Ric Louchard Group

Pianist, writer, and composer Ric Louchard writes simple narratives that embody a disarmingly personal and liminal narrative. His original music sometimes accompanies, and sometimes answers the story post-narration. Ric’s music is influenced by mid-twentieth century Western classical composers such as Berio, Crumb, Bartok, Penderecki, and Takemitsu, as well as the American avant-jazz of the same period: Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, and John Coltrane. At the Summit, Ric’s suite will be (except for a few voice pieces) very improvisational, with scores that suggest starting points and/or themes for the musicians to work from.
Ric Louchard is a composer, pianist, improvisor, story teller, writer and educator who has also worked as a piano and music theory teacher in the Bay Area for over 45 years. In performance, he creates experiences that are intimate, textured, liminal and moving. His performances include stories that are personal, true, and most often about dreams and/or epiphanies. He composes creative chamber music that often employs jazz and avant jazz structures with free improvisation with a chromatic, modern classical vocabulary. Ric has worked with Ric has been focused on working with members of the free improv community to develop and widen his improvisational vocabulary, including Lisa Mezzacappa, Jordan Glenn, Joshua Marshall, Ron Heglin, Ben Davis, Matt Ingalls, Cheryl Leonard, Anne Hege, Crystal Pascucci-Clifford, and John Worley. He has performed all over the Bay Area, Gothenburg, Sweden, and the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. Dr. Anne Hege creates musical worlds that invite an awareness to the body and our present moment. She is a composer, vocalist, instrument builder, and scholar. Her works have been performed by New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Princeton Laptop Orchestra, and Stanford Laptop Orchestra. She composed musical scores for Carrie Ahern Dance with over 50 works including the vaults of a Wall Street Bank, a retired Lyceum, and Dickson's Farmstand in Chelsea Market. She is the artistic director of the Peninsula Women's Chorus. Joshua Marshall is a Bay Area saxophonist and composer. He has played and/or recorded with ROVA, The Lords of Outland, Life's Blood Ensemble, Noertker's Moxie, Cheer Accident, Ikue Mori, and Andrew Weathers. His music has been featured in festivals and conferences nationwide, including Providence Pixilerations, and the International Computer Music Conference. Joshua holds an M.F.A. in music from Mills College. Ben Davis has performed with Earthfall Dance UK, Evan Parker, Louis Moholo, and Wadada Leo Smith. Ben developed an approach to improv while working with Ingrid Laubrock and Bobby McFerrin. His own group Basquiat Strings collaborated with Ellery Eskerlin in the BBC Electric Proms and was nominated for the Mercury Music Awards in 2007. Ben has also played with Tomeka Reid, Mary Halverson, Roscoe Mitchell and Nichole Mitchell. Ron Heglin is a trombonist and vocalist working with extended technique on the trombone and with spoken and sung imaginary languages as a vocalist. His vocal music has been influenced by his study of North Indian Classical music.
Personnel:
Ric Louchard - piano, voice | Ben Davis - cello | Josh Marshall - tenor saxophon | Ron Heglin and Anne Hege - vocals

Fumi Okiji, with Music Research Strategies

Fumi Okiji arrived at the academy by way of the London jazz scene in which she took an active part as a vocalist and improvisor. Okiji works across black study, critical theory, and sound and music studies. Her research and teaching looks to black expression for ways to understand modern and contemporary life, which is to say, she explores works and practices for what they can provide by way of social theory. Her book Jazz as Critique: Adorno and Black Expression Revisited (Stanford University Press, 2018) is a sustained engagement with Theodor Adorno’s and the critical potential of art. She proposes that the socio-musical play of jazz is not representative of the individualistic and democratic values the music is most readily associated with.

Marshall Trammell is an experimental archivist, percussionist, conductor, and composer. His aesthetics and activism are centered in social change interventions and generate new local and global ecologies that embrace improvisation as a collective, movement-building tool in the creation of post-capitalist imaginaries. Trammell’s work also uses political aesthetic theory, data creation, mapping, and collective music-and-artmaking in order to step out of the domain of traditional cultural institutions, relocating the act of co-production back in the community.

Music Research Strategies Statement:
Create, Build, Connect, Maintain, Defend Democratic Spaces Now!

Personnel:
Fumi Okiji - vocals, electronics | Marshall Trammell - drums

Motoko Honda

Motoko Honda is a critically acclaimed Japanese concert pianist, composer, and sound artist who has created a distinctive sound through her holistic approach to music, and her exceptional sensitivity in relating to other art forms and technologies. Employing a "virtuoso technique paired with her intensely imaginative mind" (Susan Dirende, L.A. Splash Magazine), and with stylistic influences ranging from jazz, world music to contemporary prepared piano with electronics, Motoko's compositions and structured improvisations are intended to affect the skin, organs and minds of the listener rather than simple recitations of rhythmic and harmonic themes. Portrayed as a "keyboard alchemist" (Chris Barton, L.A. Times), and an "embodiment of a muse" (Greg Burk, Metaljazz), Motoko's performances transport audiences on sonic adventures that transcend the boundaries and conventions of contemporary music. 
Personnel:
Motoko Honda - piano

Gumby's Junk

Oakland-based art rock band Gumby’s Junk began in 2018 as a complete mishap. Pushing musical surrealism to its limits with outrageous harmonies, circus-fast riffs, and a genre-defying mishmash, they have been described as oblique, colorful madness—like running fast while looking at the ground.
Personnel:
Jas Stade- guitars, vocals | Emmalee Johnson-Kao- bass, vocals | Eli Streich- drums

Ologist

Neo noise pseudo core conducting botched experiments with fraudulent PhD's
Personnel:
Alan - drums | Droozie - vocals | Alec - bass | Niko - guitar

Lunar Mistake

Lunar Mistake is a band of Bay Area art-rock veterans who perform with or have performed with Eskimo, Free Salamander Exhibit, MoeTar, New Zombies, Secret Chiefs 3, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Surplus 1980, and others. Drummer David Shamrock is the principal composer, and most of the lyrics are written by vocalist Jackie Wheeler, although other band members have contributed material and arrangements are collaborative. Lunar Mistake sounds slightly different to everyone who hears it, making more adjectives available than are informative or descriptive. Fortunately, the fact that we are a bunch of prog nerds who learned an hour of XTC for a backyard pandemic concert is both informative and descriptive. The modal response from listeners is along the lines of "DEVO meets Rush." Although it took me decades to forgive Rush for allowing my adolescent self to overestimate their musicianship, and although it feels weird to be selling a band to the Outsound Program Committee by comparing it to Rush, I can't say that I have a huge problem with that description. Reviewers have also repeatedly cited Cardiacs and Thinking Plague as points of reference, and one (Anthony Garrone at Make Weird Music) brought up the recent Raze the Maze-Paul Hanson collaboration.
Personnel:
Matt Lebofsky- keyboards | Steve Lew- bass David Shamrock- drums \ Drew Wheeler- guitar | Jackie Wheeler- vocals, percussion

Tri-Cornered Tent Show

In the early 20th century "tent shows" created multiple stages of interest vying simultaneously for attention. They could be selling you medicine, salvation, entertainment or war. While Drawing on combined influences in R&B/dance, classical, multi cultural folk, progressive rock, 20th century avant garde, free jazz and heavy metal, Tri-Cornered Tent Show pushes the envelope of melodic groove and arrhythmic improvisation, sometimes evoking images of 70's Italian horror pictures. and other outr`e forms of cinema. Around the turn of the 21st century the Tri-Cornered Tent Show driven by two intrepid tavelers Philip Everett and Ray Schaeffer, came out from their exile held up in a well-insulated dank studio in the depths of Richmond California for almost three decades.
Personnel:
Philip Everett - Electric Lapharp and Xlarinet | Ray Schaeffer - Electric Basses | Anthony Flores - Drums

Modesty

Texas born and raised, classically trained on violin & piano from the age of six. Modesty later retired her classical instruments to join a garage punk band playing bass & guitar. A love of producing electronic music began in 2010. Modesty has performed live in Texas and across SoCal recording in the Mojave with a focus on sound healing, meditation / synths, noise & experimental chaos magic
Personnel:
Chantelle Rodriguez - synthesizers, voice

Doctor Bob & the Out Patients

Doctor Bob & the Out Patients will peform 'Raga for Dark Times', composed by Bob Marsh & David Michalak, an all world musical slipstream, powered by the events of the day and days of innocence lost, memory and dreams. The piece allows for each musician to rise from the stream and contribute their own musical reflections and insights. Bob Marsh will dance and sing as a costumed character. and (World Premiere) The Secret Opera - film, (12 minutes) (digital) - Grum, an opera singer played by Bob Marsh searching for the key to love & art attempts to perform in spite of aphonia, inner demons and a ghost that has been haunting and dooming performances in the decaying Opera House. An Expressionistic, Felliniesque, rear window view of opening night jitters. Filmed in part in the once glorious Stone opera in Binghamton, N.Y. built in 1890 and in San Francisco. Music by Doctor Bob, directed, photographed and edited by David Michalak
Personnel:
Bob Marsh - cello, accordion, voice, movement, EWI Electronic Wind Instrument | David Michalak - lap steel, box of junk, omnichord, morse code | Cindy Webster - singing saw, hurdy gurdy | Kersti Abrams - alto saxophone

Ari Micich

Ari Micich is a San Francisco based trumpet player and composer with a solo show for trumpet, electronics and video. He will perform his original music along with several new compositions at The Outsound New Music Summit. He explores new contexts for the trumpet, through the combination of organic sounds, melody, harmony and visual storytelling. His work with video is inspired by a background in visual arts, the interplay between musical and visual mediums and their shared language of line, rhythm, harmony and dissonance. The show consists of electronics, fixed media, projections and live trumpet playing. He has performed this music as an opening act for Bonnie Prince Billy and at Sacramento State University. His compositions have been performed around the country by trumpet players at various universities. As a trumpet player, he performs regularly with many orchestras and arts organizations, including the San Francisco Symphony and SF Ballet.
Personnel:
Ari Micich - trumpet, electronics, video