Center for New Music: August, 2022

This morning I realized that I had not yet written anything about concert performances taking place at the Center for New Music (C4NM) this month. I then visited the Web site and discovered that only one event is currently on the Calendar, and it will not take place until the end of this month! This will actually be a release party, but it will include a live performance of the piece being released as a recording.

Cover of the album being released at this month’s release party at C4NM (courtesy of the performers)

The composition was created for the Turntable Drawings collection, an ongoing series of numbered works created jointly by composer Danny Clay and printmaker Jon Fischer. The work to be performed is “Turntable Drawing No. 16,” which was created for three turntables playing locked-groove records joined by an electronic guitar playing a score that features looped chordal fragments. The records on the turntables have been encoded with a variety of sounds, some of which are melodic and all of which are lower in fidelity than what we tend to expect of recordings.

The album whose release will be celebrated consists of two versions of this composition. One of these is the “studio version,” which consists of collaged material recorded between September of 2018 and May of 2020. The other is the “live version,” in which the guitar material is provided by Giacomo Fiore. He works with a modular synthesizer that processes sounds from both his instrument and the turntables, using them as the source material for his loops.

The performance at C4NM will begin at 8 p.m. on Saturday, August 27. General admission will be $10, and those paying $25 will receive a copy of the album being released. Members and students will be admitted for $5 and can receive the album for $20. For those that do not already know, C4NM is located at 55 Taylor Street, half a block north of the Golden Gate Theater, which is where Golden Gate Avenue meets Market Street. All tickets may be processed in advance through an Eventbrite Web page. Masks are still required for all in attendance, and those in the audience are required to be fully vaccinated. Furthermore, since pandemic conditions still prevail, the audience capacity will be reduced; so purchasing tickets early is desirable. [added 8/22, 10:30 a.m.:

Another event has been added to the Calendar for this month. Charles Celeste Hutchins will be visiting from London to perform what he calls “mangled agorave mashups.” He will be joined by local artists James Fei and John Bischoff, working with laptop and analog circuitry. Hutchins’ piece was originally written for tuba (which he played); but he is now performing it on a serpent. He prefers this instrument for its “low skronk and weirdly wubby intonation.”

This performance will begin at 7 p.m. on Sunday, August 28. General admission will again be $10. An Eventbrite Web page has been created for purchasing tickets in advance.]