Outsound Presents: September, 2023

Following the Outsound New Music Summit, which took place this year in Berkeley, there seems to have been a break in activity during the month of August. However, Outsound Presents events will resume this month, beginning with the coming week. During this month there will be two LSG (Luggage Store Gallery) Creative Music Series events taking place on Wednesday evenings; and the venue remains located at 1007 Market Street, just off the corner of Sixth Street and across from the corner of Golden Gate Avenue and Taylor Street. Both concerts will follow the usual two-set format beginning at 8 p.m. Admission will be on the usual sliding scale between $10 and $20. However, no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Concert specifics will be presented in chronological order as follows:

September 6: This concert will follow the usual two-set format, with each set lasting somewhat less than one hour. The first set will be taken by the Usufruct duo. Polly Moller Springhorn is both a composer and an improviser, alternating between playing the flute and vocalizing. (I seem to recall listening to her do both at the same time.) Her duo partner will be computer musician Tim Walters. Their set will be followed by Audre, another duo. Both of the performers depart from “usual suspects” instrumentation. Jorge Bachmann works with both musique concrète soundscapes and a minimalist approach to analog synthesis. Michael Gendreau began as a percussionist but then went on to work with tape machines, turntables, and “scrappy electronics” (his wording).

September 20: This concert will also consist of two sets running a bit less than an hour. The first set will be a solo flute performance by Mitch Stahlmann, whose playing is enhanced by electronic processing. He will be followed by Amanda Chaudhary, who is one of the first Outsound composer-performers I encountered. (I have a photograph of her fingers manipulating analog control dials.) Her performances involve blending the results of her electronic controls into a variety of different styles, such as jazz, funk, and dance music. [added 9/13. 4:40 p.m.: A third set has been added. This will be a solo performance by Ipek Eginli. Her ever-evolving creative process involves electroacoustic free improvisation on piano, voice, modular synthesizers, and no-input mixing boards.]