Saturday, June 24, 2017

Plans for the Sixteenth Annual Outsound New Music Summit

Outsound Presents has now updated the Web site for its annual New Music Summit with information about the schedule for this year. The festival will consist of five concerts on successive evenings at the end of next month. All performances will begin at 8:15 p.m., and each will be preceded at 7:30 p.m. with a Q&A session moderated by Rent Romus at which performers will talk about their work and take questions from the audience. Each concert will consist of two sets. Participants will be as follows:

Tuesday, July 25: Evil Genius is a jazz trio with a significant departure from the ordinary. That departure involves the use of a tuba, played by Stefan Kac, as the lead melody instrument. Rhythm is provided by Max Kutner on guitars and Michael “Bonepocket” Lockwood on percussion. They will be followed by the Usufruct duo, that brings Polly Moller (flutist and vocalist, composer and improviser) together with computer musician Tim Walters.

Wednesday, July 26: Animals and Giraffes is the team of saxophonist and composer Phillip Greenlief and writer Claudia La Rocco. They have worked together with some of the Bay Area’s finest improvisers on different ways to explore the intersection of text and sound. They will be followed by the improvising duo of Amy Reed (guitar and voice) and Collette McCaslin (trumpet and soprano saxophone).

Thursday, July 27: Reed player Sheldon Brown has formed a group called Blood of the Air to perform a suite (of the same name) of pieces based on the poetry and speech melodies of Beat/Surrealist poet Philip Lamantia. The other performers are Darren Johnston (trumpet), Lorin Benedict (voice), Andrew Joron (theremin), Dave MacNab (guitar), John Finkbeiner (guitar), Jonathan Alford (piano), Vijay Anderson (drums), and Alan Hall (drums). This large-ensemble set will be followed by the improvising neem duo of Gabby Fluke-Mogul on violin and Kelley Kipperman on bass.

Friday, July 28: Surplus 1980 is a local post-punk band founded in 2009 by multi-instrumentalist Moe! Staiano. It will be followed by the VOCO trio of Alex Young on guitar, Tim Sullivan on drums, and Josh Martin on bass. They will perform ten original compositions that take conventional instrumental rock as a point of departure and then apply shifts in genre, tempo, time signature, and dynamics.

Saturday, July 29: The opening set will feature Karen Borca, known as the only bassoonist to make a mark in avant-garde jazz and free jazz. She will be joined by Lisa Mezzacappa on bass and Donald Robinson on drums. The low register will continue to prevail in the second set with Positive Knowledge. This group brings together Oluyemi and Ijeoma Thomas, the former on bass clarinet and the latter a spoken word artist. They will be joined by Hamir Atwal on drums.

All concerts will take place in the Concert Hall of the Community Music Center in the Mission. The address is 544 Capp Street, which is just north of the northwest corner of 20th Street and between Mission Street and South Van Ness Avenue. Tickets are currently on Sale at Early Bird prices. A Festival Pass for all concerts in $45, general admission to a single concert is $13, and the rate for students and seniors is $9.50. All tickets may be purchased online through a single Eventbrite event page.

Finally, the concert series will be proceeded by the annual Touch the Gear expo. This is a hands-on family-friendly event open to the general public. It provides an opportunity for everyone to get better acquainted with the instruments, technologies, and techniques involved in the ways music will be made during the concerts to follow. This will run for three hours on Sunday, July 23, beginning at 5 p.m. It will also take place in the Concert Hall of the Community Music Center, and there will be no charge for admission.

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