Sunday, October 22, 2023

The Lab: November, 2023

The “main event” for next month will be a three-day festival. As of this writing, two additional events have been scheduled for November; and, as usual, this site will do its best to keep up with any changes in plans. For those unfamiliar with the venue, The Lab is located in the Mission at 2948 16th Street. This is particularly convenient for those using public transportation, since it is a short walk to the corner of 16th Street and Mission Street. Busses stop at that corner for both north-south and east-west travel, and downstairs there is a station for the BART line running under Mission Street. Doors will open half an hour prior to when the performance will begin. Specific information, including a hyperlink to the event page that provides both background material and hyperlinks for ticket purchases, is as follows:

Thursday, November 9–Saturday, November 11, 8:30 p.m.: This is a three-evening festival entitled Mills After Mills: Three Days of Crazy Love. Sadly, it will also be a memorial, since it will gather a broad cross-section of composers associated with the legendary and now defunct Mills College Music Department. The title is taken from Seven Years of Crazy Love, a catalogue published by Mills in regard to the Center for Contemporary Music, an audio archive with over 7000 entries. The festival is curated and organized by Sally Decker, Brendan Glasson, Briana Marela, Michelle Moeller, Matt Robidoux, and Mitch Stahlmann. They worked with Laetitia Sonami, who realized a version of this program for performance during her final seminar at Mills. The above hyperlink includes a summary of the performers for each of the three days of the festival. There will also be a workshop led by Danishta Rivero at 1 p.m. on Saturday. Admission for the entire festival will be $40. Tickets for individual dates will be $15 with the usual discounts for members. All other purchases may be made through the Withfriends Web page for this event.

Thursday, November 16, 8:30 p.m.: This program will showcase three composers. Laurel Halo is based in Los Angeles and describes her work as “singular yet stylistically diverse, with releases traversing ambient, leftfield club, experimental pop and film score.” Joel St. Julien is Haitian-American and currently based in San Francisco. His interests as a composer tend to involve the interplay of acoustic and electronic elements. Leila Bordreuil is a cellist based in Brooklyn. She describes her influences as “Noise, contemporary classical, free jazz, and experimental traditions.” Tickets will be $24 with the usual discounts for members. All other purchases may be made through the Withfriends Web page for this event.

Saturday, November 18, 8:30 p.m.: The final program for the month (as of this writing) will consist of two sets. The first set will be taken by the duo of Jeff Witscher and Jack Callahan. As individuals, they have been involved with noise, computer music, and new music circles. They describe their collaborative work as “experiments with transparent composition systems and the limits of our current music technology, sharing sensibilities with radio art, A.A. meetings, group therapy sessions, formalist and fluxus generative poetry experiments, and Q&A formats.” Drought Spa involves interdisciplinary experiments by alex cruse and Kevin CK Lo. They make it a point to acknowledge that they live and work on Chochenyo Ohlone land. Their work involves visuals, stochastic synthesis, sensing-technologies, video, text, and movement. Admission will be $17 at the door. However, advance purchase through a Web page will be $15.87. There will also be the usual discounts for members.

No comments: