2024 Schedule
Friday, July 26
Doors 7 | Q&A 7:15 | Music 8:15
Bat Noise
Bat Noise is a duo that combines haunted doom jazz improv with musique concrète industrial deathwave. Bat Noise explores frenetic and passionate music, switching between different vocal styles and surreal soundtrack instrumentals, handcrafted muse masks and queer goth punk style furthering the possessed and authentic quality to the performance of these two avant-garde subculture freaks who have been playing music together for more than two decades under various monikers.Personnel:
LuLu Gammaray - theremin, analog synth sequences, live manipulated samples, vocals, and trombone | Roxy Monoxide - tenor sax, floor tom, vocals, live manipulated loops and effects
Sharkiface
A project of experimental artist Angela Edwards' electro-acoustic music focusing on vocals, field recordings, and the live manipulation and resampling of of life & memory.Personnel:
Angela Edwards - vocals, field recordings, and the live manipulation
TanukiSpiderCat
An improvisational blend of electric cello, modular synth, and samples. By dissecting sound into pieces and manipulating these fragments in real-time, the artist sculpts an ever-evolving and fluid soundscape. Looping, layered, and staggering ever forwards. It’s a fragmented, unlikely and chimerical animal hailing from San Francisco.Personnel:
Colleen T. Kelly - electric cello, modular synth, and samples
Saturday, July 27
Doors 7 | Q&A 7:15 | Music 8:15
Moe Staiano Ensemble - LP Release performance Away Towards the Light
Moe Staiano is a musician and composer of new music works and angular rock music. Since 1995, he has been at the forefront of the Bay Area creative music scene, playing drums and percussion through innovative solo shows that can feature prepared drum kit, found objects, audio looping and the inventive use of a "percussion guitar." All this is woven in with a performance art aspect that gets the audience involved and wondering what might happen next. He will play (or smash into pieces) just about anything he can get his hands on, and somehow make a compelling musical statement out of it. Moe's compositional work has included music for large ensembles, a piece for two bass clarinets, and a work for percussion quartet. As conductor and composer for the Moe Staiano Ensemble, (formerly Moekestra!), he has composed pieces that can include over 30 musicians playing instruments ranging from violins, clarinets and cellos to drum kits, wine glasses, sirens, oscillators and electric guitars. Moe Staiano Ensemble performances are high-energy, electrifying experiences that create unique and intriguing soundscapes. He has composed two guitar piece ensembles, Away Towards the Light, and Music for 48 Guitars, which has yet to be premiered.
Personnel:
Suki O'Kane - Conductor
Guitarists: Melne Murphy, Bill Wolter, Robin Walsh, David James, Josh Pollock, Jas Stade, Lorenzo Arreguin, John Schott, Brent Miller, John Angel
Bass: Jason Hoopes
Drums: Moe Staiano
Normal
Normal is Fred Frith and Sudhu Tewari, playing manually & electronically manipulated home-made instruments. Not really instruments in the sense of beautifully crafted art objects requiring Extended Techniques, so much as de-constructions and re- constructions using the simplest of means, and requiring only minimal exertion to produce sound. Fred's "planks of wood with strings" were almost all built in the early 1980s, when for a period of several years he abandoned the guitar as his primary vehicle for improvising. The birth of this duo in 2001 marked the first time he had performed with them in many years. The fact that he is doing so again is the responsibility of Sudhu, a tinkerer of genius who plunders garages and junkshops and the street outside for the sources of his sound world, turning the smallest spring into a potential orchestra. In 2020 Sudhu and Fred were invited to create a collection of new instruments to be presented at the Center for New Music in San Francisco. This gave rise to a number of new creations including the Portable Street Piano, the Post Hole Tone Music Box, the No Strings Guitar, Sudhu’s Infernal Spring Thing and the Superstrut Bandsaw Bass. Having taken some time to learn to play the new instruments, the first Normal CD, Moving Parts, was released on the Foc’s’le label in May 2023.Personnel:
Fred Frith - guitar | Sudhu Tewari - home-made instruments
Sunday, July 28
Doors 6 | Q&A 6:15 | Music 7:15
The Dirty Snacks Ensemble
The Dirty Snacks Ensemble is my long standing post-jazz/chamber ensemble, formed originally around 2009. We perform my original compositions which are often through-composed, and reflect a wide variety of influences on my end, the strongest being creative jazz, modern classical music, and hip-hop. We have two full length records out to date: Tidy Universe (Recollect Records, 2016) and You Would Do Well (Slow & Steady, 2023).Personnel:
Mark Pascucci-Clifford - vibraphone, vocals, MPC 1000, Synth, composition | Steve Blum - keyboards | Dillon Vado - drums |
Crystal Pascucci-Clifford - cello | Cory Wright - reeds | Rob Ewing - electric bass | Robert Woods-Ladue - percussion
Pateka
An experimental art rock/soul act composed of keyboardist/vocalist Elihu Knowles, guitarist Dylan Ransley, bassist Quinn Girard and drummer Ryan Higley, as well as occasionally performing saxophonist Hayden Dekker. The group’s shared background as close childhood friends and jazz musicians deeply influences their soulful and experimental tunes. Their music has been compared to a variety of artists including Palm, Jon Bap, Sun Ra, Pulgas, Os Mutantes, and Standing on the Corner. The members of Pateka live together in the Bay Area, CA. The group performs regularly at venues including the Independent, Bottom of the Hill, Eli’s Mile High Club, the Ivy Room, the Elbo Room, Thee Stork Club, El Rio, and the Little Hill Lounge. They recently changed their name to accommodate lineup changes and a new musical direction reflected in the forthcoming album.Personnel:
Elihu Knowles - vocals, keyboard | Dylan Ransley - electric guitar, vocals| Quinn Girard - electric bass | Ryan Higley - drums
The Lost Shapes
A composer's collective, The Lost Shapes writes and performs original music that pushes the lines of composition and improvisation, with fiery, virtuosic performances and a strong group dynamic.Personnel:
Jason Levis- drums, Mark Clifford- vibraphone, Safa Shokrai- bass, Max Miller-Loran- trumpet, Beth Schenck- alto sax
Monday, July 29
Doors 7 | Q&A 7:15 | Music 8:15
Matt Robidoux w/ Lori Varga - Music For Aluminum Corn
Matt Robidoux is a San Francisco based composer, improviser, educator, and community organizer interested in the convergence of movement and sound, especially with regards to accessibility in contemporary music and the communicative capacities of sonic energy. Their primary instrument is the corn synth — (kinetically operated randomness system [k.o.r.n.]) a modular architecture that interprets physical input from two "ears of corn" sculptures cast in aluminum.
"Music For Aluminum Corn" is informed by accessible kinetic music technology in my development of "corn synth", a modular synthesizer controlled by touching aluminum cast ears of corn. Their focus' on the modularity/ubiquity of corn and the causality of reactive generation and regeneration of sound and movement mining and composing for an ethos of free improvisation.
Matt's solo work with the "corn synth", a modular environment configured around two touch controlled aluminum cast ears of corn is informed by my ongoing work with Pauline Oliveros' final project AUMI (Adaptive Use Musical Instrument) in direct collaboration with the disability community and multidisciplinary arts organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area. The powerful echo and artistic legacy of Mills College CCM (1967-2022) resonates in their design of the corn synth, modeling it after the Buchla 158, the original synthesizer used at the San Francisco Tape Music Center. The instrument was invented during their residency at ACRE in Wisconsin, where I cast two corn cob moldings in aluminum. Movement and touch determine the parameters of pitch, velocity, and duration. This makes for an accessible instrument, at once charming and absurd, while also a powerful merging of my practice creating space for unrestricted musical improvisation.
Bay area native Lori Varga is a analog Visual performance artist & noise /drone provocateur. Since 1992 she has experimented with large amounts of film projectors, found footage films, and early synthesis & sound experiments. Lori also makes 35mm slides using unconventional methods & is well known for her light shows for experimental & touring psychedelic bands in Northern CA and central TX . She also houses one of the largest collections of "special interest" and experimental video tapes in CA, providing endless access to materials for experimental film screenings & curration of more than 1000 edu 16mm films & Super 8 oddities.For several years her passion has been building /hacking low cost electronics into drone instruments or Sourcing the most peculiar oscillating sound instruments for her unique live performances. Strange Film will mix with her dark & haunting tones & loops that are all performed thru analog or custom built equipment. No two shows are ever alike. Lori has designed large scale & intimate sized down filmsets for the Butthole Surfers, Helios Creed, St37, & Acid Mothers Temple. She has done several solo shows thru Shapeshifters Cinema and Craig Baldwins Other Cinema series. Her Exp./ transgressive collage films have been screened Internationally around Europe & Japan. Lori will provide all live visuals for this performance using found VHS/16MM as well as direct animation and techniques with a multi-projector setup.
Personnel:
Matt Robidoux - Corn synth, electronics | Lori Varga - 16MM film & expanded cinema
post doom romance
A collaboration between sound artists, seah and Mykel Boyd. Both artists work with field recordings, digital manipulation of field recordings, synthesizers, and bowed instruments - often times Tim Kaiser instruments. Seah also plays cello and/or glass harp. For the Summit, post doom romance will be debuting their recently completed work from a one month artist residency in the Finnish Archipelago, funded by Finlandia Foundation National. The sound pieces of this body of work include field recordings from the residency and are composed with the intention of describing the tone and feeling of a place from memory.Personnel:
seah and Mykel Boyd - field recordings, digital manipulation of field recordings, synthesizers, and bowed instruments
