music in concert halls… and what shifts when we try?
Symphonic music has evolved through concert halls, designed to project acoustically in naturally reverberant rooms. Rock music, by contrast, was born in clubs: amplified, built for energy and proximity. These traditions developed in different spaces, for different audiences, with different listening experiences. As a cellist working within contemporary songwriting, Town Hall’s 2026 Artist-in-Residence Ollella often finds herself between these two worlds. So what happens when you bring them together?
This panel discussion brings together three powerhouses in the Seattle music scene to discuss how arrangement, amplification, and instrumentation shape emotional impact in live performance and recorded music.
Present on the panel will be:
Ellie Barber – Town Hall Artist-in-Residence; songwriter, cellist and vocalist behind Ollella
K Van Petten – Musician, music ecosystem builder, moderator
Jordan Cunningham – Sound engineer, multi-instrumentalist, producer
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Ellie Barber a.k.a. Ollella (pronounced oh-lel-uh) began her career as a musician early, singing before she could talk. Trained as a classical cellist since the age of nine, the Seattle indie-folk artist merges her technical string background with authoritative vocals and live-looping. Described as “really outstanding” by NPR Music and “so tastefully done” by Michelle Zauner (Japanese Breakfast), Ollella’s sound is organic with a side of edge, pulling on influences such as Feist, Cat Power, and Sylvan Esso. She has performed on NPR Tiny Desk Concerts, had music featured in film and TV, and is a frequent collaborator with others.
K. Van Petten is a Seattle-based songwriter, poet, and a member of the band False Hemlock. As a non-binary Gemini middle child from the Midwest, their work exists between opposites, embracing multiplicity, possibility, and transformation. Their album For Someone is an audio-poetry record blending music and language, released on Hello America Stereo Cassette. They are a voting member of the Recording Academy, serve on the Community Advisory Board for KEXP and the City of Seattle Music Commission, and work with Sonic Guild, supporting local musicians through grants and live events.
Growing up in Northern California with just enough internet to load ultimate-guitar.com pages, Jordan Cunningham started playing and recording music as a teenager. After college, he began as an intern at Prairie Sun Studios in the San Francisco bay area to assist a wide variety of producers & engineers in the recording process of both independent and major label records. Moving to Seattle in 2011 to work for producer, Michael Connolly, Cunningham started producing albums and EPs for local Seattle artists out of Empty Sea Studios, Studio Litho and other various studios around Washington state. In 2016, he was invited to become the chief engineer and manager of Sage Arts Recording outside of Seattle. (www.sagearts.com)
About Town Hall Residencies
Every year, Town Hall selects exceptional local artists and scholars for paid residencies where they engage with Town Hall programs and collaborate with our programming team to develop original events for the community. Read more about our residency program here.
Presented by Town Hall Seattle.
Events are offered for informational, entertainment, and educational purposes only. Read Town Hall’s Program Content Policy.