Now in its twelfth year, the New Music Summit will feature during cutting-edge experimental and ambient music, twitter-fed performances, improvising software musicbots, electro-acoustic performances, found-object and tape-player interactions, as well as traditional instrument ensembles bending the acoustic paradigm in new and startling ways. Featured during the seven-night festival will be cutting-edge experimental and ambient music, twitter-fed performances, improvising software musicbots, electro-acoustic performances, found-object and tape-player interactions, as well as traditional instrument ensembles bending the acoustic paradigm in new and startling ways.
Fourteen bands will perform throughout the week, including the finale on Saturday, July 27 of Kyle Bruckmann's Wrack, with guests Darren Johnston and Jeb Bishop, premiering …Awaits Silent Tristero's Empire, a 2012 Chamber Music America New Jazz Works commission.
"The New Music Summit is the 'little festival that could,' said Outsound Presents founder, Executive Director and curator, Rent Romus. “We present music where most fear to tread. We feature unique world premieres, amazing unknown young artists, and seasoned masters deserving of more credit across the myriad spectrum of music, many of which reside right here in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Summit is special on the West Coast because it supports the local community in a professional festival environment."
The Festival begins on Sunday, July 21 at 3:00pm, with a free Communications Workshop for Independent Musicians, led by Bay Area bassist/bandleader and arts organizer, Lisa Mezzacappa, followed by the popular and free Touch the Gear Expo from 7:00pm-10:00pm. A hands-on experience with sound-producing gear and instruments, Touch the Gear is an interactive, family-friendly event that allows the public to roam among 25-30 musicians and instrument inventors with their various different configurations of “gear” -- everything from oscillators and electronics, to planks of wood with strings attached. An avant-garde “Maker’s Faire,” all attendees get to make sound and experience how the instruments work, in an environment that demystifies technology, while inspiring creativity.
This event is free to the public. On Monday, July 22, the New Music Summit presents its annual Composers Symposium from 7:00pm-9:00pm. With the theme Compositional Trace Medium and Traditional Strata, this conference will feature the 2013 New Music USA Metlife Creative Connections recipient composers Rent Romus, Lewis Jordan, Matt Davignon, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano, and Ilya Rostovtsev, discussing the elements of their compositional styles and how they navigate the worlds of modern compositional techniques and processes, combined with individual forms of experimentation. There will be a Q&A segment for attendees. This event is free to the public.
The music takes off on Wednesday, July 24, at 8:15pm, with three original perspectives on composition and improvisation in an acoustic program entitled Drift Flow Swing. Featuring the bands Opera Wolf (Joshua Marshall, Crystal Pascucci, and Robert Lopez); KREation (Kevin Robinson, Aaron Kahn Caroline Cirone Tony Gennaro, Evan Jiroudek, John Schwerbel)and Wiener Kids, (Aram Shelton, Cory Wright, Jordan Glenn)the boundaries of acoustic instruments will be stretched to their limits. This event is $12 General ($10 advance), and $10 for students.
On Thursday July 25 starting at 8:15pm, five electronic and futuristic tricksters and masters of digital synthesis will explore the theme Vibration Hackers -- featuring theTwitter-fed, audience participatory computer programming group #MAX, followed by Fernando Lopez-Lezcano, performing his computer sound synthesis 3D soundscape piece, Knock, Knock…anybody there?. In what will truly be an improvisation between man and machine, Ritwik Banerji and Joe Lasqo will perform on saxophone and piano alongside their improvising software musicbots “Maxine” and Maxxareddu” with Warren Stringer providing live interactive video. Ilya Rostovtsev will explore the sonic potential of acoustic instruments within an electro-acoustic studio composition in a piece entitled Understatements (2009-2010). The evening concludes with the CCRMA Ensemble--fromthe Stanford Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics--performing an improvisation featuring Roberto Morales-Manzanares' "Escamol" interactive systems, Chris Chafe's multi-channel celletto, Rob Hamilton on the Berdahl Resonance Guitar, and daxophones built by John Granzow. This event is $12 General ($10 advance), and $10 for students.
On Friday, July 26, the Summit will present a triptych of bands that explore both live and pre-recorded sounds whenever they occur, in Emanation & Artifacts: An Evening of Objects, Electronics, Tapes, & Found Sound. The evening begins with Transient, the electro-acoustic, ambient, experimental soundscape project of David Molina, who incorporates found-object instruments, field recordings and electronics. The Pmocatat Ensemble is an 11-member group led by Matt Davignon, playing and manipulating pre-recorded tape-based sounds (taken from the members’ acoustic instruments), and played back according to the conducted graphic and textural scores. Fuzzybunny is a high-powered electronic improvisation and composition trio consisting of Chris Brown, Scot Gresham-Lancaster and Tim Perkis, which The Wire calls "a total meltdown of the senses.” This event is $15 General ($12 advance) and $10 for students.
Saturday, July 27 is the New Music Summit Finale, with The Axiom, featuring three world premieres of fiery compositional free-form jazz. Starting the evening is Rent Romus' Lords of Outland featuring Hasan Razzaq & L.A. Jenkins, presenting a new suite of original compositions, The Proceedings of Dr. Ke, inspired by the essays of experimental psychologist Dr. Charles Ponce. Lewis Jordan's Music at Large with Karl Evangelista, will also debut an original suite of music, Only Children, incorporating scored and improvised sections, and spoken word. Kyle Bruckmann's Wrack features special guests Darren Johnston and Jeb Bishop, and will make the world premiere of …Awaits Silent Tristero's Empire, a 2012 Chamber Music America New Jazz Works commission, inspired by the fiction of Thomas Pynchon. This event is $15 General ($12 advance) and $10 for students.
Outsound Presents, a nonprofit arts organization
12th Annual Outsound New Music Summit, Presented by Outsound Presents and KFJC 89.7FM
July 21 – 27, 2013
Community Music Center
544 Capp Street, San Francisco, CA, 94110
All Ages, Wheelchair Accessible
July 21-22: free
July 24-25: $12 General ($10 advance) / $10 Student
July 26-27: $15 General ($12 advance) / $10 Student
Festival Pass $45 ($38 advance)
Tickets: www.brownpapertickets.com/event/381977
Web: www.outsound.org/summit
