Community Music Center
544 Capp Street SF
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14th Annual Outsound New Music Summit
Vision Music (film through the lens of extended music)
Tickets for 14th Annual Outsound New Music Summit

Bill Hsu/James Fei/Gino Robair
Tender Buttons Tania Chen, Gino Robair, Tom Djll
Bridge of Crows
Mika Pontecorvo, Elijah Pontecorvo, Kersti Abrams, Greg Baker, Mark Pino, Mariko Miyakawa, Bob Marsh



"Hsu’s animation work sustained interest from beginning to end, perhaps because there was just the right level of chaos (in the mathematical sense of the word) to trigger creative sensemaking on audience side." - Stephen Smoliar, Examiner

Tender Buttons taps sound worlds of complexity and lush emptiness, using grand piano framed by two setups of modular electronics. At times evoking sound worlds reminiscent of early Stockhausen, Cage/Tudor and new wave bands of the 1980s, the trio interplays compatibly with an intensity wrought from focused concentration – sometimes evoking a meditative “composed” sound world, at other moments setting up impossible musics in side-by-side coexistence, shimmering and translucent. For the Outsound Summit, Tender Buttons will augment their performance with live interactive video projections. Tender Buttons came together out of a shared passion for the practice of free improvisation as informed by contemporary musical disciplines, with a dash of intuitive and absurdist literatures (having borrowed their name from the 1914 book by Gertrude Stein). Individually, the members have worked with a range of artists from Tom Waits and Pauline Oliveros to Derek Bailey and Lol Coxhill.

Bill Hsu has built systems, tools, installations and compositions in collaboration with Peter van Bergen, Chris Burns, John Butcher, James Fei, Matt Heckert, Lynn Hershman, Jeremy Mende, and Gino Robair. He has performed and exhibited work in the US, Europe, Asia, and Australia. He teaches and does research in the Department of Computer Science at San Francisco State University.
James Fei has since been active as a composer and performer on saxophones and live electronics. Works by Fei have been performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble, MATA Micro Orchestra and Noord-Hollands Philharmonisch Orkest. Recordings can be found on Leo Records, Improvised Music from Japan, CRI, Krabbesholm and Organized Sound. Compositions for Fei's own ensemble of four alto saxophones focus on physical processes of saliva, fatigue, reeds crippled by cuts and the threshold of audible sound production, while his sound installations and performance on live electronics often focus on electronic and acoustic feedback. Fei received the Grants for Artists Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2014. Fei has taught at Mills College in Oakland since 2006, where he is Associate Professor of Electronic Arts.
Gino Robair has performed and recorded with Tom Waits, Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Nina Hagen, Terry Riley, Lou Harrison, John Butcher, Derek Bailey, Peter Kowald, Otomo Yoshihide, and the ROVA Saxophone Quartet. He is one of the "25 innovative percussionists" included in the book Percussion Profiles (SoundWorld, 2001), as well as a founding member of the Splatter Trio and Pink Mountain. His opera, I, Norton, based on the life of Norton I, Emperor of the United States, has been performed throughout North America and Europe

Mika Pontecorvo is a composer, improviser, visual artist/designer, and former research scientist living in San Francisco California. Mika began his sonic experiments as a teenager in the high desert of Nevada with home build instruments, sitar, and prepared and standard guitars. Late, while pursuing a Computer Science degree at the University ok Utah, Mika began studying composition and electronic music under Professor Vladimir Ussachevsky. Under the mentorship of Ussachevsky and Ercolino Ferretti, Mika began research into a Complex adaptive Systems theoretic approach to algorithmic composition, He also worked with Ferretti on a conceptual framework for using computers as performative music elements. His use of Complex Adaptive Systems and emergence in generative design systems in Creative systems has pointed the way toward his on-going work in designing and programming of computer-based Signal Processing networks utilizing Max/MSP. Mika's visual kinetic art works also draw on his generative and adaptive systems work. His approach often utilizing techniques such as photo collage and film montage with chaotic selection systems create complex, unexpected visual symbolic works with an evocative emergent narrative quality to them. Bridge of Crows is an electroacoustic chamber ensemble drawn from the the ranks of the collective improv group Cartoon Justice. It provides Mika and longtime members with a platform for further exploring Complex Adapt System Based Music. Blending free and modal improv with structured song and experimental noise processes, as well as, extra musical elements. The resulting music is focused at the intersection of Indigenous Root music and Post-industrial Electroacoustic Improvisation.
This years Outsound Summit will see the debut performance of a segment of Bedouin Poets of Mars : The Last Poet by Mika Pontecorvo's Bridge of Crows with guest artist Bob Marsh. They will show the kinetic video segment of the opening cut of this story and perform a live improvised score for this segment. The Bedouin Poets of Mars : The Last Poet is an original Intermedia work by Mika Pontecorvo. It is a speculative tale of a once thriving civilization inhabiting the planet Mars which has annihilated itself leaving only one last Bedouin poet and a small plant alive. The poet's last act is to try to find a survivable environment for the plant. On this journey the poet witnesses the utter destruction and desolation left in the wake of civilizations excesses. This performance piece is a work in progress that when fully realized will incorporate elements of butoh, dance, and spoken word in addition to music and kinetic video sculpture.



Cost: $15/$12

Audio samples in which musicians at this event play:

Videos featuring musicians playing at this event