sfSound presents





The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2025
 Friday, January 10, 8:30pm [notes]
Saturday, January 11, 7:00pm [notes]
Saturday, January 11, 9:30pm [notes]
Sunday, January 12, 7:00pm [notes]

Victoria Theatre
2961 16th Street
San Francisco

 $20 general ($10 Sat 9:30 concert)
$10 balcony (underemployed et al.)
$50 fest pass (general seating all concerts)

CLICK HERE for advance ticket purchase

cash and venmo accepted at the door
beginning one hour before start time


America's only annual festival devoted to the performance of audio works projected in three-dimensional space, The San Francisco Tape Music Festival features four distinct concerts of classic audio art and new "fixed media" compositions by 42 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 (24 high-end loudspeakers) with the audience seated in complete darkness. It's a unique opportunity to experience music forming, literally, around you.

This year's festival features contemporary and classic fixed media compositions projected live through the loudspeaker array including works by AMON TOBIN, LUC FERRARI, JOHN CHOWNING, LAURIE SPIEGEL, ANNETTE VANDE GORNE, GILLES GOBEIL, ELECTRONIC MUSIC FROM INDIA 1969​-​1972, and many others.

Saturday's $10 9:30pm concert features late-night-appropriate works that lean towards ambient and long-form-exploration. The program centers around water, ecosystems in a rapidly changing climate, and the exploration of sonic worlds both physical and in our imaginations.

Sunday night's concert explores the various ways experimental musicians incorporate and manipulate elements from popular music and culture. A wide range of recombinant and collage works will be presented, including new multi-channel realizations of iconic pieces by JOHN OSWALD, JOHN CAGE, and WOBBLY. Compositions by KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN, NEGATIVLAND, RUTH ANDERSON, CARL STONE, PEOPLE LIKE US, and others will also be presented.

Local artists THOM BLUM, CLIFF CARUTHERS, SAM GENOVESE, MATT INGALLS, CHERYL E LEONARD, DOUGLAS MCCAUSLAND, KRISTIN MILTNER, MAGGI PAYNE, GINO ROBAIR, JON LEIDECKER, and MICHAEL ZELNER will be performing their works throughout the festival.

program notes and bios will only be available online. access them via the links below

P R O G R A M

Friday January 10, 2025 (8:30pm)
 [ program notes ]
LUC FERRARI - Visage V (1958)
MAGGI PAYNE - Surface Tension (2010)
ANNETTE VANDE GORNE - Vox Alia IV: Vox populi (2023)
MARTIN BÉDARD - Honey (Architectures From Silence No. 1) (2021)
MARIE-JEANNE WYCKMANS - Voyage, Voyage (2006)
S.C. SHARMA - After the War (1969)
NIKOS KANELAKIS - Inflection Point (2024)
SAM GENOVESE - Image Storm (2024)
CHERYL E LEONARD - Eremozoic (2021)
DOUGLAS MCCAUSLAND - Premiere (2025)


Saturday January 11, 2025 (7:00pm)
 [ program notes ]
JOHN CHOWNING - Phoné (1981)
AMON TOBIN - Piece of Paper (2011)
GILLES GOBEIL - Dans l'air du soir (2019)
MAŁGORZATA ALBIŃSKA-FRANK / CHARLOTTE HUG - Voices Found (2024)
ENRICO DORIGATTI - Quantum (2020)
I.S. MATHUR - Soundtrack of Shadow Play (1969)
JULIE MONDOR - Phloême (2024)
THOM BLUM - Combustible (2008)
CLIFF CARUTHERS - Blue Sky (2006)
MATT INGALLS - Sketches (2025)
KRISTIN MILTNER - Premiere (2025)


Saturday January 11, 2025 (9:30pm)
 [ program notes ]
LAURIE SPIEGEL - Patchwork (1977)
YANNICK DAUBY - Other Topographics (2023)
CHARLES DELUGA - Ecospherical: The Flood (2023)
MARCO DIBELTULU - Due atomi di idrogeno e uno di ossigeno (2024)
DAVID PIAZZA - L'arène aux songes (2023)


Sunday January 12, 2025 (7:00pm)
 [ program notes ]
KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN - HYMNEN (3rd Centre - SPAIN) (1967)
JOHN CAGE / MEDIO MUTANTE - Williams Mix 23A (1953/2023)
JOHN OSWALD - Plexure '24 (excerpt) (2024)
NEGATIVLAND - Incomprehensible Solution (2020)
RUTH ANDERSON - DUMP (excerpt) (1970)
CARL STONE - Apsara (2022)
PEOPLE LIKE US - Gone Gone Beyond (excerpt) (2022)
PHILIPPE MACNAB-SÉGUIN - Gone For Eggs (2024)
DIANA SALAZAR - La Voz Del Fuelle (2012)
GINO ROBAIR - Doom Scroll (2024)
WOBBLY - Wild Why (2002)
MICHAEL ZELNER - Public (2024)



equipment kindly provided by
The Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University
and sfSound


Spot on KQED's "California Report" by Sam Harnett



Spot on KDFC's "State of the Art"

NEW RELEASES!

   

   

   









What is Tape Music??

It is a bit paradoxical to use the word traditionally with a practice of the avant garde -- but, traditionally the words tape music have referred to the target media of a new kind of music. This new kind of music is not composed for arbitration by a pianist and the piano, so it must not be piano music. . . not for the string quartet, not for the orchestra, not even for the rock band.


Music Composed for Tape.

The idea of a music composed for a fixed medium, while perhaps starting down a path, does not really lead us to a fundamentally new art. If the only criteria for differentiating tape music from all other musics is the fixed delivery medium -- magnetic tape, vinyl, CD, miniDisc -- then our thought has just led us to all industrialized forms of music, so called "popular" and "classical". When this is our only standard, we discover tape music is actually the foremost music of our time. The kids love it, the moms subdue their road-rage with it, the dads sing tunelessly with it, and so on.


But This Music May Not be Music.

The pieces we present transcend simplistic notions of music and its materials and its "instruments." The recording/playback media itself is treated not as a stand-in for an absent performer, a poor man's orchestra, but as a vital and unique territory for exploration/exploitation. They coexist in many worlds, blurring the line between composition, field recordings, sound design, "cinema for the ear," virtual [audio] reality, "radio" drama, and sound synthesis. This art form does not depend upon the posturing of performers. It does not worship the technology with which it was produced, nor does it fetishize the physical medium in which it is contained. There is nothing to see here! In the same way cinema is NOT theatre, tape music is NOT music.


sfSoundRadio is now playing many tape works from
our past concerts. TUNE IN NOW!


Past SFTMC concerts

The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2024
January 5-7, 2024

a microfestival of tape music
April 30, 2023

The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2023
January 13-15, 2023

The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2020
January 10-12, 2020
 READ: a preview by Sam Lefebvre, KQED

The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2019
January 4-6, 2019
 READ: a preview by Joshua Kosman in the San Francisco Chronicle
READ: a review by Giacomo Fiore in the San Francisco Classical Voice

The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2018
January 5-7, 2018

The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2017
January 6-8, 2017
 READ: a review by Giacomo Fiore in the San Francisco Classical Voice

The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2016
January 8-10, 2016

The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2015
January 9-12, 2015
READ: a review by Sam Lefebvre in the East Bay Express

The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2014
January 3-5, 2014
READ: a review by J. Poet in the SFWeekly

The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2013
January 25-27, 2013

The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2012
January 20-22, 2012

The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2011
January 7-9, 2011

Unravelling Tape An installation by the San Francisco Tape Music Collective
June 15-July 15, 2010

The San Francisco Tape Music Collective @ Mills College
November 9, 2009

The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2009
January 30-February 1, 2009
 READ: a review by Jonathan Russell in San Francisco Classical Voice

The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2007
January 26-28, 2007

The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2006
January 25-27, 2006

Cinema for the Ear: The San Francisco Tape Music Festival
January 20-22, 2005

The San Francisco Tape Music Festival
February 20-22, 2004
HEAR: Colin Berry's feature about the festival on NPR's California Report

San Francisco Electronic Music Festival
Sunday July, 27, 2003
READ: a review by David Bithell in Computer Music Journal

Strictly Ballroom Series
Thursday October, 23, 2003
Stanford University

The Tranparent Tape Music Festival II
8/16/2002 - 8/18/2002
READ: a review by Tom Djll

The Tranparent Tape Music Festival
1/11/2002 & 1/12/2002
READ: East Bay Express' Preview Article
READ: a review by Jonathan Segel in Computer Music Journal

microFestival
7/29/2000
READ: a review by Mark Alburger in the SF Classical Voice & 21st Century Music

Big Sur Experimental Music Festival II
5/20/2000

The East Bay Tape Music Festival 1 @ Art Rattan Warehouse
4/30/99



The San Francisco Tape Music Collective is dedicated to presenting performances of audioArt diffused through a surround-sound speaker environment.
The SFTMC and the SF Tape Music Festival are projects of sfSound


The San Francisco Tape Music Collective is
Joseph Anderson | Thom Blum | Cliff Caruthers | Matt Ingalls
Kent Jolly | Douglas McCausland | Kristin Miltner | Maggi Payne



We are always looking for new works.
Click here for submission information.


:: contact us ::


Background image: a "diffusion score" for Edgard Varèse's Poème Électronique