It’s time again for the San Francisco Tape Music Festival, this year being held at the Victoria Theater in San Francisco.
It’s the annual presentation of pre-recorded electronics works played on dozens of speakers surrounding the audience — a very cool event that has to be experienced in person, not on YouTube. I wrote my impressions of the experience back in 2012.
This year’s edition has a few unusual twists:
- Sunday night, Jan. 11, will feature compositions that combine tape music with live performers. It’s not that unusual a concept but is new ground for the Tape Music Festival. I’m hoping the “tape” portion continues to take advantage of the multispeaker setup.
- There’s a late-night show, 11:00 p.m. tonight (Saturday, Jan. 10) in addition to a normal-timed 8:00 p.m. show.
- That late-night show will include the world premiere of a Brian Eno piece, “Golden.” The web site explains: “In 2007, Eno composed Golden, a new 16-channel work specifically for our festival. He created multiple versions of various lengths, and the “full” 17-minute version will have its public debut on this program.” Also on the program: a 1966 piece by Pauline Oliveros.
- The Saturday 8:00 p.m. show features “Nasal Retentive Calliope Music,” a 1968 piece by Frank Zappa. Also on the program: a new piece by Cheryl Leonard, a musician who works with natural objects as “instruments” and once took that practice to Antarctica.
If that isn’t enough, you can also catch Bruno Ruviaro’s “Cinema for the Ears,” a recital of electronics being performed on Jan. 23 at Santa Clara University. Ruviaro is the SCU professor who guides the Santa Clara Laptop Orchestra (SCLOrk), which I’d profiled in 2012.
