September 15—17, 2023
7:30pm doors / 8:00pm show
$17-25 Per Night // $45 Festival Pass
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SFEMF announces dates and artists for its 22nd Annual Festival dedicated to groundbreaking electronic music. In a coproduction with The Lab and with the support of the Italian Cultural Institute, SFEMF presents three nights of live electronic performances featuring a diverse cadre of internationally renowned and emerging creators. This year's lineup highlights local musicians as well as headliners from afar. The work ranges from operatic landscapes, ecosystems of noise, and new visions of dub to the space between instrument and art. The festival opens Friday, September 15th, at The Lab, with Bay Area favorite Chris Brown remounting his 2001 work Branches for interactive computer and live improvisation. Percussionist William Winant and cellist Ben Davis join Brown for the performance. Friday’s concert will continue with Roziht Eve’s sonic journey through inner landscapes and conclude with artist, poet, and instrument maker Ava Koohbor, who will present Silhouette of a Tulip exploring sound as a silhouette. Saturday, September 16th, presents local experimentalist Sam Genovese as well as re:VOLT from Los Angeles. Comprising composers Jill Fraser and Peter Granader, re:VOLT, along with Shiro Fujioka and Thomas Klepper, will adapt Morton Subotnick's seminal 1971 electronic work Sidewinder. Genovese’s electronic operatic rituals cap the evening. On Sunday, September 17th, Canadian experimental composer/musician Fletcher Pratt weaves together musique concrete, dub, and rhythmic elements to create a rich, stereophonic tapestry. Next, using only the Juno 60 synthesizer and the organic linear pulsating sound of a drum kit, the Italian duo Bono / Burattini performs a dense, hypnotic collection of songs. The festival concludes with Providence-based improviser and noise artist Bonnie Jones creating ecosystems of sound that invite the listener to perceive sound as knowledge.
FULL PROGRAM
Friday, Sept 15
8 pm at The Lab, 2948 16th St, San Francisco
Chris Brown with William Winant and Ben Davis, Roziht Eve, Ava Koohbor
Saturday, Sept 16
8 pm at The Lab, 2948 16th St, San Francisco
re:VOLT, Sam Genovese
Sunday, Sept 17
8 pm at The Lab, 2948 16th St, San Francisco
Fletcher Pratt, Bono / Burattini, Bonnie Jones
About SFEMF
The San Francisco Electronic Music Festival is an artist-run organization founded in 1999 by eight local sound artists and musicians. Since the first festival in 2000, SFEMF has presented works that span the sonic spectrum from ambient to rhythmic and atonal to melodic by participants ranging from new and emerging young artists to respected pioneers of the electronic music field. Recent festivals have featured performances by clipping, zoviet france, William Basinski, Dieter Moebius, Christian Marclay, and Maja Ratkje. For more info: sfemf.org.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES:
Ava Koohbor is a poet, visual and sound artist. Through sound, words, and objects she seeks to find balance in everyday’s chaos. Her latest works have been exhibited and performed at Audium, APICC Festival 2023: Reimagine Horizons, and as a part of group exhibition at RootDivision: ME in a(ME)rica. Her latest publication, a collection of her poetry, Death Under Construction, has been published by Ugly Duckling Presse. She believes that each artist is a medium to transfer the world of possibilities to what is. She holds an MFA in Electronic Music from Mills College. avakoohborarts.com
Roziht Eve is a San Francisco-based Taiwanese American media composer, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and a self-produced singer-songwriter. She recently earned her Master's degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in Technology and Applied Composition. She enjoys her continual exploration of genre-bending music influenced by sacred chants, Bach, Chopin nocturnes, Debussy, jazz, Enya, and EDM. roziht.com
Chris Brown, composer, electronic musician, and pianist, makes music with self-designed acoustic and electroacoustic instruments, interactive software, computer networks, microtonal tunings, and improvisation. His early work featured electroacoustic instruments he created, like the Gazamba (1982) – an electric percussion piano featured in Alternating Currents (1984) – and a computer-controlled analog signal-processor for the environmental sound piece Lava (1992), for brass, percussion, and live electronics. As a member of the pioneering computer music band The Hub he received a 2018 Giga-Hertz Award for Lifetime Achievement in Electronic Music from ZKM. From 1990 to 2018 he taught electronic music, theory, composition, and contemporary performance practice at Mills College in Oakland as Co-Director of the Center for Contemporary Music (CCM). https://cbmuse.com
William Winant, percussion – "One of the best avant-garde percussionists working today" according to critic Mark Swed (LA Times, Wall Street Journal) – has performed with some of the most innovative and creative musicians of our time, including John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, Keith Jarrett, Anthony Braxton, James Tenney, Cecil Taylor, George Lewis, Steve Reich and Musicians, Jean-Philippe Collard, Frederic Rzewski, Ursula Oppens, Joan LaBarbara, Oingo Boingo, and the Kronos String Quartet.
Ben Davis, cello, concentrates on fusing his playing and ideas into a raw vehicle of acoustic expression. Following gigs with Evan Parker, Louis Moholo, Vincent Courtois and Wadada Leo Smith, Ben developed a taste for a freer approach to improvisation, consequently touring and recording extensively with Ingrid Laubrock, Simon Nabatov, and his own group Basquiat Strings, which collaborated with Ellery Eskelin and was nominated for the prestigious Mercury Prize.
re:VOLT is a Los Angeles-based electronic music quartet of like-minded avant-garde synthesists/composers/producers who fell down the same sonic rabbit hole. Separately they have had lifelong careers infusing experimental music into the collective cultural zeitgeist by scoring feature films and countless television commercials and video games, winning international music festivals, being featured in the Patch CV documentary and multitudes of electro-acoustic/multimedia performances – including selling out the REDCAT Theater – winning Cleos, serving on the board of SEAMUS, and being awarded a RIAA Gold Record for electronic sound design for the progressive metal band Tool.
Sam Genovese is an experimental sound artist, composer, and filmmaker. His work takes the form of albums, films, opera, installations, and live improvisation. Somewhere between song, sound sculpture, and phantom score, the varied terrain of Genovese’s albums plays within the realm of electronic, computer, and new music, but precludes full subscription to any tradition. Cinematic techniques and imagined narrative structures play at the heart of Genovese’s process, offering throughlines that guide both compositional decisions and the listening experience. Sam holds an MFA in Experimental Electronic Music and Recording from Mills College. His new vocal album STUBBORNDEATHSTUBBORNSTEEL will be available October 17. Samgenovese.com
Fletcher Pratt is a musician/composer/video artist based in Oakland, CA. Originally from Winnipeg, MB, Canada, he was active in the Canadian experimental scene before moving to the Bay Area in 2015. He studied at Mills College, receiving an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media. His music is a mix of tape collage, abstract electronics, dub-infused rhythms, and deep drones. His ongoing tape series called Dub Sessions; Vol.5 was released in 2021 on Crash Symbols. He also makes abstract video using both analog and digital tools. linktr.ee/fletcherpratt
Francesca Bono is a vocalist, performer, founder of Ofeliadorme, and a member of the Donnacirco collective. Vittoria Burattini is a percussionist and multi-faceted drummer, and a member of the influential Italian avant-rock band Massimo Volume. Their debut album Suono In Un Tempo Trasfigurato was recorded and mixed by Italian composer Stefano Pilia, a perfect match for Bono / Burattini’s sonic explorations. Their blend of analog electronics and organic pulses place them in a time out of joint where dancing remains the one constant ritual. www.instagram.com/bonoburattini
Bonnie Jones is a Korean-American improvising musician, poet, and performer working with electronic sound and text. She performs solo and in numerous collaborative music, film, and visual art projects. Bonnie was a founding member of the Transmodern Festival and CHELA Gallery and is a member of the High Zero Festival collective. With Suzanne Thorpe she co-founded TECHNE, https://technesound.org, an organization that develops anti-racist, feminist workshops that center on technology-focused art and community collaboration. She has received commissions from the London ICA and Walters Art Museum and has presented her work extensively in the U.S., Mexico, Europe and Asia. Bonnie was a 2018 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. Born in South Korea, she was raised on a dairy farm in New Jersey, and currently resides in Baltimore, MD, and Providence, RI, on the lands of the Susquehannock, Piscataway, Algonquian, and Narragansett. https://bonnie-jones.com