The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2017 America's only festival devoted to the performance of audio works projected in three-dimensional space, The San Francisco Tape Music Festival features three distinct evenings of classic audio art and new fixed media compositions by 20 local and international composers. Hear members of the SF Tape Music Collective, along with guest composers, shape the sound live over a pristine surround system consisting of 24 high-end loudspeakers while the audience is seated in complete darkness. It's a unique opportunity to experience music forming - literally - around you. [click here for more details]

ASHLEY WALTERS Cellist ASHLEY WALTERS has been described as performing “…with the kind of brilliance that beckons a major new performer on the new music scene” (Mark Swed,LA Times). As a solo artist, Ashley has been the dedicatee of numerous works by composers such as Nicholas Deyoe, Andrew McIntosh, Lewis Nielson, Daniel Rothman, Wadada Leo Smith, and Andrew Tholl. She is also known for her performances of Sequenza XIV by Luciano Berio, Plainsound-Litany by Wolfgang von Schweinitz, and Invisibility by Liza Lim. She specializes in performing microtonal works and repertoire with extended techniques and alternate tunings. Ashley has appeared as a soloist on concert series such as Green Umbrella, wasteLAnd music, San Diego New Music, Beyond Baroque, nief-norf Summer Music Festival, Santa Fe Creative Dialogue, at the Hammer Museum, the Wulf, and for dance performances in San Diego, Los Angeles, and Pittsburgh. Her debut album will soon be released featuring four works written for her in addition to works by Berio and Schweinitz. Recently, Ashley premiered a cello concerto by long-time collaborator Nicholas Deyoe and will record the piece in 2017. Following the premiere performance, Paul Muller of Sequenza 21 wrote, “The swirling texture and often agitated phrasing was accurately and confidently played, a showcase for the virtuosity that Ms. Walters dependably brings to all her performances.” This sheason, she will perform Liza Lim’s Invisibility at Disney Hall as well as solo recitals in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. A frequent collaborator with legendary trumpeter, improviser, and composer, Wadada Leo Smith, Ashley joined his Golden Quintet in 2016 and recorded his America’s National Parks the same year. “The band Wadada enlisted for this project was an expansion of his dream-team of veterans known as the Golden Quartet (Anthony Davis on piano, John Lindberg on bass, Pheeroan akLaff on drums), with the acquisition of the young cellist Ashley Walters, who adds chamberesque texture and diversified colors to the organic divagations.” (Jazz Trail) About the album, Dan McClenaghan of All About Jazz said “…and Ashley Walters’ cello paints the rich, beautiful hues that subtly enhance the entire proceeding – the most auspicious addition to a jazz ensemble since Chico Hamilton brought the instrument into his chamber groups in the late 1950’s.” Ashley has toured Smith’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated Ten Freedom Summers to Austria, Brazil, Chicago, D.C., and New York. She has also twice appeared as a guest with Smith’s Golden Quartet performing in Istanbul and Paris and she has performed with Smith’s Silver Orchestra, for which Robert Bush of All About Jazz said,“…and cellist Ashley Walters contributions were consistently compelling.” Ashley is a founding member of the Formalist Quartet, now in its tenth season, which has premiered a vast repertoire of works and is known for its audacious programming. Soon, the quartet will release a recording of Christian Wolff’s string quartets, recorded in collaboration with the composer. The Formalist Quartet has held residencies at Princeton, Stanford, UC Santa Barbara, CalArts, and Oberlin. Called “superb” and “fabulous” by the LA Times, the group has appeared in concert in Iceland, Austria, Italy, Germany, and throughout the United States. In the summer of 2013, Ashley joined the faculty of the nief-norf Summer Festival, a multi-tiered contemporary music organization devoted to fostering creative collaboration among musical performers, composers, and scholars. Each summer, she joins colleagues from throughout the U.S. to perform, teach chamber music, and conduct ensembles. In November 2014, she appeared with the nief-norf project at a multi-day festival at Northern Illinois University. Ashley’s recordings can be heard on Cold Blue Records, Darla Records, Populist Records, Tzadik Records, Cunieform, Music from Stanford: 541, Atlantic Records, Universal Motown, and as the cellist on the DVD documentary Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story. Ashley currently serves as faculty at Moorpark College and Ventura College. She has served on the faculty of the California State Summer School (Valencia, CA), the Academy of Creative Education (North Hollywood, CA), the Harmony Project (Hollywood, CA), and as an Associate-in-Music at UCSD. A native of Oak Hill, VA, Dr. Walters holds degrees from the University of California, San Diego (where she was twice awarded for excellence in teaching for her work with undergraduate students), the California Institute of the Arts, and Vanderbilt University (Magna Cum Laude).

sfSoundOrchestra peforms works by PAULINE OLIVEROS M U S I C I A N S Shanna Sordahl, cello Monica Scott, cello Elizabeth Schenck, saxophone Crystal Pascucci, cello Adria Otte, violin Polly Moller, flute, alto flute, bass flute Robert Lopez, percussion Jason Levis, percussion Emily Laurance, harp Benjamin Kreith, violin Kelley Kipperman, contrabass Aurora Josephson, voice John Ingle, saxophone, conductor Matt Ingalls, clarinet Jacob Felix Heule, percussion Diane Grubbe, flute Phillip Greenlief, saxophone Philip Gelb, shakuhachi Giacomo Fiore, guitar Tom Djll, trumpet Tom Dambly, trumpet Armando Castellano, horn Jesse Canterbury, bass clarinet Joshua Allen, saxophone and others, tba

DAVID SMOOKE Baltimore-based composer DAVID SMOOKE, marking the release of his solo album ‘Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death’ (New Focus Recordings), will perform compositions for toy piano and electronics as well as improvisations with Ken Ueno (voice) and Matt Ingalls (clarinets, contrabass garden hose). Composer DAVID SMOOKE (b. 1969) currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland, where he teaches music theory, rock music history, and composition, and is the Chair of the Music Theory Department at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. The Washington Post claims that “Smooke has some of the most uninhibited brain cells around” and describes his music as “superb […] a kaleidoscopic sonic universe where anything could happen”; the Baltimore Sun adds that it is “a highly creative, absorbing experience.” His honors include those from the Maryland State Arts Council, BMI, the National Association of Composers USA, the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Yellow Barn. He has composed commissions for groups and individuals including the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Volti Choir, Rhymes With Opera, the Great Noise Ensemble, and the Peabody Wind Ensemble. He received an M.M. degree from the Peabody Conservatory, a B.A. magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where he received the Century Fellowship, the highest fellowship offered by the Humanities Division. His composition teachers have included Shulamit Ran, David Rakowski, Robert Hall Lewis, and Richard Wernick. In addition to his composition activities, David performs improvisations on toy piano with the support of Schoenhut toy pianos, and has written extensively for NewMusicBox, the online magazine of New Music U.S.A.

Solo Performances by JOHN KRAUSBAUER BILL ORCUTT C. SPENCER YEH JOHN KRAUSBAUER is a music maker currently living in Los Angeles. He has performed his music in a multitude of settings - from basements and rock clubs to colleges and art galleries. Numerous recordings of his work have been released on independent labels in both the US and Europe.  In recent years his focus has been on his solo work, involving ritual endurance happenings with voice and violin, accompanied by synth and strobes; his compositions, mainly concerned with sytems-based phasing constructions; the Ecstatic Music Band, a collective exploring just tunings with amplified strings at high volumes and long durations, with stroboscopic lighting; The Essentialists, a country-blues-boogie-raga guitar/violin duo; and most recently the formation of the "M"inimalist psych-punk group, Night Collectors. Trance-Psychedelia is the aim and goal, thru experiential-architectural sound environments. BILL ORCUTT is an American guitarist and composer whose work combines elements of blues, punk, and free improvisation. Inspired by seeing Muddy Waters in The Last Waltz, Orcutt began playing the guitar as a teenager in Miami. In 1992, he formed the band Harry Pussy with his wife, Cuban/American drummer and vocalist Adris Hoyos. The group recorded three LPs and toured the US frequently, often in support of indie bands like Sonic Youth and Sebadoh. Their music, which drew from American no wave, hardcore punk and free jazz was influential and "served as a progenitor for the Noise movement." In 1997 the band dissolved and the couple divorced. Orcutt moved to San Francisco and took a long hiatus from music, returning in 2009, with an LP of solo guitar entitled A New Way To Pay Old Debts which was well received, ranking 3rd of 2009 in the The Wire magazine's annual "Rewind" list. His follow-up release How The Thing Sings was similarly praised, reaching number 3 on NPR's The Best Outer Sound Albums Of 2011. Since 2009, Orcutt has toured often appearing at festivals in the US and Europe, including Hopscotch, Incubate, Le Nouveau Festival du Centre Pompidou, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Donau and Big Ears. Typically a solo performer, Orcutt has also recorded or performed with Loren Mazzacane Connors, Chris Corsano, Peter Brotzmann and Alan & Richard Bishop. C. SPENCER YEH was born in Taipei Taiwan and is currently based in Brooklyn New York.  Yeh's sonic practice first developed within the autodidactic and u venturesome strategies of the American and International underground, most prominently with his project Burning Star Core.  Preferring the distinction of "working with sound and music" over more familiar nominations of "musician," Yeh considers not only timbre, texture, and temporality as material considerations, but the construction of genre, audience, and lore as part of the listener/consumer's experience.  Having amalgamated numerous artistic mediums and roles over his numerous endeavors, Yeh's formative infatuation with noise and improvised music could still be regarded as his most unadulterated expression – a bespoke array of facilities and parlance on a foundation of unconventional musical pedagogy.

LOADBANG New York City-based LOADBANG performs works for trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet, and baritone voice by Tim McCormick, Aaron Cassidy, Aaron Helgeson, Joji Yuasa, and Gerard Grisey. New York City-based new music chamber group LOADBANG is building a new kind of music for mixed ensemble of trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet, and baritone voice. Since their founding in 2008, they have been praised as ‘cultivated’ by The New Yorker, ‘an extra-cool new music group’ and ‘exhilarating’ by the Baltimore Sun, ‘inventive’ by the New York Times and called a 'formidable new-music force' by TimeOutNY. Their unique lung-powered instrumentation has provoked diverse responses from composers, resulting in a repertoire comprising an inclusive picture of composition today. In New York City, they have been recently presented by and performed at Miller Theater, Symphony Space, MATA and the Avant Music Festival; on American tours at Da Camera of Houston, Rothko Chapel, and the Festival of New American Music at Sacramento State University; and internationally at the China-ASEAN Music Week and Shanghai Symphony Hall. loadbang is the recipient of numerous awards, including Chamber Music America/ASCAP's Adventurous Programming Award and New Music USA's Impact Fund. loadbang has premiered more than 200 works, written by members of the ensemble, emerging artists, and today's leading composers. Their repertoire includes works by Pulitzer Prize winners David Lang and Charles Wuorinen; Rome Prize winners Andy Akiho and Paula Matthusen; and Guggenheim Fellow Alex Mincek. Not content to dwell solely in the realm of notated music, loadbang is known for its searing and unpredictable improvisations, exploring the edges of instrumental and vocal timbre and technique, and blurring the line between composed and extemporaneous music. To this end, they have embarked on a project to record improvisations and improvised works written by members of the ensemble. These recordings are designed, fabricated, and released in hand-made limited editions. loadbang can also be heard on a 2012 release of the music by John Cage on Avant Media Records, a 2013 release of the music of loadbang member Andy Kozar on ANALOG Arts Records which was called ‘virtuosic’ by The New Yorker, a 2014 release on ANALOG Arts Records titled Monodramas, and a 2015 release on New Focus Recordings titled Lungpowered which was called ‘new, confident, and weird’ by I Care If You Listen. loadbang is dedicated to education and cultivation of an enthusiasm for new music. They have worked with students ranging from elementary schoolers in the New York Philharmonic's Very Young Composers program and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s OrchKids Program to college aged student composers at institutions including Columbia University, Cornell University, Manhattan School of Music, New York University, Peabody Conservatory, Princeton University, University of Buffalo, and Yale University. They are in residence at the Greenwich House Music School in New York City and the Charlotte New Music Festival.

BASS2BASS SCOTT WORTHINGTON & MICHELLE LOU BASS2BASS is an electric bass duo comprised of SoCal bassist/composers SCOTT WORTHINGTON and MICHELLE LOU. Seeing a dearth in new music written for the instrument, the duo decided to form in 2016 and commission new pieces that feature the expressive range of the electric bass in contemporary music. Their inaugural west coast tour presents three new works by composer/performers SABRINA SCHRODER, WESTON OLENCKI and SCOTT WORTHINGTON. MICHELLE LOU'S work studies the possibilities of how strange form(s), functioning as behavior/as odd containers of strange objects/material can shape experiential time. In her recent work, she has begun to incorporate analog and D.I.Y. electronics, as well as edge towards computer based music and performance/installation pieces. Born in San Diego, California, Michelle received a dual B.A. degree in Performance and in Composition from the University of California, San Diego. She then continued her studies on the double bass at the Conservatorio G. Nicolini in Piacenza, Italy. Leaving without completion of the artist diploma, she decided to continue her composition studies at U.C.S.D. and later obtained an M.A. in Composition. As a Fulbright Scholar, she entered into the Masters program at the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Graz, Austria to work with Beat Furrer. Again, leaving without a degree in hand, Michelle chose instead to pursue doctoral studies at Stanford University, earning the D.M.A. degree in 2012. Her main teachers of composition are Chaya Czernowin, Steven Kazuo Takasugi and Brian Ferneyhough. Active also as a bassist and guitarist, Michelle has performed in many contexts, from cover bands to jazz, latin jazz, salsa, and free improv to classical and contemporary chamber and orchestral music. She has worked closely with young composers, having helped to premiere many works. Her teachers on the bass were Bertram Turetzky, Leonardo Colonna, Mark Dresser, and Bruce Moyer, with additional studies on the viola da gamba with John Dornenburg. In 2013-2014, she was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Her work has appeared at festivals such as Wien Modern, Donaueschinger Musiktage, MATA, Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, Darmstadt Ferienkurse, and The Festival for New American Music. In 2012, she won first prize in the Finale/American Composer's Forum competition with a handwritten score. SCOTT WORTHINGTON is a double bassist and composer based in Los Angeles. As a performer, he plays in chamber ensembles, orchestras, recording studios, and as a soloist. His focus on contemporary music frequently leads to commissions and premieres of new works for solo bass. As a composer, Worthington often uses electronics and non-standard ensembles. He strives to write music that evokes a timeless, meditative state with spacious and resonant sounds. He has released two albums on Populist Records, most recently Prism, which was named one of The New Yorker's top ten classical albums of 2015 by Alex Ross. Some highlights in the 2016-17 season include a performance on the Los Angeles Philharmonic's marathon event Noon to Midnight, a west coast tour with composer/bassist Michelle Lou, and a solo recital at UC Santa Barbara. Originally from west coast Canada, SABRINA SCHRODER writes music for mixed ensembles, often using modified transducers and self-built mechanisms as integrated instruments in live performance. She's been an active member of composer-performer collectives presenting scored and improvised music, a back-up band coordinator for teens in mental health housing, and has taught courses in Sound and Media Art at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Schroeder completed a BMus at the University of Victoria, an MA at Wesleyan with Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton; and a PhD in composition from Harvard University. She is currently based in Manchester, U.K. WESTON OLENCKI is a trombonist and composer specializing in the performance and production of new music and sound art. His work in performance is primarily concerned with hyper-extended instrumental technique, intensive performer-composer collaboration, object-oriented performance, feedback and noise, and continued fostering of artistic communities. Compositional concerns include digital native culture, glitch aesthetics, ties with visual and conceptual practices, and technologically-enhanced virtuosity. Weston is a member of Ensemble Pamplemousse and one half of RAGE THORMBONES [alongside Matt Barbier]. He was awarded the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis from the Darmstadt Ferienkurse, and has held residencies at UC Santa Cruz, Harvard, New York, and Stanford Universities. He lives in New York City.

sfSoundGroup plays music SFSOUND returns to c4nm with a program of contemporary chamber music by NOMI EPSTEIN, VINKO GLOBOKAR, and KLAUS HUBER (November 30, 1924 – October 2, 2017); short works written for sfSound by bay area composers HYO-SHIN NA and ERIK ULMAN; a world premiere by bay area composer SARAH STILES; and improvisations by SFSOUNDGROUP. P R O G R A M Nomi Epstein - Combine, Juxtapose, Delayed Overlap (2014) for chamber ensemble Vinko Globokar - Correspondences (1971) for four soloists Klaus Huber - Schattenblätter (1975) for clarinet, cello, and piano Hyo-shin Na - Andante (2007) for clarinet, piano, and violin -- written for sfSound's "small packages" commissioning project Sarah Stiles - excerpt from a new work (2017) for english horn, bass clarinet, cornet, percussion, violin, cello, and bass Erik Ulman - Fragment for Jules Olitski (2007) for oboe, clarinet, piano, and violin -- written for sfSound's "small packages" commissioning project sfSoundGroup - Improvisations (2017) M U S I C I A N S Monica Scott, cello Kjell Nordeson, percussion Julie Michael, viola Lisa Mezzacappa, bass Hadley McCarroll, piano Benjamin Kreith, violin Matt Ingalls, clarinet and bass clarinet Tom Dambly, trumpet Kyle Bruckmann, english horn

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