Author: Polly Moller

Polly Moller is a composer, performer, improviser, performance artist, and curator based in Oakland, California, USA. She practices a lot, writes many grant proposals, drinks a lot of mochas, and serves on the Board of Directors of Outsound Presents.
Composers, Conductors, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Festivals, Improv, Interviews, Music Events, Opera, San Francisco

Let’s ask Gino Robair

The San Francisco Electronic Music Festival celebrates its 10th anniversary this week.  On the final festival night, Saturday, September 19th, the program will include a special all-electronic performance of the opera I, Norton, by San Francisco Bay Area composer Gino Robair. I, Norton is based on the proclamations of Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, who lived during the Gold Rush era in San Francisco. The concert begins at 8:00 p.m. at the Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th Street, San Francisco. Tickets are available online from Brown Paper Tickets. Gino Robair has created music for

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by Polly Moller
Composers, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Festivals, Interviews, Performers, San Francisco

Let’s ask Donald Swearingen

The San Francisco Electronic Music Festival (SFEMF) kicks off next week, and several of its original founders will be performing in celebration of the festival’s tenth anniversary.  One of them, Donald Swearingen, will take the stage on Thursday, September 17th along with Maria Chavez, Mark Trayle, and Mason Bates.  The show starts at 8 pm in the Brava Theater, 2781 24th Street, San Francisco. Tickets are available online or at the door. It’s hard to coax Donald Swearingen away from his many projects, but I did manage to get him to share some background and a few hard-to-find details about

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by Polly Moller
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Film Music, Opera, Premieres, San Francisco

Let’s ask Jack Curtis Dubowsky

San Francisco-based composer, conductor, writer, educator, and filmmaker Jack Curtis Dubowsky is a very busy man.  This Wednesday night, September 9th at 7:30 p.m., he’ll take the stage along with the Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble in San Francisco’s Meridian Gallery, located at 535 Powell Street, convenient to Powell Street BART.  Next month, he has a new opera premiering. But fortunately, he wasn’t too busy to talk to me. S21: How does it feel to be leading off the Meridian Gallery’s 11th season of Composers in Performance? JCD:  It’s an honor to be selected to be a part of the Meridian

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by Polly Moller
Cello, Chamber Music, Concerts, Electro-Acoustic, Exhibitions, Experimental Music, Music Events, San Francisco

Good herb!

That’s what early settlers said about the wild mint growing all over the peaceful hills and oceanside that would one day be paved over and known as San Francisco.  In fact, for many years starting in 1835, that’s what the settlement was called, only in Spanish: Yerba Buena. History lives on in the name of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, located on 3rd Street between Mission and Howard. YBCA’s New Frequencies performance series, curated by Performing Arts Manager Isabel Yrigoyen, is well underway, and offers a couple of intriguing choices in coming days. First on Saturday evening, August 22,

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by Polly Moller
Experimental Music, Music Events, San Francisco, Video

New music and intermedia – the life of the party

Making the pronouncement, “Oakland is to San Francisco as Brooklyn is to Manhattan”, is the quickest way to start an argument on either side of the Bay (or in the Big Apple, probably).  Over-simplified as that statement may be, there are times when I can see why people believe it.  I moved to Oakland for two reasons — one, to join the community of artists there; and two, because for the price of a room in San Francisco, I could have my own one-bedroom apartment in Oakland. But I digress. We’ve got our own free weekly paper, the East Bay

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by Polly Moller
Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Improv, Music Events, San Francisco

Outsound New Music Summit kicks off on Sunday

San Francisco’s Mission District, home of so much that is cool, is a natural neighborhood for the arts.  The San Francisco Community Music Center located at 544 Capp Street is the the Bay Area’s oldest community arts organization and San Francisco’s largest provider of low-cost, high quality music education.  In 2008, 2,300 students of all ages, ethnicities and income levels enrolled in Music Center programs and over 16,000 people enjoyed musical performances at no or low cost. Starting this Sunday, the SFCMC will host the eighth annual Outsound New Music Summit, a festival which for all its success and longevity

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by Polly Moller
Concerts, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Improv, Just Intonation, Music Events, Percussion, San Francisco

Performances next week at the Lab celebrate 25 years of oddity

I’ve been working so hard today I’ve forgotten to eat, and it’s in that spirit of lightheadedness and poor impulse control that I share with you the following San Francisco Bay Area new music scene update. The Lab’s 25th anniversary performance series is well underway, and in just one night, they’ll run the gamut of styles celebrating their audacious artistic vision.  On Thursday, July 2nd, Mills College’s own Chris Brown will curate and perform in a concert featuring Charles Johnson, Chad and Curtis McKinney, Tom Nunn and William Winant. When Johnson et. al. take the stage, you’ll hear amplified string

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by Polly Moller
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Improv, Music Events, San Francisco

Summer Solstice in the Bay Area means the Garden of Memory

The San Francisco Bay Area  has a unique way of celebrating the first day of summer.  Our most popular new music event, the Garden of Memory, comes around every summer solstice, and reliably attracts more than 1,000 visitors while creating a parking nightmare for miles in every direction.  In 2007 I was forced, like many attendees, to park in the nearby cemetery and accidentally backed over the curb.  I left my car there and hurried away apologizing profusely for actually driving over somebody’s grave. Every year over 30 composers, improvisers, and sound-artists take over the columbarium at the Chapel of

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by Polly Moller
Contemporary Classical

Monday night mind-blowing

If, like me, you’re a San Franciscan who’d rather have your mind blown than numbed on a Monday night, Other Minds is hoping you’ll turn out for a benefit movie screening this coming Monday, June 15th. The film, which bears the politicially-incorrect title The Revenge of the Dead Indians: In Memoriam John Cage, is neither a documentary nor a feature, but it’s scored with John Cage’s music, plus found audio landscapes.  Encounters with market vendors and street cleaners mix in with Cage tributes from Frank Zappa, Noam Chomsky, Yoko Ono, Frank Gehry, Ellsworth Kelly,  and Merce Cunningham, directed by Henning

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by Polly Moller
Contemporary Classical

Matthew Sperry: Gone but Never Forgotten

On June 5, 2003, SF Bay Area musician Matthew Sperry was killed by an inattentive driver while riding his bicycle to work.  Grieving friends in the Bay Area music community gathered spontaneously at 21 Grand at that time to play together in his memory, and every year since then, there’s been a Festival in honor of Matthew.  It’s grown to include national and international artists drawn from Matthew’s wide circle of inspiration and collaboration — Tom Waits, M.C. Schmidt, Johannes Bergmark, Sean Meehan, Ellen Fullman, and many others have contributed to SperryFest in past years.  I was first invited to

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by Polly Moller