APRIL 28 8PM PAMELA Z APRIL 29 8PM THERESA WONG EDWARD SCHOCKER & THE CROSSING ENSEMBLE APRIL 30 8PM LUCIANO CHESSA YBCA FORUM & GRAND LOBBY #NEWFREQFEST2016 Our organization was founded in 1993 as WELCOME TO a citizen institution that would be home YBCA Presents to the diverse local arts community while YERBA BUENA serving to connect the Bay Area to the CENTER FOR world. YBCA’s mission is to generate NEW FREQUENCIES FEST 2016 culture that moves people. We believe THE ARTS that culture—a collection of art, traditions, values, human experiences, and stories— is what enables us to act with imagination and creativity, to act socially, politically, and with conviction. Culture instigates THURSDAY, APRIL 28, 8PM change in the world. MEMORY TRACE, Pamela Z We believe that more and different kinds FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 8PM of people need to be defining culture today THE UNLEARNING, Theresa Wong and that more people need to have access THE CROSSING, Edward Schocker and the to cultural experiences that are relevant to Crossing Ensemble their lives and their communities. We need new definitions and new experiences that SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 8PM bring people together regardless of their A RETROSPECTIVE, Luciano Chessa differences in order to make the inclusive and equitable culture we need today. We believe that the arts should be on the front line of change and that cultural institutions exist to spur and support big societal movements. Through powerful art experiences, thoughtful and provoca- tive content, and deep opportunities for participation, we are committed to kindling inclusive culture that cultivates empathy, awakens personal and societal transfor- mation, and reaches for a world fueled by inspiration. The need has never been stronger than now, and there is no better place than YBCA to answer the call. We are so glad that you are here. We are grateful for your cultural participation, and we hope you will come back and enjoy all that YBCA has to offer. Warmly, DEBORAH CULLINAN CEO of YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS Pamela Z photo of Memory Trace by Silvia Matheus 2 3 A NOTE FROM The Bay Area is experiencing a resurgence PROGRAM OVERVIEW THE CURATOR of national recognition with its healthy and vibrant experimental music scene ISABEL YRIGOYEN spearheaded by the Center for New Music, MEMORY TRACE MUSIC CURATOR Mills College, San Francisco Symphony’s Pamela Z SoundBox, the Other Minds music festival, and the Luggage Store Creative Music Memory Trace is a solo performance Series. The San Francisco Conservatory exploring various aspects of memory of Music and its New Music Gathering through voice, electronics, multichannel conference hopes to be an annual hybrid video, sampled text fragments, and conference and music festival of national gestural movement. The work grew out scope devoted to contemporary music. of a sound and video installation that I showcased at Arc Gallery in 2012. It unfolds YBCA’s New Frequencies Festival 2016 through a series of dreamlike sonic and highlights the work of four Bay Area– visual episodes of remembering and based artists from this underground forgetting. scene: Pamela Z, Theresa Wong, Edward Schocker, and Luciano Chessa. Each play a Part of my working process involved pivotal role in the new sound music arena, making audio and video recordings of delving into experimentation with old and interviews with a number of people, whom Pamela Z photo by Silvia Matheus new technologies, making instruments, I asked to recount memories, dreams, and repurposing traditional instruments to curious memory-related stories. I mined changes in the way her memory worked. create new sounds, and using the body these for speech and image fragments to She began launching into dialogues and voice to push the envelope and create collage, layering and triggering samples about (and with) people from her past as San Francisco was at new forms. in the performance. I composed music if those conversations had taken place combining my live voice and electronic just yesterday or were in the midst of the forefront of musical The projects bridge music and sound, processing with this audio and video happening. She began sharing fragments experimentation during performance, and visual arts to express source material, which I conjured and of her past that she had never spoken of concepts and explore the contemporary controlled using instruments that sensed before and mentioning names that my the 1960s counterculture. human condition with imagination, depth, my physical gestures and the amplitude of sisters and I had never heard. It was as The city’s history with the and humor. Pamela Z opens with the my voice. These voices, faces, and figures if she was time traveling—slipping in and premiere of Memory Trace, an exploration emerge periodically throughout the various out of the present. My observations of her avant-garde, particularly of the concept of memory, occupying the episodes, acting as connective tissue for inspired me to examine subtle changes as the Tape Music intersection of technology and theater, the work, forming some of its multiple in my own memory processes. I began to and forefronts the artist’s extraordinary layers. wonder how my memory will change in the Center developed new operatic vocal range. Theresa Wong’s future. Toward the end of her life I made tape-based art forms, The Unlearning, is a timely reflection on I can still remember the day in the early some audio and video recordings of her, war and whether we can unlearn cycles 1990s when I first purchased memory. I and a small amount of that footage made contributed to a wealth of violence. Edward Schocker’s The delighted in the fact that I could hold it in its way into Memory Trace in the form of of creative collaborations Crossing takes us into a contemplative my hand: a thin green wafer etched with a short, single-channel movie used as an space of ecstatic sound rooted in a lattice of metal lines. I quickly noticed episode in the piece. My mother passed among artists such as improvisation, contrasting traditional parallels between the computer’s memory away in early August 2015, just one week Terry Riley, Steve Reich, shinawi Korean musical practice with and my own. Prone to anthropomorphism, after I mounted a work-in-progress run contemporary performance. Luciano I continue to compare and often confuse of the piece, and I will always think of the David Tudor, Pauline Chessa’s retrospective is a self-portrait, the two. I am interested in exploring how work as being dedicated to her memory. Oliveros, and others showcasing sixty-four hand-picked artists humans and computers store memory. from gospel to orchestra. Chessa also How do they “misplace” information, or Memory Trace was workshopped at New Music with the San Francisco’s premieres A Blind Date, inspired by his lose it entirely? How can we differentiate New College in Sarasota, Florida, in January Actor’s Workshop, the San personal life and experiences as an openly between dreams and real or manufactured 2015. The work-in-progress showed at Royce gay Italian man. memories? Why do certain sounds or Gallery in San Francisco in summer 2015 in an Francisco Mime Troupe, aromas trigger very old recollections? intimate three-night run. Anna Halprin Dancers’ Join us for a remarkable three-day festival and an extraordinary range of expression As I was developing Memory Trace, my Workshop, and Canyon and sound art. Enjoy! aging mother was living out her final years. Cinema. I became deeply interested in the vast memories she held as well as the rapid 4 5 ARTIST PROFILES and performed original scores for Ensemble, the Empyrean Ensemble, an ISEA panelist on sensor-driven and choreographers and for film and video and St. Luke’s Chamber Orchestra. She network performance, Leonardo LASER PAMELA Z artists. She has done vocal work for other has had numerous dance commissions, presentations. He received 2012 and 2014 Creator, composer, performer composers, including Charles Amirkhanian, providing scores for choreographers LAD awards for video design, and a 2012–13 Vijay Iyer, and Henry Brant. Her large- such as Brenda Way (ODC Dance), Jo Isadora Duncan Award nomination for Pamela Z is a composer, performer, and scale multimedia performance works Kreiter (Flyaway Productions), and best visual design. He teaches workshops media artist who works primarily with Parts of Speech, Gaijin, Voci, and Baggage Donald Byrd (Spectrum Dance Theater). in interactive video and sound, and has voice, live electronic processing, sampled Allowance have been presented at the She curates and produces the ROOM been a visiting artist and conference sound, and video. A pioneer of live digital Kitchen, New York; Theater Artaud and Series, a San Francisco avant-chamber presenter in media and performance at looping techniques, she processes her ODC Theater, San Francisco; the Museum series featuring a variety of virtuosic many institutions, including the University voice in real time to create dense, complex of Contemporary Art theater, Chicago; solo artists and chamber groups playing of San Francisco, San Francisco State sonic layers. Her solo works combine theaters in Washington, DC, and Budapest, experimental music. She has collaborated University, MIT, Massachusetts College of experimental extended vocal techniques, Hungary, and beyond. Her one-act opera with a wide range of artists, including Art and Design, Louisiana State University, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, Wunderkabinet, inspired by the Museum of Joan La Barbara, Joan Jeanrenaud, Miya the University of Roehampton, the and sampled concrète sounds. She Jurassic Technology (co-composed with Masaoka, Jeanne Finley and John Muse, University of Brighton, Amherst College, uses MAX MSP and Isadora software on Matthew Brubeck), premiered at the Lab Shinichi Iova Koga (inkBoat), and Luciano Duke University, the University of Sussex, a MacBook Pro along with custom MIDI in San Francisco, and was subsequently Chessa.