$7 one night / $15 festival pass
[ email/phone reservations suggested ]
tapecenter@sfsound.org
(415) 614-2434
Transparent Theater
1901 Ashby - Berkeley, CA USA
[ across from the Ashby BART parking lot ]
The 'New' San Francisco Tape Music Center once again brings an exciting weekend of fixed-media compositions projected over a 20+ speaker surround-sound system. In conjunction with Acme Observatory Contemporary Music Series and Transparent Theatre, we present a rare event featuring classic and modern masterpieces, as well as six premieres of new works by Bay Area artists. Please join us in what will be a most memorable event!
First things first
A number of them— Pierre Schaeffer's 1948 "noise studies", musique concrète is born with the scratching of phonographs in a Paris radio studio; John Cage's "Willams Mix" of 1951, tiny pieces of tape are pasted together for eight separate soundtracks in a New York loft; Newman Guttman's 1957 "Silver Scale", a machine intended for telephone research sputter's out the first computer tune in New Jersey.
On reflection
This April— the passing of John Pierce, director of Bell Telephone Laboratories from the late 50s through the 60s. Significant work in sound synthesis and perception carried out at the Labs by Pierce, Max Mathews, Jean-Claude Risset, and others.
Here we are
Today— Subotnick's Tape Music Center, trades turning tape for spinning hard disc, anticipating spring rain.
Schaeffer's noise art, music made concrete with Warren's trains, Jolly's planes, Chuprun's children's dreams— Voisey hearing things. Austin hears Cage's silence; following, Jean, Segel sing their songs in Cage's many soundtracks.
Pierce's musical numbers then— sound in Ikeda, Ingalls, Nance; numbers speak your rightful voice! The art born, again—and lest we forget another birthday, 50 years of an artist Harrison.
Last things last
So we sound the sounds of before. And the sounds of what's now. And anticipate the sound to be made after this. . .
