San Francisco

SIMM Series: Hay/Honda/Kuehne trio and Forward Energy

Today we look at a recent show in Outsound Presents’ SIMM Series that featured two different but energetic ensemble performances. Jim Ryan’s Forward Energy was back for a CD release performance. And they were preceded by a trio of Emily Hay on flute+vocals, Motoko Honda on piano, and New-York-based Valerie Keuhne on cello.


[Emily Hay and Valerie Kuenhe]

Before the show, I went up to the piano to take a closer look at the array of gear arranged on top, including a Korg Kaoss Pad and 4ms Noise Swash. These were used by Motoko Honda during the set, though she mostly used it to control audio from the other performers.

The set opened with cabaret-style piano (no electronic effects yet), joined by flute trills and melodies. Keuhne’s cello complemented Hay’s flute, but then grew more intense and frantic, eventually reaching high-energy “bow-wrecking” levels. Hay switched from flute to vocals that nonetheless retained a flute-like quality. The rhythm of the voice and piano were set strongly against the cello.

Keuhne started the second piece, again with fast bowing, harmonics and percussive effects. Her performance was forceful and featured rich tones. The piano and flute came in more subtly, with processing by the Kaoss Pad. It was easier to hear the electronics with the flutter technique on the flute and percussive vocal effects, with a variety delays, pitch bends and harmonizations. While controlling the effects, Honda continued her vigorous piano performance, using the inside of the instrument in addition to the keys.

Hay opened the next piece with flute mouthpiece and electronic effects. Here I think the 4ms pedal was being used, particularly on the buzzing effect of the low drone from the cello. The overall texture became quite noisy, but the vocals and scraping effects from the cello came through. The final section featured the full ensemble, and particularly forceful piano performance by Honda that included shaking the instrument. The ending was a little quieter from all, but nonetheless still vigorous.

After a short break between sets, Forward Energy took the stage in a performance celebrating the release of their new CD The Awakening. The group featured Jim Ryan on voice and saxophone, Rent Romus on saxophones, CJ Borosque on trumpet, Scott Looney on piano, Eric Marshall on bass, and Timothy Orr on drums.

The set started off immediately with a burst of energy. After this opening fanfare, the music relaxed into a fast jazz rhythm with repeating atonal patterns. The horns (Ryan, Borosque, Romus) took turns with solos separated by ensemble improvisation sections. There were passages where the three horns played together as a single instrument; and Rent Romus’ solo had a more soulful and deep quality compared to the overall frantic and anxious quality of the piece. Scott Looney’s piano solo switched back and forth between rhythmic chords and fast runs that I couldn’t possibly play myself. The bass solo by Marshall was accompanied by scraping metallic percussion and prepared piano, including drumsticks and metal percussion on the strings.

The rhythm section opened the next piece, with resonances in the piano and slow percussion tones. This eerie mixture was set against slow trumpet. Then all at once the ensemble started playing loud and fast. Then a sudden silence followed by prepared piano. It kept going back and forth this way, soft versus angry. I found myself particularly noticing the various gongs that Looney was using inside the piano to both visual and aural effect

The final piece was where the reeds pulled out their virtuosic techniques. Rent Romus played double saxophone (similar to a few nights earlier at the Music of Invention concert), and Jim Ryan launched into his poetry (one friend on Twitter referred to this as “Jim going bore poet”) with lines ranging from “Naked on the plane of full being” to “Did you ever see an elf die?” I can with all honesty that I have never actually seen an elf die. It was delightfully weird, and I think some of the lines took the other musicians by surprise. The prepared piano accompaniment was noisier and scratchier than in the previous piece, which gave the overall background a more staccato and pointed texture.

Overall, the performance did live up to the name of ensemble, and it was clear that everyone, especially Jim Ryan, had a great time with it.

Music of Invention: A Concert Celebrating Tom Nunn’s Invention

Today we review the Music of Invention: A Concert Celebrating Tom Nunn’s Inventions which recently took place the Community Music Center in San Francisco. This retrospective concert brought together not only many of Tom Nunn’s musical inventions from the past decades, but many of his closest musical collaborators as well. The evening was divided into several miniature sets, some with established ensembles as well as individual collaborations. Most of the names on the program were quite familiar, and I recalled from my interview with Nunn his describing the “master players” he has been fortunate to work with over the years.


[Bart Hopkin and Tom Nunn. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

The concert opened with a “inventors’ duo” as Tom Nunn performed alongside music-instrument maker Bart Hopkin. The first sounds were scratchy and metallic, primarily from Nunn’s instrument, the crab. Hopkin’s instrumental performance started out quite percussive as well but soon settled into a more tonal marimba-like state, albeit a tonality with an odd scale. The crab seemed to have two types of sound and texture that reflected the different types of rods, one louder and more metallic, and another more quick and watery. They settled into a pattern with quick rhythmic textures from the watery sounds and bass notes, with a steady rhythm forming and then breaking apart and then forming again. Hopkin switched to one of his other instruments, the ‘Moe, a clarinet-like instrument with a continuous pitch control. Although the sound was unmistakably that of a clarinet, the rapid pitch bends sometimes made it sound more like an analog synthesizer (with a square wave, of course). Against this, Nunn generated a musical “waterfall” from the crab that concluded with a harp-like arpeggio.


[Bart Hopikin on ‘Moe. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

This was followed by a performance of Allan Crossman‘s piece Plasticity. This was one of the only fully composed pieces on the program (the other being Skatchbox Blues). Originally for Sonoglyph and orchestra, on this occasion it was reduced to Sonoglyph performed by Nunn and piano performed by Crossman. The music began with metallic watery sounds from the Sonoglyph and anxious harmonies on the piano. The overall effect was quite dreamlike, and I had the impression throughout the piece of being a well-crafted children’s movie with a richly detailed imaginary world. The instrumental sounds ranged from resonant and chime-like to more scratchy and noisy. There were sections with traditional contrapuntal textures, humorous phrases, and even something that brought to mind a march or procession.

The next set featured the Octatonic T-Rodimba, a pitched instrument tuned to three separate octatonic scales. Nunn was joined for this set by guitarists Gary Knowlton and Michael Knowlton. From the start, it was a clash of timbres between the guitars and the T-Rodimba, with slow chords against fast runs. Over time, the guitars became more melodic and all three performers settled into a jazz-like feel. The rhythms were all separate at first, with scratchy guitar sounds providing percussion, but coalesced into a single unit with repeated phrases. Certainly, the octatonic scales were part of the music, but not a distinct part to be heard separately. With the rhythms aligned, the tonalities of the different instruments blended together. The music became louder and more percussive before concluding with a guitar drone and effects from the green Line 6 pedal many of us know and love.


[Tom Nunn on Lukie Tubes and Paul Winstanley on prepared bass. Photos: PeterBKaars.com.]

The following set introduced the Lukie Tubes, an instrument with a resonant metal plate suspended on balloons that excited using a series of cardboard tubes. Nunn was joined by Paul Winstanley performing on “prepared electric bass”. He performed by bowing on the bass, which had several rods inserted between the strings and the neck for a variety of sounds that were enhanced by additional electronic effects. The bass blended will with the Lukie Tubes as the set began with a long metallic drone on both instruments with different resonances coming in and out of focus. The overall effect was a lush but eerie landscape, punctuated with bits of static and shorter tones. The were moments that brought to mind whales and others reminiscent of Central Asian throat singing. In addition to the acoustic strength of Lukie Tubes, Winstanley used another Line 6 pedal to build up energy. The loud sounds gave way to softer higher tones and then a quiet but more percussive conclusion.


[RTD3. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

The final set of the first half featured RTD3, a trio of Ron Heglin, Tom Nunn and Doug Caroll. I have heard RTD3 on several occasions in the past. For this performance, Caroll was on cello as usual, Heglin was performing only on voice (i.e., no trombone), and Tom Nunn was on Skatchbox. In particular, this was the debut of one of the “perfect” Skatchboxes that I had seen during the interview. Musically, things start of softly with voice a percussive cello. Heglin’s vocals featured a wide variety of effects, groans, gurgles and rumbles, along with incantations on unknown (and perhaps unknowable) words. The vocals filled the space in between the cello and the distinctive comb noises of the Skatchbox. Nunn switched to Lukie tubes during the performance, and then to another instrument called the Techphonic plate. During this time Caroll’s cello performance moved from traditional practice (pitched bowed tones) to more plucking and percussive techniques, and finally to extended techniques such as using a cork on the strings and scratching on the back of the instrument. All three performs came together for a final drone that ended with a minor modal harmony.

The second half opened with a live performance of “Skatchbox Blues”, which was released as a single in conjunction with the concert. It was a lighthearted departure from the other sets with a traditional “country blues” feel provided by Gary Knowlton and Michael Knowlton on guitars, and Aurora Josephson on voice. The Skatchbox itself as played by David Michalak was a purely percussion instrument in the context of this piece, with the grinding and buzzing sounds working together with the guitar to provide the familiar traditional rhythm. The lyrics were a humorous send-off of the experience of building and playing a Skatchbox, with the repeated cadence “treasures in the trash.”

[Skatchbox Blues. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

The next set featured Ed Herrmann on the Octatonic T-Rodimba with Nun on the Crab. Here, the tonality and timbre of the T-Rodimba was used to full effect, with Hermann performing rhythmic phrases and switching among different types of mallets. Between the two metal instruments and rhythmic texture, this set was particularly “gamelan-like”, with call-and-response between the two performers and moments of synchronicity. There were moments of slower movement and empty space as well. During the set, I heard something from hall which I dubbed at the time “unexplained bass”, a series disembodied low bowed tones. It turns out the Doug Caroll was had quietly slipped into the audience with his cello and joined into the mix. The acoustics of the hall helped to give his addition a more surprising and disorienting quality. But overall, it did add a supporting quality to the music and a contrast to the more metallic sounds. The overall effect reminded me quite a bit of the music of Harry Parch.


[Rent Romus and Tom Nunn. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

TD Skatchit, the Skatchbox duo of Tom Nunn and David Michalak, made its official appearance with a pair of mini-sets, each with a guest soloist. The first featured Rent Romus on saxophones. The result was a delightfully noisy set the requisite squeaks, squaws and other effects, punctuated by more jazz-like tonal phrases. Nunn and Michalak provided a rhythm trading notes on the Skatchboxes. The tones were more of the continuous scratches and rumbles, but after a grand pause, Nunn produced a more rhythmic sound from one element of his Skatchbox with a repeated beat that reminded me a bit of rumble strips. The music gradually grew louder, with more complex and intricate jazz runs. Ultimately, Romus pulled out both an alto and soprano sax to play simultaneously in a loud and intense final run.


[Aurora Josephson with TD Skatchit. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

Aurora Josephson returned to perform in the second set with TD Skatchit. It was clear from the start that this was going to be different from her traditional blues vocals only a few minutes earlier, as she took a large swig of water from a bottle and began to vocalize with subtle squeaks and wiggles as well as louder gurgles. Her percussive sounds blended well with the Skatchboxes, which responded with squeakier timbres. The performance was visually and aurally quite humorous and small bursts of laughter could be heard from the audience – to me, this seemed perfectly appropriate and acceptable for such a performance. At times, she seemed to be a third percussion instrument as she traded short notes with Nunn and Michalak. There were a few messy (i.e., wet) moments, but Josephson reminded us, “It’s just water.”


[Ghost in the House. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

The final performance featured Ghost in the House, with Nunn and Michalak joined by regular group members Karen Stackpole on metal percussion and John Ingle on saxophone, and guest Bart Hopkin. Like RTD3, I have seen Ghost in the House a few times before. This time they did not do their usual ritualistic procession into the hall, probably because of the logistics involved, but they appeared on stage bathed in eerie blue light punctuated by candles. The opening sounds were quite resonant and featured rich harmonics. Nunn’s instrument, the Crustacean, blends quite well with Karen Stackpole’s gongs, and a rhythm emerged in the beating patterns between the instrument. Layered in between was Michalak’s lap-steel guitar, which always seems to have a melancholy sound. Bart Hopkin’s instrument, called the Disorderly Tumbling, provided a cascade of high bell sounds that lingered above the other timbres. In a performance like this I find myself listening for the details such as these. Others that caught my attention in this section of the performance were Stackpole’s row of keys, Ingle’s swelling saxophone town, and intense sound of the bowed Crustacean. Over time, the texture became more sparse and glitchy, including mouthpiece noises on the saxophone, striking of metal bowls, and short notes on the Techphonic plate. The music then moved into an eerie phase with lap steel drones, toy-like sounds and the Lukie tubes that reminded me of an old radio or classic science fiction soundtrack. The tones became richer and darker, with long tones and wiggling metal sheets, saxophone multiphonics and glissandi; and finally more rhythmic, with bouncing high tones and the cascading bells, matched by saxophone and gong.


[Karen Stackpole and Tom Nunn. Photos: PeterBKaars.com.]

The concert was well received, and there was quite a long moment of mutual appreciation between Tom Nunn and the audience. This was clearly a special occasion for him, for the musicians and those in attendance. There was also a warm recognition of David Michalak, who was primarily responsible for proposing this concert and making it happen as well as it did. It was quite a logistical feat to have so many sets with large and unusual instruments.

We conclude with what I believe is the smallest invention of the evening. Nunn had made several limited-edition mini-Skatchboxes to commemorate the evening. One of them went home with me and waits to be used in a future musical project inspired by what I heard at this concert.

Gino Robair and Andrea Centazzo, with Trevor Dunn and Travis Laplante, Luggage Store Gallery

The first Thursday of this month featured an impressive performance by Andrea Centazzo together with Gino Robair at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco. I had missed an earlier performance of theirs at another Bay Area venue earlier the week, but glad I was able to make this one.

The evening opened with solo sets by Trevor Dunn on upright bass and Travis Laplante on saxophone. Dunn’s set unfolded as a single piece, which had just started when I arrived. It was a combination of long bowed notes that are part of traditional bass practice along with timbral effects and more percussive extended techniques. The low tones filled the room nicely and provided a more meditative start to the evening.

Laplante’s solo saxophone set was quite a contrast in terms of energy and dynamics. It was nearly all extended technique with fast runs of notes. And it was quite loud. Given the acoustically active nature of the Luggage Store Gallery, this made for some interesting effects. I think the combination of the two sets worked well. Dunn and Laplante were touring the west coast of the United States and Canada together, so I suspect their contrasting styles played into their other performances as well.

Afterwards, the audience shifted 90 degrees towards the front of the gallery, where two tables festooned with a variety of percussion and electronic gear awaited the start of the second set. Andrea Centazzo’s table was dominated by the MalletKAT, a marimba-like electronic controller.

He also had a variety of small acoustic percussion, as well as this toy that he said was from a previous visit to San Francisco in the 1980s.

Gino Robair had his usual assortment of percussion, noisemakers and electronics, including the Blippo Box and his signature broken cymbals.

The set began in either a dramatic fashion, nor in an especially subtle way. It was well timed and well balanced and drew one quickly into the music. As I have said on previous occasions, a masterly improvisation performance will balance rhythm, dynamics and timbres into a cohesive whole, and this performance was no exception. Even with the “noisy” source instrumentation, I felt like the interaction of the performers created a harmonic structure of sorts to go along with the rhythms. And the electronic and acoustic elements blended well in this context. You can hear a short excerpt in this video:

Overall, this was a great performance, and I sat quietly and intently in full absorption of the music, foregoing the note-taking I sometimes do during experimental-music concerts. And it was a perfect conclusion to what had been a long day of not only experimental music but art-gallery openings. But that is another story.

Todd Hido: Excerpts from Silver Meadows, Stephen Wirtz Gallery

One exhibition I have come back to a few times over the past month is Todd Hido’s solo photography show, Excerpts from Silver Meadows at Stephen Wirtz Gallery.


[Todd Hido, Untitled #10121-A,2011. Courtesy of Stephen Wirtz Gallery]

The show features large images that were taken near Kent, Ohio, where Hido grew up. We see wintry scenes of modest houses and fields in a flat landscape with a few trees. The effects of snow, wind and the windshield of a car give the images a somewhat blurry quality. Interspersed among these pieces are a contrasting set of clear, high-contrast images featuring female models in vintage dress or poses. All the pieces bear very dry titles that are presumably based on serial numbers of some sort, a detail which I find interesting for what are emotionally strong images.


[Todd Hido, Untitled #10106,2011. Courtesy of Stephen Wirtz Gallery]


[Todd Hido, Untitled #10473-B,2011. Courtesy of Stephen Wirtz Gallery]

At first glance it may seem to like two shows mashed together into one, a stark wintry landscape in a small community, and stylized portraits of female subjects. The often blurry effects of weather and glass in the exterior images also contrast with the hyper-clarity of the indoor portraits. But taken together they do form a narrative whole that is very film-like. Indeed, I had the impression of stepping into a David Lynch film. The wintry exterior is a small town somewhere in the Midwest that seems perfectly normal. It’s a not a picture postcard of a the archetypical “small town” adorned with a layer of snow, but rather a place that is maybe a little more bleak, a little more tired, a little more isolated. But afterd entering a few of the snow covered houses, a more eerie and eccentric reality emerges within, populated with unnerving but seductive characters. The effect is accentuated by the fact that several of the portraits feature the same model in very different roles and appearances (something I would not have recognized if it were not pointed out to me), but by the dreamlike effect of the inclement weather and dark skies in the outdoor photographs.


[Todd Hido, Untitled #9221,2010. Courtesy of Stephen Wirtz Gallery]

My impressions seem in line with Hido’s mission in this collection, “the artist’s metaphorical reckoning with his own past, while providing a majestic summation of the suburban childhood experience in general…homes built similarly to convey stability actually conceal lives seething with sexual and psychological instability.” I also like how he uses road trips as his part of his execution of this vision (indeed, the feeling of looking out a car window in stormy weather permeates much of Hido’s outdoor imagery). It suggests a dark corner of one of my “Fun with Highways” posts.


[Todd Hido, Untitled #1843,1996. Courtesy of Stephen Wirtz Gallery]
[Todd Hido, Untitled #10502-42,2011. Courtesy of Stephen Wirtz Gallery]

The cat portrait is a bit random, but it is quite humorous and does fit into the overall structure. I thought it worked especially well paired with the classic head portrait reminiscent of the late 1950s or early 1960s.

The show will continue at Stephen Wirtz Gallery in San Francisco through February 25.

Wordless Wednesday: Mission Bay Instagram

As usual, the description is in the comments. But while you’re here, please checkout yesterday’s South Carolina post.

NOTE: CatSynth will go black 8AM to 8PM US Pacific Time in protest of SOPA/PIPA. More information at http://www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa and http://sopastrike.com/.

Hare and Arrow, Charm and Strange

Today we look at the last show I attended in 2011. On December 29, Outsound Presents featured a pair of duos at the Luggage Store Gallery: Hare and Arrow, and Charm and Strange.

Hare and Arrow was a duo of musical-instrument maker Sung Kim and David Dupuis. I had the opportunity to hear Kim perform on his instruments several times during 2011, but I found this performance to the the most musical. The instruments were of course quite interesting sonically as well as visually, but the music held its own with having to be conscious of this. The set started with a combination of scratchy noise and feedback, but then moved to more traditional bowed sounds and glissandi. The combination of harmonies and relatively gentle noise had a plaintive quality. Over time, the music grew noisier and darker, and more animated. You can hear a short clip of the set in this video:

There were some interesting moments as the piece continued, including a clarinet-like timbre from one of the string instruments and a jazzy bass line. The second piece was more percussive, with plucked strings and striking of the instruments. As a result, it had a more sparse texture. Towards the end, Kim set aside the instrument to manually control the effects pedals for an electronic conclusion to the set.

It was then time to transition to Charm and Strange, an electronic-music duo of Julia Mazawa and Sharkiface. During the intermission, I found myself quite curious about this bright red device. It definitely had the look of a Ciat Lonbarde instrument (i.e., like the kitten-nettik that I have somewhere at CatSynth HQ).

It turns out it is a combination of oscillators and loop processors, although in this performance it was mostly used for the latter. Plus, the red color matched Sharkiface’s shawl. And they both contrasted nicely with the leopard-print table cover.

The set opened with a looping sound and a texture that was industrial, ambient and machine-like. Mazawa, who was performing on an iPhone, appeared to be controlling the loops and applying turntable-like effects. Over time, different looped sounds came in. It was only after the performance that I found out that the sampled sound sources were actually from Hare and Arrow’s set. Simultaneously, Sharkiface played the red instrument, both using the raw contacts and applying jumper cables at various points. A syncopated rhythm emerged, with environmental sounds set against machinery. It then turned to a more turntable-like pattern with metric scratching. There were repeated string phrases (i.e, from Hare and Arrow), hissing sounds, and loud machine noises. The loops seemed to have similar lengths, but set at different phases to create rhythmical effects. Other pieces featured chaotic noise that reminded me of circuit-bent instruments (though I think the sounds were coming from the iPhone), a steady pulse set against more random wobbling sounds, and a section where Sharkiface played the red instrument more expressively, almost melodically.

You can hear a tiny bit of their set in this video:

The video clip is rather short (only a few seconds). I’m not sure why that is all I have of the video, but it is what it is. And I hope to hear more performances from them in the future.

Space Music Night at the Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco

Earlier this month, I participated in a show at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco called Space Music Night that turned out to be quite memorable. So what exactly is “space music”? It is not straightforward to come up with a definitive answer, except that it should reflect some sense of “outer space” as one might imagine it. Or, perhaps more accurately, as people might have imagined it in the 1960s and 1970s. The music that we performed that evoke “space rock” that one might associate with early Pink Floyd or Gong, but also more freeform ambient soundscapes. The latter comes closer to ambient music one might hear on NPR’s “Hearts of Space” program but without crossing over that dangerous line into New Age. The music was certainly contemplative at times, but retained an edge to it and often veered back to rock and jam idioms, and moved back and forth between defined harmonies and more abstract timbres. The “space” effect was also heightened by having a dark room with abstract video projections by Tim Thompson.

The show was divided into two sets with four musicians each. Although many of us were familiar to one another, this was the first each each set of four played together as a group. The first set featured Matt Davignon on drum machines and effects, Kristen Miltner on electronics, Karl Evangelista on guitar, and Andrew Joron on theremin. Musically, this set had a very thick electronic texture with a soft beat from the drum machines that came in and out of presence. The electronics and heavily processed guitar provided anxious harmonies, and the theremin seemed to be narrating a space story with warbles and slides that approached the rhythm of human speech. At moments, the rhythm dropped out altogether, while at others it came closer to an extended jam. You can hear a bit of the set in the following video:

In the second set, I performed with iPad and the Dave Smith Evolver, along with David Leikam, Sheila Bosco on drums, and Steve Abbate on guitar. Perhaps it was the instrumentation of the set, or the musical leanings of the performers (including myself) towards strong rhythm, but we very quickly gelled into a steady rock jam rhythm that extended for most of the length of the set except for avery deliberate breaks. I mostly used Sunrizer on the iPad to provide ethereal harmonies to set again Leikam’s Moog Rogue and his “electric bass cello” and provide structure for melodic improvisation. This was definitely approaching the “space rock” idiom that inspired the evening.

I was quite happy with how well we able to play together despite having not played together before, and indeed a few people afterwards expressed some surprise that we hadn’t. But perhaps we will get a chance to play again.

December 1 Electronic Music at the Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco

The December 1 show at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco marked my official curatorial debut for the long-running Outsound Presents’ series. The show featured three solo performances with electronics, all very different in terms of musical style and technologies. But while all featured and celebrated different facets of electronic-music technology, there were strong connections to the acoustic and natural environment.

The evening opened with a set by Headboggle (aka Derek Gedalecia) with an array of analog electronics, including a Blippo Box. The sounds and possibilities of analog electronics were paired sounds of nature as recorded in the Yosemite Valley. The music began with a rhythmic pattern of high-pitched sounds against longer machine noises and clear presentation of the nature recordings. Gradually, the two sonic strains collided and mixed together.

As with previous Headboggle performances (such as the set at the 2010 Outsound Music Summit), this one was full of energy and stage theater, with head banging, dropping of the stage furniture, and even a moment where he tossed shakers down the Luggage Store Gallery’s stairwell. The music also became more dramatic and percussive, with more glitches, percussive hits and bursts of noise, but all set against the continuing presence of the nature sounds. The harsher electronic sounds gave way to a more rarefied tone over time, with longer periods of harmonic oscillator sounds fading into a quieter single tone. After another percussive period that included lifting and dropping the table holding the care, the environmental sounds took center stage. Between the stereo speakers and the acoustics of the gallery, the leaves and other sounds were strongly spatialized and felt present.

Thea Farhadian followed with a set for violin and computer running Max/MSP. In some sections of her performance, the violin was more of a traditional chamber-music instrument, with its familiar timbres augmented by electronic samples and processing. In others, it was more of a controller, with pizzicato notes triggering long runs of notes from the computer or other purely electronic events. The set started out with solo violin, with the electronics emerging slowly like the orchestra in a concerto. The music continued to unfold as interplay between the violin and electronics. As the texture changed to more pizzicato notes with electronic responses of backward tones, the music grew more anxious, channeling the anxious moments of countless films. I also was reminded of works by Penderecki and Xenakis. A large barrage of electronic pizzicato sounds started to take on a drone-like quality with its density. In both the melodic and percussive sections, the music was harmonically a very strong, a brought in electronic orchestration that suggestion the presence of a cello or bass off stage. Other effects included fast glissandi and electronic pitch changes such as one might achieve by changing the speed of a tape.

Farhadian’s performance was divided into a series of short movements, and some had very different character. In one, short pizzicato notes on the violin acted as triggered for long runs of electronic notes and processing, with various speed, pitch and timbral changes applied. In another, a very lyrical string melody was set against fluttering sounds and dramatic low tones. In yet another, she used “prepared violin”, with bits of foil and other items placed against the strings for percussive effects. The electronic accompaniment was equally scratchy and inharmonic. And in one of the final sections, repeated rhythmic phrases and echoes perfectly aligned.

The final set featured Later Days (aka Wayne Jackson) with a variety of circuit-bent instruments, acoustic and electronic noisemakers, and a laptop running his custom Cambrian Suite audio softsynth with both hand-designed and algorithmically evolved patches. If Farhadian’s performance was all about software-based manipulation and Headboggle was focused on analog hardware, Later Days combined both.

The space was quickly filled with an ocean of electronic sounds, glitches, bleeps, rumbles, short loops and echoes. At one point, everything became extremely quiet, with a few lo-fi distortion sounds and high squeaky analog sounds. The new sampling and looping capabilities of the software were showcased with repeated loops of circuit-bent sounds, a solo on a photo-sensitive oscillator, a car horn and recordings from a microphone dangled out the window onto busy Market Street. The loops built up to a frenzy and the slowed down to almost nothing. The sounds picked up again in pitch and energy, with feedback loops providing an edgy and unpredictable quality. A metallic rhythm emerged, and the faded a single feedback loop. A flurry of “little loud bits” formed an odd harmony of their own. After a series of machine-like noises and a more elemental wind-like sound, the music slowed down once again and came to a watery end.

Over all it was a great concert with a rich variety of music. Indeed, the three artists fit together sequentially even better than I had anticipated. And fortunately, the logistics and technical requirements (e.g., soundchecking) were not that challenging, so I was able to enjoy the show along with the audience.