A number of Sequenza 21 contributors and readers also populate the site ImprovFriday. It’s a web community that encourages sharing of improvisations, compositions with an element of improv, and recent compositional sketches at a series of web events run on … you guessed it, Fridays. While this all sounds very free form, the group has specific guidelines for participation, found here. Employing these operating principles are a wide ranging group of spontaneous creators: diverse in style, outspoken yet constructive in critiquing each others’ work, but unified in ambitious music-making. The community’s first compilation recording, ImprovFriday Vol. 1, is now available from online vendors Amazon
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Composers, Conductors, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Festivals, Improv, Interviews, Music Events, Opera, San Francisco
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
Read moreI’ve only been living in New York City for a few years, but I already feel like there are times when I just simply take the city for granted. Or worse, I don’t take advantage of all that it has to offer. But I think what makes living here so exciting is the opportunity to accidentally stumble onto incredible events, or to go places expecting one thing and end up (pleasantly) at something totally and completely different. This is exactly what happened yesterday afternoon as I wandered in to the World Financial Center Winter Garden during the third hour of
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Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Improv, Music Events, San Francisco
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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Concerts, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Improv, Just Intonation, Music Events, Percussion, San Francisco
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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Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Improv, Music Events, San Francisco
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
Read moreSan Francisco is famous for its innovations, its open minds, and its spirit of protest. In 2005, according to Rova Saxophone Quartet member Larry Ochs, “our government was committing all sorts of crimes against humanity in all of our names. I wanted to create some art that flew in the face of those acts – but not overtly political because that’s not what we do.” Rova dreamed up an international collaborative work in honor of the visionary genius of Buckminster Fuller and his “Spaceship Earth” global perspective. “Good works by people brought together from different countries – if only to
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Chamber Music, Concerts, Downtown, Experimental Music, Improv, jazz, Music Events, New York, Performers
We’ve reached the final concert of Interpretations’ twentieth season of provocative programming in New York City! Founded and curated by baritone Thomas Buckner in 1989, Interpretations focuses on the relationship between contemporary composers from both jazz and classical backgrounds and their interpreters, whether the composers themselves or performers who specialize in new music. To celebrate, Jerry Bowles has invited the artists involved in this season’s concerts to blog about their Interpretations experiences. Our last concert is also an anniversary celebration: The String Trio of New York has been going strong for 31 years. Guitarist James Emery and bassist John Lindberg
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Chamber Music, Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Improv, Music Events, New York, Performers
Interpretations continues its twentieth season of provocative programming in New York City. Founded and curated by baritone Thomas Buckner in 1989, Interpretations focuses on the relationship between contemporary composers from both jazz and classical backgrounds and their interpreters, whether the composers themselves or performers who specialize in new music. To celebrate, Jerry Bowles has invited the artists involved in this season’s concerts to blog about their Interpretations experiences. The concert on 12 March 2009 is a recital by the producer himself, baritone Thomas Buckner. He took time out of his busy schedule to tell us in his own words about
Read moreWhat better way to ring in the year than to take in a couple ensembles, from opposite ends of the spectrum, showing in much the same way what the whole point of playing is? Wojciech Kilar is a Polish composer from the same 60’s group that gave us Penderecki and Gorecki, but is notable for his detour into film music (Like Coppola’s Dracula). This is his utterly simple/hard 1988 piece Orawa (there are a bunch of other video performances of this on YouTube, but this one with Agnieszka Duczmal conducting the Chamber Orchestra “Amadeus” has them all beat for pacing and
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