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Subtropics celebrates fifteen years of music beyond the pale Iron Maiden at BankAtlantic Center April 16

By John Anderson Thursday, Feb 27 2003 Comments A A A Bruno Mars at the Fillmore Miami Beach May 11 March is a busy month for music fans in South Florida. There's the Calliope Fest at the end of the Miami Reggae Festival at Peacock Park April 30 month, and the brand-new Langerado Music Festival at the beginning. And of course there's that Listening party for Tyler the Creator's Goblin at the little gathering of DJs called the Winter Music Conference in the middle. Vagabond May 5

Sleigh Bells at Grand Central Miami April 30 Then there's the Subtropics Experimental Music More Most Popular>> Festival. Taking place throughout the month, it may be the most impressive event of them all in terms of breadth and artistic vigor, as well as the fact that it has survived fifteen years without a raft of fans arriving from all corners of the globe, with headliners few people have ever heard of.

Gustavo Matamoros cuts the, uh, keyboard Encompassing everything from classical and prog-rock to electronic music and performance Details art, Subtropics stays alive with the help of a low- Runs from February 27 to March 29. budget operation run by a small staff. "We don't Performances are scheduled for the Bass Museum, 2121 Park Ave, Miami Beach; PS 742, require as much resources to operate 1165 SW 6th St, Little Havana; Miami Beach Community Church, 1620 Drexel Ave, Miami efficiently," says Gustavo Matamoros, artistic Beach; and Light Box, 3000 Biscayne Blvd. Call 305-981-0600 for info, or see director of the South Florida Composers www.subtropics.org. Alliance, which produces the festival. The Related Content alliance's efforts are sustained through modest Röyksopp Talks Star Wars, Synths, and the art grants (from Miami-Dade County's Cultural Ultra Fest March 25, 2011 Affairs Department, among others) and Man Beaten By Police on Halloween Charged collaborations with local organizations like with Resisting Arrest Miami-Dade Community College and the Miami November 24, 2010 Light Project. It helps, too, that he works with Ten Electronic Dance Music Legends We Wish Had Come to Miami in March artists who don't require big fees, if any at all; April 1, 2011 many of them even pay their own way to travel Mediterraneo at Jade Brickell: A New Neighborhood Hangout

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Miami New Times on Facebook to the festival. "This field is not filled with prima August 13, 2010 Like donnas," says Matamoros, who nevertheless Miami Art Museum's "New Work Miami 2010" showcases breadth and scope of local talent tries to support the artists as much as he can. July 22, 2010 11,982 people like Miami New Times. Still, nobody is in it for the money. More About New and experimental music is a tough sell in Ruben Michelle Luis Fernando Oksana Matamoros Chris Cutler any city but it takes extra effort in Miami, where Facebook social plugin Wendy Carlos Music Festivals memories are short and apathy for live music is Electronic Music endemic. For any arts organization to achieve

critical mass, at least enough to tip the scales for free stuff, music info & more! and justify another year's funding, success often relies heavily upon the vision and efforts of one person. In Subtropics's case, that would be Matamoros. enter email

"I think I started saying this from the third festival on: Every year I do it is like doing it again from scratch," laughs Matamoros, who sees the festival's ongoing struggle for survival as the result of the instant-gratification crowd that prevails here. However, he acknowledges, "There's Slideshows

people who've been coming from the first year for fifteen years and continue to come. But it's like Bruno Mars & I say, in Miami there are no mountains, but everything is uphill." Janelle Monáe at Fillmore Miami Beach So while most of Miami's mid-March visitors will be busy bobbing to dance music spun by DJs in cavernous clubs, small but dedicated groups of music fans will be gathered in conference rooms around the city to celebrate those same DJs' predecessors. Before there was Sasha and Digweed Zeds Dead at or even Frankie Knuckles there were experimentalist legends like Terry Riley, Wendy Carlos, and Fillmore Miami Kraftwerk, pioneers to a new musical frontier of sound and technology. Riley's phase shifts and Beach tape loop innovations on early-Sixties works like In Cpredate modern sampling. Carlos took the Moog synthesizer and made it commercially viable in the early Seventies through hit albums like Switched-On Bachand the film soundtrack for A Clockwork Orange.Meanwhile Kraftwerk incorporated the work of both these artists and made history with seminal recordings like Sleigh Bells at Grand Central Autobahnand Trans-Europe Express. Somewhere in Detroit, a young Juan Atkins was paying very close attention to these developments, eventually drawing inspiration from them to create the techno sounds that the Winter Music Conference would subsequently be founded upon.

That much of today's DJ sounds are a legacy of those early experimentalists does little for the More Slideshows >> fortunes of the Subtropics festival. Of course, there are always exceptions.

"A couple years ago we presented Derek Bailey; he's an older guy, but he's been doing improvisational music a long time," says Matamoros of the avant-garde guitarist well known for Miami Classifieds

collaborating with jazz composer John Zorn. "I never saw so many young people in the audience. buy, sell, trade (7,277) musician (918)

And the guy is playing the weirdest stuff on the guitar." rentals (3,290) jobs (1,567)

personals (656) adult entertainment (14,701) With performances from more than twenty artists, the five-week festival starts off with a literal bang when Chris Cutler sets up his odd mix of drums and appliances at PS 742 in Little Havana on Friday. Cutler has had a long and politically active musical career, starting in London's psychedelic music scene of the Sixties; collaborating with keyboardist Dave Stewart (not to be Entertainment confused with the Eurythmics guitarist) in the 26-piece art-rock group Ottawa Music Company; Gino Tozzi forming the prog-rock band Henry Cow; playing with the London Philharmonic and Berlin Radio View Ad | View Site Orchestra; and working with a who's who list of progressive and experimental rock acts from Pere Ubu to the Residents. Art Modern Gallery View Ad | View Site

Probably the most recognizable of the performers, Cutler will be using a drum kit that includes Events http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2003-02-27/music/subterranean-diversions/ Page 2 of 5 Subterranean Diversions - Page 1 - Music - Miami - Miami New Times 5/12/11 1:03 PM

an electric toothbrush, Ping-Pong balls, and battery-operated cocktail mixers. Cutler will also Events Redland International Orchid perform on the following night as part of the "Surreal Subtropics Marathon," a no-holds-barred Festival musical event inspired by the Fluxus movement of the late Sixties that includes eclectic yet View Ad | View Site spontaneous performances from electric violinist Alfredo Triff, sound artist Alison Knowles, and Clubs others. Clevelander View Ad | View Site "You ask any of the artists that are coming and they'll say there's not that many places to perform anymore," says Matamoros of why Subtropics continues to be a valuable musical asset. As has More >> been proven in the past, such unusual sounds deserve to be heard because they often portend future mainstream music trends. "New music, meaning what's going on rather than a particular style of music, keeps changing," he argues. "What people are doing continues to change. It's basically exploring the unknown in different ways."

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