For Immediate Release: August 2, 2009
Press Contact: Elise Baldwin
Phone: 415.602.0480
Email: elisebaldwin@earthlink.net
THE 10TH ANNUAL SAN FRANCISCO ELECTRONIC MUSIC FESTIVAL 2009
San Francisco’s only festival dedicated to electronic music celebrates its tenth anniversary with four nights of exciting performances, featuring emerging and internationally renowned artists.
San Francisco Electronic Music Festival 2009
Wednesday, September 16th 2009 through Saturday, September 19, 2009
Brava Theater Center, 2789 24th St, San Francisco, CA
Doors at 7:30 PM, performance at 8:00 PM
Further Information: www.sfemf.org
(Full calendar listing at bottom of page)
2009’s 10th Annual San Francisco Electronic Music Festival consists of four evenings of stimulating performances by internationally recognized artists and musicians in the electronic music field. In celebration of it’s 10th Anniversary, SFEMF 2009 will feature four of the festival’s founding organizers – Miya Masaoka, Pamela Z, Ed Osborn, and Donald Swearingen – one on each of its four evenings.
This year's lineup includes a wide array of electronic music pioneers, modern innovators, and emerging artists, ranging in diverse styles and methods from contemporary classical, glitch, music concrete, sound art, free improvisation and experimental pop. The technology represented will range from old school synthesizers to laptop computer patches, including exploration of interactions between acoustic and electronic instruments and charting the artistic evolution of several of the festival’s founders. The entire festival will be bookended with a debut of new work by festival founder Miya Masaoka on Wednesday evening and an intermedia performance by longest standing festival organizer Pamela Z on Saturday evening.
For this year's festival, SFEMF has invited a diverse group of artists from across the field of electronic music, including critically- acclaimed symphonic and electronic composer Mason Bates, Berlin-based analog audio/video pointillist Frank Bretschneider, avant-cabaret vocal artist Amy X Neuburg, music and new media pioneer and professor Mark Trayle, improvisational New York turntablist Maria Chavez, composer and pioneer of extended vocal techniques Joan La Barbara, electronic experimental pop artist Preshish Moments, installation and media artist Ed Osborn, multimedia and sound artist [ruidobello] aka Jorge Bachmann, composer and interface innovator Donald Swearingen, voice and electronics innovator Pamela Z, poly-rhythmic composer Lukas Ligeti, Bay Area percussionist and improviser Gino Robair, as well as the debut of a new performance by New York sound artist Miya Masaoka. In addition, there will be sound installations in the theater lobby including a work by Dokuro, the artistic maelstrom formed by the duo of Agnes Szelag and The Norman Conquest.
THE ORGANIZATION:
The San Francisco Electronic Music Festival is an artist-run organization founded in 1999 by a committee of eight Bay Area electro-acoustic music and sound art practitioners. Its mission is to provide a highly visible public forum for the diverse community of composers and sound artists working with electronic-based technologies in the Bay Area. Designed as an annual multi-day event consisting of concerts, installations and discussions, the primary focus is on independent artists whose innovative aesthetics challenge academic and commercial standards. The Committee's goals are long-term: to establish the festival as an annual presence in the Bay Area; to foster a greater sense of community among the diverse group of Bay Area sound artists; to stimulate the creation of new electronic sound works; to increase public awareness of new sound-based technologies and their creative applications; to raise the level of discourse surrounding music and sound-art; and to raise the national and international profile of the Bay Area as a center for electronic music and sound art.
SFEMF 2009 Steering Committee/Curators: Elise Baldwin, Elisabeth Beaird, Matt Davignon, Tom Duff, Marielle Jakobsons, Kadet Kuhne, Jon Leidecker, Kristin Miltner, Patrice Scanlon, Agnes Szelag and Pamela Z
Advisory Board: Mark Bartscher, John Bischoff, Krys Bobrowski, Lance Grabmiller, Guillermo Gallindo, Steev Hise, Matt Ingalls, Dan Joseph, Walter Kitundu, Miya Masaoka, Suki O'Kane, Ed Osborn, Sean Rooney, Christopher Salter, Todd Shalom, Laetitia Sonami, Carl Stone
San Francisco Electronic Music Festival 2009 Artists:
Mason Bates / Masonic
Mason Bates / Masonic, the young San Francisco composer and DJ who recently became the first dual recipient of the Prize de Rome and the Berlin Prize, moves fluidly between the worlds of classical music and electronica. Currently busy with both commissions and performance engagements, he has appeared at venues such as The Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, and Lincoln Center, and Berlin's Volksbühne. Spanning the classical concert hall to the clubs and lounges where he DJs electronica, his music was recently described by the San Francisco Chronicle as "lovely to hear and ingeniously constructed." His recent symphonic work, Omnivorous Furniture, for symphonietta & electronica, was commissioned by The Los Angeles Philharmonic and premiered at Disney Hall, and it is since been performed by the American Composers Orchestra in New York and by The Oakland Symphony. His releases as Masonic are available at iTunes and other major internet distributors.
Frank Bretschneider
Frank Bretschneider works as a musician, composer and video artist in Berlin. His work is known for precise sound placement, complex, interwoven rhythm structures and its minimal, flowing approach. Described as “abstract analogue pointillism”, “ambience for spaceports” or “hypnotic echochamber pulsebeat”, Bretschneider‘s subtle and detailed music is echoed by his visuals: perfect translated realizations of the qualities found in music within visual phenomena. In 1996 he and Olaf Bender founded the record label Rastermusic which merged with Carsten Nicolai‘s Noton to form raster-noton in 1999. Since then he has been releasing his work through several record labels including 12k, Mille Plateaux and contributed to some well-known compilations like „Clicks & Cuts“ on Mille Plateaux or Raster-Noton‘s „20' To 2000“ series. He has performed at music and new media festivals such as Ars Electronica, Cut & Splice, Elektra, Mutek, Offf, Sonar, Steirischer Herbst, Transmediale, etc. In addition to his solo work he has cooperated with Taylor Deupree, Olafur Eliasson, Steve Roden and Ralph Steinbrüchel. With Olaf Bender and Carsten Nicolai he runs Signal, another Raster-Noton project.
Maria Chavez
Born in Peru, avant-turntablist Maria Chavez currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. With a collection of new and broken needles that she calls “pencils of sound” and a selection of records, she harnesses the electro-acoustic sounds of vinyl and needle. Chavez made her New York City debut in a duet with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, collaborated with fellow turntablist Otomo Yoshihide as part of the 2007 Wien Modern Festival, and recently shared a stage with Pauline Oliveros and Lydia Lunch during Vienna’s Phonofemme 2009. Having also performed at such internationally acclaimed venues as STEIM (Amsterdam) and the Kitchen (NYC), she was an artist-in-residence at Brooklyn’s Issue Project Room in 2006 and awarded a Jerome Foundation Emerging Artist Grant by New York’s Roulette Intermedium in 2008. In June and July, 2008, she was part of a quartet that collaborated with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at DIA: Beacon. This fall, she will also perform at a turntable festival in Berlin, and in Gdansk and Krakow, Poland.
Dokuro
Dokuro is the artistic maelstrom formed by the duo of Agnes Szelag and The Norman Conquest. Though the main artistic focus of Dokuro is exploring the intersection of composition and improvisation, they enjoy working together in other mediums including video and installation. Their music has been described as a collision of electronics, voices, & cello in a frenzied swirl of noise, pop melodies, improvisation, and lush ambience that transport the listener to blood red moons & dusty corners of the heart.
Joan La Barbara
Joan La Barbara, composer, performer, sound artist, has been hailed as "one of the great vocal virtuosas of our time" (San Francisco Examiner). Her multi-layered compositions often utilize her unique vocabulary of experimental and extended vocal techniques (multiphonics, circular singing, ululation and glottal clicks), her “signature sounds”. Her awards include DAAD Artist-in-Residency in Berlin, Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition, 7 NEA grants, numerous commissions and 2008 Letter of Distinction from the American Music Center for her significant contributions to American music. Recent recordings include "ShamanSong" (New World) and "Voice is the Original Instrument" (Lovely Music). "73 Poems" was presented in The American Century Part II: SoundWorks at The Whitney Museum. Award-winning interactive media performance work "Messa di Voce" premiered at ars electronica 2003. Creating works for multiple voices, chamber ensembles, music theater, orchestra and interactive technology. La Barbara is currently composing an opera. http://www.joanlabarbara.com
Lukas Ligeti
Transcending the boundaries of genre, composer-percussionist Lukas Ligeti has developed a musical style of his own that draws upon downtown New York experimentalism, contemporary classical music, jazz, electronica, as well as world music, particularly from Africa. Known for his non-conformity and diverse interests, Lukas creates music ranging from the through-composed to the free-improvised,
often exploring polyrhythmic/polytempo structures, non-tempered tunings, and non-western elements. He has also been participating in cultural exchange projects in Africa for the past 15 years. Lukas’ concert music has been commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, Bang on a Can, Vienna Festwochen, and the Kronos Quartet, to name a few. He frequently performs solo on electronic percussion, and as a drummer co-leads several bands including Burkina Electric, the first electronica
band from Burkina Faso in West Africa. Lukas has also performed/recorded with John Zorn, Henry Kaiser, Raoul Björkenheim, Marilyn Crispell, Jim O’Rourke, Gary Lucas, John Tchicai, and many others.
Miya Masaoka
Miya Masaoka resides in New York City and is a classically trained musician, composer and sound/installation artist. She has created works for solo koto, laser interfaces, laptop and video, sculpture installations and written scores for ensembles, chamber orchestra and mixed choirs. She has a large body of work for solo koto, live electronics and video. She often works with the sonification of data, and maps the behavior of brain activity, plants and insect movement to sound. Her work has been performed at the Venice Biennale 2004, the Miller Theater, NYC, Ircam, Paris and V2, Rotterdam. Awards and commissions include the Alpert Arts Award, Bang On a Can, Engine 27/Harvestworks, Gerbode Foundation.
Amy X Neuburg
Amy X Neuburg is best known for her wildly entertaining "avant-cabaret" performances for voice and live electronics, in which she uses an electronic drumset, a real-time looping machine, and an array of sounds and samples to construct complex, emotionally intense songs and stories. As soloist she has performed at venues as diverse as the Other Minds and Bang on a Can new music festivals, the Berlin International Poetry Festival, and the Wellington and Christchurch Jazz Festivals (NZ). As composer, commissions include numerous works for voices and chamber ensembles, often with live looping electronics. Recently Amy has been developing works for the analog Blippoo Box -- a custom-designed synth that features chaotic modulations and a Theremin-like antenna.
Ed Osborn
Ed Osborn works with many forms of electronic media including installation, video, sound, and, performance. His pieces explore a tactile sense of space, movement, image and aurality combined with a precise economy of materials. His work has been presented worldwide and has received numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a DAAD Artists-in-Berlin residency. He is based in Providence, RI, where he on the faculty of the Visual Art Department at Brown University.
Preshish Moments
Preshish Moments is the moniker of twenty-six year old Michael Carter. He makes electronic music and builds unique instruments for live performance. In 2007 he used one of these instruments to win the San Francisco Laptop & Machine Music Battle, competing against over fifty contestants. His debut album “Let’s be Friends” is set to come out on Daly City Records on July 1st 2008 and he can often be heard performing in and around the San Francisco Bay Area at a wide variety of venues playing an even wider variety of styles. In 2005 he moved to Oakland to pursue a Masters Degree in Electronic Music and Recording Media at Mills College and it was here that he finally built and began to perform with the instrument of his dreams. He uses it to play house, noise, hip-hop, dubstep, jungle, hardcore, breakcore, drone, free improv, cyber-boogie, metal, pop, wedding music, chant-rock, and pre-preshcore. He also likes to bake.
Gino Robair
Gino Robair is an American composer, improviser, drummer, and percussionist. In his own work (as a soloist and in improvisation ensembles), he plays prepared/modified percussion, analog synthesizer, ebow and prepared piano, theremin, and bowed objects (polystyrene, customized/broken cymbals, faux daxophone, metal). Although Gino is often referred to as a jazz musician, he grew up playing both rock and concert music. He is currently the editor of Electronic Musician magazine, and he runs Rastascan Records.
[ruidobello]
[ruidobello], aka Jorge Bachmann, is a multi-disciplinary, mixed-media and sound artist. Since the early eighties, he has been exploring the strange, unique and microcosmic sounds of everyday life, collecting field recordings. The sound atmospheres created are meant for deep listening and are composed in symbiosis with the sculptural installations. He creates equally sensual and detailed oriented photo- based work. His art explores social and sensual constructs and experiences.
Donald Swearingen
Donald Swearingen is a composer, musician, sound designer, educator and innovator of performance and installation interfaces. A classically trained composer and pianist, Swearingen's strong commitment to musical experimentation has sent him along numerous paths, from rock bands to the contemporary classical concert stage to computer networks. His current work concerns the use of movement and gesture as the source of media control in an expanded, computer-assisted performance environment. He has developed a series of modular MIDI control hardware components coupled with a sophisticated software interface (built in MAX MSP) which he uses to generate and perform his electroacoustic sound works.
Mark Trayle
Mark Trayle works in a variety of media including live electronic music, installations, improvisation, and compositions for chamber ensembles. Recent venues for performances and exhibitions include t-u-b-e (Munich), DEAF '04 (Rotterdam), Resistance Fluctuations (LA), net_condition (ZKM Karlsruhe), Pro Musica Nova, Format5 (Berlin), and Inventionen 2004 (Berlin). His music has been performed by Champs D'Action, Ensemble Zwischentoene, Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, and Ensemble Mosaik. Recent collaborators include Muhal Richard Abrams, Boris Baltschun and Serge Baghdassarians, David Behrman, Toshimaru Nakamura, Wadada Leo Smith, and The Hub.
Pamela Z
Pamela Z is a composer/performer who makes solo works combining a wide range of vocal techniques with electronic processing, samples, and gesture activated MIDI controllers. She has toured extensively throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. Her work has been presented at venues and exhibitions including Bang on a Can (NY), the Japan Interlink Festival, Other Minds (SF), the Venice Biennale, and the Dakar Biennale. She's created installation works and has composed scores for dance, film, and new music chamber ensembles. Her numerous awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Creative Capital Fund, the CalArts Alpert Award, the ASCAP Award, an Ars Electronica honorable mention and the NEA/JUSFC Fellowship. www.pamelaz.com
CALENDAR LISTING:
WHAT: The San Francisco Electronic Music Festival
WHEN: Wednesday, September 16, 2009 through Saturday, September 19, 2009
PROGRAM:
Wednesday, September 16, 8pm:
Miya Masaoka, Lukas Ligeti, and Amy X Neuburg
Thursday, September 17, 8pm:
Mark Trayle, Donald Swearingen, Maria Chavez, and Mason Bates
Friday, September 18, Pre-show Talk 7pm, Concert 8pm:
(talk: La Barbara, Ligeti, Osborn, Masaoka, Z, moderator: O'Kane)
Concert: Ed Osborn, Preshish Moments, Frank Bretschneider, and Joan La Barbara
Saturday, September 19, 8pm:
[ruidobello], Gino Robair, and Pamela Z
WHERE: Brava Theater Center, 2789 24th St, San Francisco, CA 94110
TIME: Doors 7:30 PM, Performance begins 8:00 PM each night.
TICKETS:
Ticket $16 General; $10 Student/Discount.
Full festival pass: $50
Purchases online at www.sfemf.org or at the door.
INFO: www.sfemf.org; Brava Theater: 415.641.7651
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