Dates Announced for San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2018

Once again the new year will be celebrated by the annual San Francisco Tape Music Festival. This remains one of the best opportunities in the United States to enjoy the performance of synthesized audio compositions projected into a three-dimensional space. That space is configured with 24 high-end loudspeakers; and, for many of the performances, the projection of the audio sources onto those speakers is controlled in real-time. The results are experienced by the audience sitting in total darkness.

As in the past, the festival schedule will consist of four concerts over the course of a single weekend. Specific dates and times will be as follows:

• Friday, January 5, 9 p.m.
• Saturday, January 6, 8 p.m.
• Saturday, January 6, 11 p.m.
• Sunday, January 7, 8 p.m.

Details about the specific compositions to be performed at each of these concerts have not yet been released. (Those details were added to last year’s version of this article when they became available.)

The schedule will include three pioneering works in the medium. The earliest of these will be Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Gesang der Jünglinge,” created in 1956 and one of the earliest pieces to have a significant spatial dimension. There will also be a projection of James Tenney’s “Blue Suede,” his first collage created in 1961. This was one of the instances of what would later be called plunderphonics, since the collage was based on samples taken from an Elvis Presley recording. Finally, there will be a projection of Pierre Henry’s 1963 “Variations pour une porte et un soupir” (variations for a door and a sigh), considered as one of the pioneering works in the musique concrète genre.

[added 12/26, 3:40 p.m.: Program details have now been announces as follows:

Friday January 5, 2018 (9pm)
PIERRE HENRY Variations for a Door and a Sigh (excerpt) (1963)
FRANCIS DHOMONT Phœnix XXI (2016)
MAGGI PAYNE Coronal Rain (2017)
FERNANDO LOPEZ-LEZCANO Y Sonó como Arpa Vieja (2017)
NATHAN CORDER clima, slice, clima (2017)
ELSA JUSTEL Cercles et Surfaces (2013)
PANAYIOTIS KOKORAS Qualia (2017)
JAMES O'CALLAGHAN Xenoia (2017)

Saturday January 6, 2018 (8pm)
JAMES TENNEY Collage No.1 (Blue Suede) (1962)
THOM BLUM Tabula Rasa (2017)
MATT INGALLS Collage 3.1 (2017)
SOPHIA SHEN / GABBY WEN Cloudburst Dreamscape (excerpt) (2017)
ADAM SOHN Cricket Rhythms (excerpt) (2017)
ROCÍO CANO VALIÑO Tâches (2016)
NIKOS STAVROPOULOS Karst Grotto (2017)
DEMIAN RUDEL REY Che-toi (2016)
BERNADETTE JOHNSON Summer (2009)
FRANCESCO GIOMI Scabro (2011)

Saturday January 6, 2018 (10:40pm)
[program runs one hour and fifteen minutes with no intermission]
MONIQUE JEAN T.A.G. (2013)
JOSEPH ANDERSON Pacific Slope (2002)
TIM WALTERS The Answer in the Flame (2017)
CHAMBERLAIN ZHANG Spiralism (2016)

Sunday January 7, 2017 (8pm)
KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN Gesang der Jünglinge (1956)
HILDEGARD WESTERKAMP Kit's Beach Soundwalk (1989)
JONTY HARRISON Espaces cachés (2014)
NATASHA BARRETT A Soundwalk through Shanghai (2014)
HANS TUTSCHKU Remembering Japan (part 1) (2016)
CLIFF CARUTHERS Short Walk to Killaloe Moon (2001)
ORESTIS KARAMANLIS Sterfos (2009)]

All performances will take place in the Victoria Theatre, located in the Mission at 2961 16th Street, one block east of the 16th Street BART Station and the Muni bus stops on the corner of Mission Street. General admission will be $20 for each concert with a special $10 rate for balcony seating for the underemployed. As in the past, there will be a festival pass sold for all four concerts for $60. Tickets will be available at the door after 7 p.m. on each of the three days of the festival, and only cash will be accepted. The Web page for the Festival announcement has a hyperlink for advance ticket purchase; but, as of this writing, the Web page accessed by that link is not currently processing ticket orders.