THE SAN FRANCISCO TAPE MUSIC FESTIVAL 2015 program 2 THE SAN FRANCISCO TAPE MUSIC FESTIVAL is presented by the San Francisco Tape Music Collective and sfSound

funded in part by:

The San Francisco Grants for the Arts, The French-American Fund for Contemporary Music, The Zellerbach Family Foundation, and individual contributors.

equipment kindly provided by: The Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), Stanford University.

sfSound/SFTMF is an affiliate of, and is fiscally sponsored by, the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the service of chamber music in California.

THANK YOU Wendy Carlos, Byron Evora, Matthew Goodheart, Grux, Benjamin Kreith, Charles Kremenak, Dianne Lynn, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano, John MacCallum, Hadley McCarroll, Collin McKelvy, Sam Nichols, Eric Seifert, and Erik Ulman S A T U R D A Y J A N U A R Y 10 2 0 1 5 8 P M V I C T O R I A T H E A T E R

P R O G R A M 2

Cuerno de Chivo (2012) Francisco Eme

Sufficient for a Head: Radio Edit (2015) Collin Mckelvey sunSurgeAutomata (1987) Carla Scaletti

Ablation Zone (2014) Cheryl Leonard

Schrei (2014) Pierre-Luc Senécal

Bodies-Soundings (2014) James O’Callaghan

interval

Track #1 (2013) Matthew Schoen

Bellbox (2003) Kent Jolly

Flux - Sound Re-Design (2015) Byron Evora

Walkways of the Hopeful and the Hopeless (2015) Thom Blum

Nasal Retentive Calliope Music (1968) Frank Zappa giraSol~giraNada (2014) David Arango Valencia FRANCISCO EME Cuerno de Chivo (2012 :: 4:00 :: 5.1 channels)

In 2006 Mexico's President Calderon launched a war against the drug cartels. Violence soared to the point of becoming a way of life in certain areas of the country, thus creating a "culture" of drug trafficking and violence. One of the strongest symbols of this culture is undoubtedly the "goat horn,” the popular name for the AK47 assault weapon, the weapon of choice for drug lords and hitmen. Seized weapons from big capos have been entirely dipped in gold or encrusted with diamonds as amulets and status symbols. There are also several popular songs that refer to it, and hundreds of pictures of men and women posing with this gun, including politicians. The piece is based on two types of sound materials, audio recordings of actual clashes between soldiers and drug traffickers, obtained from an investigation of journalistic content, and a “narco- corrido” (folk music that speaks of drug exploits) played by the band "Los Dareyes de la sierra" called "goat horn.” The song talks about the legendary weapon AK47 and its "heroric" use by a Mexican drug lord. In the piece a musical group is interrupted by gunmen and that's when the languages are intertwined and start making music together, although it’s a music of death. This composition is not meant to glorify this culture of violence, rather it is meant to provoke awareness of a reality lived by many.

Born in Mexico, FRANCISCO EME currently works as a composer and sound and multimedia artist. His work has developed in the areas of sound art and electroacoustic music, performing pure electronic, instrumental and mixed compositions, sound acts, sound installations and video. He has also done works for dance, theater and media. His works have been presented in México, Spain, Italy, Czech Republic, Canada, Argentina and El Salvador. Primarily self taught, Francisco has also undergone studies in the Mexican Centre for Music and Sound Arts and the Laboratory of Musical Informatics and Electroacoustic music at the UNAM. He has taught several courses in different art schools in México, teaching electronic musical composition, video making, sound engineering and music production. COLLIN MCKELVEY Sufficient for a Head: Radio Edit (2015 :: 7:02 :: 4 channels)

Sufficient for a Head: Radio Edit was originally composed to accompany a live film piece. This drove me to create a dynamic piece that would really utilize and push the expansive frequency range that the Meyer Speakers can articulate. The piece itself is developed from some very mundane phonography and incidental sounds recorded primarily in my studio, which is a thirteen square-foot room with 9 foot ceilings. The source material was recorded and then processed and arranged. There are bowed metal springs, violin, paper sounds, household items being manipulated, voice, doors creaking, an avocado tree, a chair moving on a wooden floor, and the narrow gauge Skunk Train from Fort Bragg California. My goal was to create a tense and dynamic piece that had a good sense of movement as well as tension. The piece on tonight’s program is a more concise version.

COLLIN MCKELVEY is a San Francisco based artist working with sound and video to create site specific performances. McKelvey has shown work at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Southern Exposure, Royal Nonesuch Gallery, ATA, Human Resources, The Lab, Guerrero Gallery, the Kanbar Forum at the Exploratorium, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, The Geffen Center at MOCA and other artist spaces throughout the United States.

CARLA SCALETTI sunSurgeAutomata (1987 :: 5:10 :: stereo)

The title comes from Lewis Thomas' The Lives of a Cell in which he describes the "steady surge of energy pouring out from the sun into the unfillable sink of empty space by way of the earth,” resulting in the "improbable ordered dance" that we call life. All sounds in the piece are derived from "clicks" organized using one-dimensional cellular automata (self-organizing systems, the most familiar example of which is the 2-D version called Conway's Game of Life). Clicks were chosen as the source material because in the mountains of New Mexico (where the composer grew up), nearly every animal makes some kind of clicking sound. sunSurgeAutomata was realized using the Platypus Digital Signal Processor.

CARLA SCALETTI holds computer science and music composition degrees from University of New Mexico, Texas Tech University, and University of Illinois. In the 1970s, she worked as principal harpist in the New Mexico and Lubbock Symphony Orchestras and composed for acoustic instruments, but later she developed an interest in computer generated music. After completing her education, she worked as a researcher at the CERL Sound Group, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and later as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Illinois before leaving the university to launch the Symbolic Sound Corporation. Scaletti designed the Kyma sound generation computer language and co-founded Symbolic Sound Corporation with Kurt J. Hebel in 1989 as a spinoff of the CERL Sound Group. CHERYL LEONARD Ablation Zone (2014 :: 5:13 :: stereo)

In 2009 I spent a month at Palmer Research Station on Anvers Island off the Western Antarctic Peninsula. Palmer is built on a sliver of exposed rock at the edge of the Marr Ice Piedmont, a vast glacier that enshrouds the island. Like most glaciers in this region, the Marr is shrinking, its surface increasingly fractured by exposed crevasses and its periphery collapsing into the sea. Behind the station the ice has retreated more than 1500 feet over the last 50 years. The “ablation zone” of a glacier is the area below a certain elevation where there is a net loss of ice mass due to melting, evaporation, sublimation, calving, wind scouring, and so forth. Within the Marr’s ablation zone I collected field recordings of meltwater streams and crevasses full of icicles. In the ocean near the Marr’s terminal ice cliffs I recorded icebergs and brash ice that it had jettisoned. The Marr produced a beguiling array of unique sounds. Each meltwater stream bubbled, gurgled, or sputtered its own rhythms and melodies, sometimes sounding like electronics or machinery. Icicles dripped the intricate layers of gamelan songs. Icebergs crackled and snapped like giant pop-rocks, or provided large cavities for waves to resonate within. To these field recordings, full of motion and insistent energy, I added the more subtle sound of smooth penguin nesting stones rubbing together, and then otherworldly voices produced by bowing Adélie penguin vertebrae.

CHERYL E. LEONARD is a composer, performer and instrument builder. Over the last decade she has focused on investigating sounds, structures and objects from the natural world. Many of her recent works cultivate stones, wood, water, ice, sand, shells, feathers and bones as musical instruments. Leonard is fascinated by the subtle textures and intricacies of sounds, especially very quiet phenomena. She uses microphones to explore the micro-aural worlds hidden within her sound sources and develops compositions that highlight the unique voices they contain. Her projects often feature one-of-a-kind sculptural instruments that are played live onstage, and field recordings from remote locales. Leonard is particularly interested in collaborating across artistic disciplines and creating site-specific works. In addition to developing her own projects, she has written numerous soundtracks for film, video, dance and theater, and has designed sounds for exhibits at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. Leonard holds a BA from Hampshire College and an MA from Mills College. Her music has been performed worldwide, and her compositions for natural-object instruments have been featured on several television programs and in the video documentary Noisy People. She is the recipient of grants from the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, ASCAP, American Composers Forum, American Music Center, the Eric Stokes Fund and Meet the Composer. Leonard’s commissions include works for Kronos Quartet, Illuminated Corridor and Michael Straus. She has been awarded residencies at Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Arctic Circle, Villa Montalvo and Engine 27. Recordings of her music are available from NEXMAP, Unusual Animals, Ubuibi, Pax, Apraxia, 23 Five, The Lab and Great Hoary Marmot Music. PIERRE-LUC SENÉCAL Schrei (2014 :: 9:40 :: 8 channels)

Schrei, "scream" in German, is my attempt to transfer into music the horrors of World War II. Positioning itself along the countless studies and novelists' work which attempt to have us look closer at the reality that the executioners were alarmingly ordinary, this piece is in no way a judgement of the actors implied, but a representation of the extent the Horror can take. In this piece, inspired by Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones, you will hear the voices of men and women, both victims and executioners, telling their tales as they bring you through the mass murders in the East, the propaganda campaign of the Third Reich and the gas chambers. Voices where suffering and brutal dehumanization blends with the reports of SS officers, giving in to nervous breakdowns and sadism. Voices from beyond the grave, urging us to listen and to remember. Pain is universal, a thread that connects us all as members of the human race, even when Evil is done. The murders of this war, of any war for that matter, often committed with barbaric and senseless cruelty, remain the product of human beings. In that, we remain somewhat, human brothers.

PIERRE-LUC SENÉCAL: I am 12 when I tell my father I want to learn guitar. It’s the start of thousand of hours listening to Pink Floyd, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Sigur Rós, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and technical death metal, practicing guitar and whatnot. At 19, my musical studies begin with electroacoustic music under the wings of Michel Tétreault and Pierre-Marc Beaudoin in Cégep de Saint-Laurent, Montréal. Today, I am 23 and I keep learning with great teachers and composers such as Georges Forget, Martin Bédard et Robert Normandeau at the Université de Montréal.

JAMES O’CALLAGHAN Bodies-Soundings (2014 :: 10:21 :: stereo)

Bodies-Soundings interrogates two instruments - an acoustic guitar and a toy piano - as sounding bodies, whose resonant chambers do not sound, but only resound. The instruments are used as loudspeakers, amplifying sounds both sourced from the instruments, and external sounds that expand and contradict the instruments’ identities. Without performers, they are simultaneously ‘disembodied’ and re-imagined as physical bodies of their own, animated by living sounds; anthropomorphizing them while also emphasizing their physical construction. JAMES O’CALLAGHAN (b. 1988) is a composer and sound artist based in Montréal praised for his “real orchestral imagination” and “highly refined sense of color” (Vancouver Sun). His music intersects acoustic and electroacoustic media, employing field recordings, amplified found objects, computer-assisted transcription of environmental sounds, and unique performance conditions. Recently, he was commissioned to produce a new acousmatic work for the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (INA-GRM) in a co- production with Le Vivier; the work will be completed as part of a residency at the GRM studios in Paris. His work Isomorphia for orchestra and electronics was nominated for a JUNO Award for Classical Composition of the year. The work was the result of a commission and residency with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada. He is a founding member and co-director of the Montréal Contemporary Music Lab. He received a Master of Music degree in composition from McGill University in 2014, studying with Philippe Leroux, where he also taught an introductory course in Electroacoustic composition. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts honours degree from Simon Fraser University in 2011, studying with Barry Truax, David MacIntyre, Rodney Sharman and Arne Eigenfeldt. He has also studied and taken workshops with Michel Gonneville, Kaija Saariaho, Lasse Thoresen, and R. Murray Schafer.

MATTHEW SCHOEN Track #1 (2013 :: 4:05 :: stereo)

This piece was born from my love for electronic music, as well as an interest for analog synthesis. I wanted to use sounds that are akin to popular music in a more experimental context. Chords, pads, and percussions are all to be heard, but their typical organization is disrupted.

From a background of classical music, MATTHEW SCHOEN primarily composes electroacoustic music with and without video. Increasingly interested in exploring new forms and tools of expression, his most recent projects have focused on live audiovisual interaction. Matthew enjoys working with programming, believing that the tools he uses to create his work are closely related to its meaning.

KENT JOLLY Bellbox (2003 :: 8:02 :: stereo)

Bellbox is a somewhat meditative piece that uses the sound of a gamelan (courtesy of Mills College), a busy Highway 580, and a box with bells inside it.

KENT JOLLY (Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, 1970) received his education in electronic music at the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA 1994) and Mills College in Oakland (MFA 1996). He currently works professionally in the video game industry as a sound designer, audio director, and creative director. BYRON EVORA FLUX - Sound Re-Design (2012 :: 4:19 :: stereo)

While I work as a Video Game Sound Designer, one of my favorite things I've ever done wasn't actually a game at all. During the summer of 2012, after making guns, explosions, and other typical video game sounds for over a year straight I needed to find something that would challenge me in a different way (while recharging my battery). I found an abstract animation by Candas Sisman on VIMEO, called FLUX, and decided to re-do its soundtrack. It was refreshing to be without limits and, and surprising to see what I could make when allowed to simply cut loose. I wanted to make it feel like an inorganic entity was slowly coming to life, timid yet inquisitive at first, but then growing angry it was trapped in the frame. Since it was originally meant for a wrap- around video wall in a museum I panned everything to the extremes, quickly, and aggressively. In the end, it turned out sounding somewhere in between a film soundscape and a modern symphonic piece with discordant notes and strange morphing sounds.

BYRON EVORA is a sound designer currently residing in San Francisco. While he primarily works in the game industry, he has created audio for just about everything at some point or another, including an independent feature-length film. When Byron is not making sounds, he enjoys reading sci-fi novels, training MMA, cooking, and drinking a nice Single Malt Scotch.

THOM BLUM Walkways of the Hopeful and the Hopeless (2015 :: 7:52 :: stereo)

Begun in the last half of 2014 and finished in January of 2015, this piece was provoked by my morning constitutionals in the most urban settings of San Francisco, California, where I observed that the middle class has all but vanished. It is thus a play in which two characters of quite opposing natures collide directly into each other without any buffer whatsoever.

THOM BLUM has been composing electroacoustic music since 1972. For the most part he is a self-taught composer, although his early teachers and mentors include James Tenney, Ingram Marshall, and Curtis Roads (California Institute of the Arts). His works are presented internationally in concerts, festivals, broadcasts, and galleries. He is co-founder of The International Computer Music Association, was an associate editor of The Computer Music Journal, and is a member of the five-person San Francisco Tape Music Collective. In late 2013 his Soundscraper project, for live crowd-sourced soundscaping performances, was launched and had its premiere performance in March, 2014 (see www.soundscraper.org for details). Other Soundscraper performances will take place in 2015, including an evening-length collaboration, Under the Radar, with choreographer Alyssa Lee. www.thomblum.com FRANK ZAPPA Nasal Retentive Calliope Music (2:02 :: 1968 :: stereo)

YEAH! Bwa-hah-hah! Oh, my God... Beautiful! God! It's God! I see God!

FRANK ZAPPA (1940 - 1993) was an American musician, bandleader, songwriter, composer, recording engineer, record producer, and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. Zappa produced almost all of the more than 60 albums he released with the band The Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. While in his teens, he acquired a taste for 20th-century classical composers such as Edgard Varèse, Igor Stravinsky, and Anton Webern, along with 1950s rhythm and blues music. Zappa was a self-taught composer and performer, and his diverse musical influences led him to create music that was often difficult to categorize. His 1966 debut album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!, combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. His later albums shared this eclectic and experimental approach, irrespective of whether the fundamental format was rock, jazz or classical. His humorous lyrics often reflected his iconoclastic view of established social and political processes, structures, and movements. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship.

DAVID ARANGO VALENCIA giraSol~giraNada (2014 :: 11:26 :: stereo) “Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.” — Samuel Beckett

The title is taken from a poem and song from the literary movement called Nadaismo (Nothing-ism). The song Girasol giranada was inspired by a poem written by the Colombian author Gonzalo Arango and the song writer Eliana.

DAVID ARANGO VALENCIA’S music career began as a keyboard player in various projects including: electronic, rock and industrial metal, while possessing a background in classical piano. After his first experiences, David became interested in sound design and the ability to use sound in order to create, and explore, a unique language within music. He exploited his first ideas in sound field recording for documentaries and short films. While attending Cégep de St-Laurent, under the direction of electroacoustic composers Michel Tétreault and Pierre Marc Beaudoin, he developed a deeper appreciation for composition and its ability to transmit ideas. Presently, David attends Université de Montreal under the direction of Jean Piché and Martin Bédard, continuing to explore the boundaries of electroacoustic music and creation. PLEASE JOIN US FOR THE REMAINING FESTIVAL CONCERTS

SATURDAY JANUARY 10 11pm Brian Eno - Golden (2007, WORLD PREMIERE) Pauline Oliveros - The Day I Disconnected the Erase Head and Forgot to Reconnect It (1966) Cliff Caruthers - Natoma (2003) Augusto Meijer - Utopia (2014)

SUNDAY JANUARY 11 8pm (featuring sfSoundGroup) two programs in two sets, exploring the relationships between electronics and acoustic instruments

“Does listening to this constant transition from one state to another tell us anything about the nature of sound?“ -- Bernard Parmegiani

FRENCH PROGRAM Pierre Boulez - ANTHÈMES II (1997 :: violin + electronics) Luc Ferrari - ARCHIVES SAUVÉES DES EAUX (2000 :: improvisers + tape) Horacio Vaggione - PRELUDES SUSPENDUS III (2009 :: tape) Bernard Parmegiani - ACCIDENTS / HARMONIQUES (from DE NATURA SONORUM) (1973 :: tape)

AMERICAN PROGRAM Mario Davidovsky - Synchronisms #2 (1964 :: flute, clar, violin, cello, tape) Robert Erickson - Pacific Sirens (1969 :: ensemble + tape) Hans Tutschku - Still Air 3 (2014 :: oboe, bass clarinet, iPads) Matt Ingalls - CrusT (1997 :: clarinet + tape)

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KEEP THIS PROGRAM ADVERTISEMENT FREE Your kind donation will help us to continue presenting great music Go to sfsound.org/sponsors.html to donate online UPCOMING SFSOUND CONCERTS

jan 21, 2015 :: sfSalonSeries @ center for new music SÉVERINE BALLON

feb 11, 2015 :: sfSalonSeries @ center for new music MAZEN KERBAJ

feb 17, 2015 :: sfSalonSeries @ center for new music JOANA HOLANDA & IGNAZ SCHICK

mar 9, 2015 :: sfSalonSeries @ center for new music MARCO FUSI

mar 18, 2015 :: sfSalonSeries @ center for new music CARL LUDWIG HÜBSCH & RADICAL 2 DUO

mar 28, 2015 :: sfSalonSeries @ center for new music ROBERT ASHLEY TRIBUTE

apr 10, 2015 :: april in santa cruz festival @ ucsc SFSOUND PLAYS TENNEY & NEW WORKS BY STUDENT COMPOSERS

apr 18, 2015 :: tangents guitar series @ center for new music JAMES TENNEY'S "SPECTRUM IV”

apr (tbd) :: room series @ royce theater WATER-CITY BERKELEY : LIVE MUSIC TO A FILM BY KIM ANNO

may 9, 2015 :: sfSalonSeries @ center for new music DAVID BITHELL

may 22, 2015 :: sfSalonSeries @ center for new music HAPPY VALLEY BAND

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