San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2023 Plans

Unless I am mistaken, the last performance of a San Francisco Tape Music Festival (SFTMF) took place in January of 2020, about two months before just about all public performances were cancelled in order to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus (coronavirus). Next month SFTMF will be “back in the saddle.” It is still our country’s only festival devoted to 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.

The return of the Festival will see performances of “fixed media” compositions by 46 local and international composers. This year the local artists will included T.D. Skatchit, the duo of Tom Nunn, who died earlier in the year, and David Michalak. As in the past, the festival schedule will consist of four concerts over the course of the second weekend in January. Specific dates and times are as follows:

• Friday, January 13, 8:30 p.m.
• Saturday, January 14, 7 p.m.
• Saturday, January 14, 9:30 p.m.
• Sunday, January 15, 7 p.m.

As in the past the second Saturday concert will feature late-night appropriate works that lean towards ambient and long-form explorations. The specific compositions to be performed at each of these concerts will be as follows:

Friday January 13, 2023 (8:30pm)

• ENNIO MORRICONE - La mitragali (1970) & Disordini (from "L'istruttoria è chiusa, dimentichi") (1971)
• ALVIN LUCIER - North American Time Capsule (1967)
• T.D. SKATCHIT (TOM NUNN/DAVID MICHALAK) - Chairmen of the Skatch (2010)
• CHERYL E LEONARD & JON LEIDECKER - Multiple Park (2022)
• KRISTIN MILTNER - new work (2023)
• NATHAN CORDER - Appetite (2020)
• SOUTHEAST OF RAIN - Day 8 Between Fleeting Somethings (2020)
• JUNZUO LI - An Ensemble of Time and Scene (2019)
• PETER FALCONER - Canch End Morning Radio (2020)
• PANAYIOTIS KOKORAS - A.I. Phantasy (2020)
• JOÃO PEDRO OLIVEIRA - La Mer Émeraude (2018)

Saturday January 14, 2023 (7:00pm)

• VANGELIS - selections from Blade Runner (1982)
• KRZYSZTOF PENDERECKI - Psalmus (1961)
• JON APPLETON - San Francisco Airport Rock (1996)
• MATT INGALLS - Ping (2023)
• SUDHU TEWARI - Transparent Fish (2020)
• JAEHOON CHOI - Stream (2019)
• SIMON COOVI-SIROIS - Trois Perspectives Sur Une Entropie Positive (2020)
• MARCO DIBELTULU - Microclima IIII (2017)
• RYO IKESHIRO - CCCCaaaallllllllOOOOnnnnMMMMeeee (2017)
• ANDREW LEWIS - Skyline (2016)
• FULYA UÇANOK - Swarming (2020)
• BIHE WEN - Beyond (2020)

Saturday January 14, 2023 (9:30pm)

• ROBERT FRIPP - Empire (2021)
• JON APPLETON - Newark Airport Rock (1969)
• THOM BLUM - Three Improvisitions (2022)
• KATIE MCCUTCHEON - Quiet Place (2022)
• LEAH REID - Reverie (2019)
• WEI YANG - a_voi(ce)_d (uhj) (2021)
• JOHN YOUNG - Arioso (2021)
• CECIA Team - CECIA Composition (2019)
• CECIA (Collaborative Electroacoustic Composition with Intelligent Agents: PANAYIOYIS KOKORAS, MARIAM GVINIASHVILI, JUAN CARLOS VASQUEZ, MARTYNA KOSECKA, ERIK NYSTRÖM, ARTEMI–MARIA GIOTI, & KOSMAS GIANNOUTAKIS)

Sunday January 15, 2023 (7:00pm)

• GYÖRGY LIGETI - Artikulation (1958)
• FRANCIS DHOMONT - Perpetuum Mobile (2019)
• JON APPLETON - Chef d'Oeuvre (1967)
• MAGGI PAYNE - Through Space and Time (2022)
• JOSEPH ANDERSON - the 7 GATES of Thebes (1995)
• DOUGLAS MCCAUSLAND - why do you distort your face? (2022)
• MICHAEL ZELNER - Confined (2020)
• STÉPHANE BORREL - The Lovebirds (2021)
• NIKOS KANELAKIS - Spaces and Places (2019)

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 and for the underemployed. The one exception will be the 9:30 p.m. show on Saturday, which will be $10 for all. As in the past, there will be a festival pass sold for all four concerts for $50. 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. Eventbrite has created a Web page for advance ticket purchases for both individual concerts (using a pull-down menu to select the date) and the festival pass.