Luggage Store New Music Series

Click for Photos of the Luggage Store Series

The LSG New Music Series is the longest standing experimental music series in the Bay Area, with weekly Thursday night shows since 1991. Founded by LSG Gallery Directors Laurie Lazer and Darryl Smith, the series has been curated by several Bay Area musicians.

Since 2002 the New Music Series has been curated by Outsound Presents and local improvisers/sound artists Rent Romus and Matt Davignon. They present a wide cross section of sound artists from every experimental genre.

Thursdays 8-10pm
Admission $6-10 sliding scale
All ages welcome, no one refused for lack of funds.

The series is an artist-run, grass-roots DIY effort that relies on volunteers. Please join us in setting up chairs, curtain, lights, sound once a week, and contact Outsound Presents to get involved in marketing and project coordination.

The Luggage Store Gallery is a non-profit corporation funded by the City of San Francisco, grants, and your contributions. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday, Noon to 5pm. For gallery information call 415-255-5971.

Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Sean Rooney, Steev Hise, Scott Looney, Matt Ingalls, Damon Smith, Bob Boster, Melissa Metrick, Jon Brumit (send us a note if you presented over the past 17 years, we'd love to hear from you).

Over the course of its Thursday night concerts, the series has presented hundreds of artists drawn from a vanguard roster, among them Cecil Taylor, Miya Masaoka, Alan Silva, Carl Stone, Biggi Vinkeloe, Joe McPhee, Janet Feder, Peter Kowald, Henry Kaiser, Fred Frith, Gino Robair, Koji Asano, Andrea Neumann, Axel Dorner, Kitundu, Pamela Z, Wolfgang Fuchs, Amy Denio, Jason Kahn, Eddie Prevost, Karen Stackpole, Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Gianni Gebbia, Karen Borca, Oluyemi Thomas, Saadet Turkoz, Yasuhiro Otani, Eddie Gale, Jim Ryan, Dina Emerson, Burton Green, Jane Rigler, Jack Wright, Assif Tsahar, CJ Reaven Borosque, Glenn Spearman, Danielle DeGruttola, Bob Marsh, Shoko Hikage, Bob Ostertag, Xome, Randy Yau, Stimbox, Kaffe Matthews and countless others both local and international.

Directions : 1.5 blocks from the Powell Street BART station

Link to home page : Luggage Store New Music Series

Upcoming Events:

Thursday, Jul 9 2009 8:00 PM

Outsound Presents
Full Moon Concerts - Blessing Moon
8 PM Free Rein
9 PM Valka (Agnes Szelag + Marielle Jakobsons) with Noah Phillips

Free Rein, focused on "earth music for space people", is a new all-improv trio melding reeds/flutes, Danelectro 6 string bass, percussion, voice, cymbal, keyboard, and Theremin.

The surface area of the Moon is equal to that of Africa. The Moon is a spherical continent hanging in the sky. The Moon is the missing content of the Earth. Through the medium of gravity waves, the rocks of the Moon sing to the rocks of the Earth. Free Rein will spontaneously collaborate with the Moon in this endeavor, sculpting a sound that reflects back to Earth, playing tones that wax and wane through vibration, harmonic bodies phase shifting.

Valka is battle of strings. Agnes Szelag & Marielle Jakobsons unleash graphic scores and mood swings with guest players.
With Noah Phillips, the trio's Blessing Moon rituals are inspired by ripe dreams and the balance between dark and light.

Thursday, Jul 16 2009 8:00 PM

8pm: Lance Grabmiller (laptop) with Sebastian Krawczuk (ashbory bass)
9pm: George Chen

Sebastian Krawczuk:
A free improvising sound artist in transition from Washington, DC to California, playing the electric upright bass with sound processors. Krawczuk has recently expanded his domain in modular synthesizers and computer music. Sebastian is a seasoned player, participating in a series of music improvisation workshops in Baltimore (MD), in the Minijax and Electric Possible events in DC. He is a former member of the 10 String Trio, Mystery Shopper, the Asher-Krawczuk Duo and is currently involved in projects to include: Outdegree - an "intra-development" experiment, a soundtrack contribution to Dual Nature, a film by Andreas Guskos, and collaboration with Vildhjarta – a progressive metal band from Sweden. Past influences include punk, metal and free-improvised sounds while performing with bands in Szczecin, Poland, such as Baby Blue Eyes, Felicite Pueros and STUCKONCEILING.

Lance Grabmiller is a San Francisco-based laptop musician, with musical roots in IDM and industrial music, but who now specializes in processing sounds of live musicians and/or environmental noises. He is 1/3 of the band Shudder (with Kyle Bruckmann and Phillip Greenlief). http://www.praemedia.com/lancegrabmiller.html

George Chen is a freelance writer and musician living in Oakland, CA. Music projects include Chen Santa Maria, KIT, Common Eider King Eider, and running the record label Zum (http://zumonline.com). Other multimedia collaborations include working with video artists Nate Boyce and Detritus Projects for Illuminated Corridor. Along with Virgil Porter he helped produced the cable access show Burn My Eye. He has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, SF Bay Guardian, The Wire, and The Stranger.

Thursday, Jul 23 2009 8:00 PM

No show tonight - our staff is co-presenting the Outsound New Music Summit. Come see us there!

Thursday, Jul 30 2009 8:00 PM

8pm: James Devane - computer
9pm: Jorrit Dijkstra (NL)

Thursday, Aug 6 2009 9:00 PM

Outsound Presents
Full Moon Concerts - Corn Moon
8 PM: Grex (Karl Evangelista and Margaret Rei Scampavia)
9 PM: Phillip Greenlief and David Boyce tenor saxophone duo

Grex’s program explores generative natural processes through the lens of morbidity and fractured consciousness, utilizing cyclicalism and repetition to infuse this perspective with shades of redemption and rebirth.

Grex (greks) n. 1. a multicellular aggregate of the groups Acrasiomycota or Dictyosteliida, formed for the purposes of travel and food collection. 2. a Bay Area creative music partnership composed of Karl A.D. Evangelista (guitar, vox, misc.) and Margaret Rei Scampavia (piano/keys, accordion, flute, saxophone, vox, misc.). Grex (the band) was formed in and around the Mills College music axis, early morning breakfast conversations, and intense dissections of South African music, emphasizing genre bending, cross-idiomatic conceits and melding elements of mostly everything (Evangelista has a background in free jazz and Scampavia is a biologist) into something stark and eldritch. Remarks HurdAudio, “The striking thing about this music was its stubborn refusal to eschew any element in favor of another… offered with a headlong creative urge that made the unexpected turns and sequences into a joyful expression.”

Thursday, Aug 13 2009 8:00 PM

Guest Curation by CJ Borosque
Intersections and connections:
The 8 ball evening: kicking off the series "BEHIND THE 8"
A show about making connections between artists of radically different musical traditions...
Phogmasheen (trumpet, FX)
Jim Kaiser (bicycle wheel)
CJ Borosque (trumpet, FX)
and Arachnid Arcade (noise FX)

The first set will be a duo between Arachnid Arcade and CJ Borosque. Two noise artists who have never shared the stage.
The music will be spontaneously composed and will be about 25 mins...
The second set will be an orchestra of never-played-together-before musicians.

The set will be 30 to 40 mins
and will be a meditation on a video that will be unveiled the night of the performance.
The musicians will provide an ambient noise score, to go with the film, that will be unrehearsed and unpredicted in outcomes, as radically different players from different tradition create music to accompany visual media they have never seen. Surprise is the name of the game.

Thursday, Aug 20 2009 8:00 PM

Guest Curation by Travis Johns
8pm: M. Mara Ann
9pm: TBA

M. Mara Ann:
As an artist working with language, M. Mara-Ann expresses her creativity through writing, singing, and mixed media performance. inspired by the musicality of spoken language, the graphical architecture of writen text, her love of philosophy and theory, and the limitless exactitude of abstraction, Mara's approach to language is fearless with a passion for *hybridity* and *experimental forms*. often, Mara's artistic process involves the creation of a core manuscript such as lighthouse, or more recently Containment Scenario, from which a family of related multi-media works emerge both as excerpt and exponent. this constellating dialogue can be seen with the CD Luminous, the audio-visual installation the mirrorrim, and the multi-media performance Containment Scenario as they relate to the book, Containment Scenario: DisLoInterMedTextIdentCation: Horse Medicine just out from OBooks. as a poet that sings, a writer who performs, and a storyteller creating immersive multi-media shows, Mara's greatest creative goal is to help inspire a more sustainable, compassionate, and peaceful world for all of us.http://www.medusa.org/bio.html

Thursday, Aug 27 2009 8:00 PM

8pm Tri-Cornered Tent Show
Album Release performance of Erase the Past
9pm AnyWhen Ensemble (OR)

Douglas Detrick - Trumpet and Compositions
Hashem Assadullahi - Alto and Soprano Saxophones
Steve Vacchi - Bassoon
Jon Glawe or Liz Byrd - Cello
Ryan Biesack - Drums and Percussion
An ensemble performing original compositions from romantic orchestral music, modernist chamber music, traditional and contemporary jazz, and free improvised music, as well as rock, electronica and folk musics.

Thursday, Sep 3 2009 8:00 PM

Outsound Presents
Full Moon Concerts - Harvest Moon
8 pm: RTD3 - Ron Heglin, Tom Nunn, and Doug Carroll
9 pm: Potluck Percussion Harvest and a magnum homage to Neil Young with Gino Robair!

Thursday, Sep 10 2009 8:00 PM

Music by the Eyeful: Inventions in Visual Audio
brief works of astounding duration with Ian Winters and Evelyn Ficarra; Bill Hsu and others TBA.

Thursday, Sep 17 2009 8:00 PM

No show tonight - our staff is working at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival.

Thursday, Sep 24 2009 8:00 PM

8pm: Sarah Rose Stiles and Rachel Wood-Rome
9pm: INSTAGON - The Noise Trio

Thursday, Oct 1 2009 8:00 PM

Outsound Presents
Full Moon Concerts - Blood Moon
8 pm: A. C. Way and James Kaiser
9 pm: Myles Boisen's Past, Present, Future

Thursday, Oct 8 2009 8:00 PM

Music by the Eyeful: Inventions in Visual Audio
10-8-9 | 11-12-13
a night of intermedia accounting [artists tba]

Thursday, Oct 15 2009 8:00 PM

Outsound Presents
Y2k9 looping festival

Thursday, Oct 22 2009 8:00 PM

Fresh from NoCal NoiseFest
+DOG+ , Millions Now Living will Never Die! plus more TBA

Thursday, Oct 29 2009 8:00 PM

Lords of Outland XV CD release
Eddie the Rat

Thursday, Nov 5 2009 8:00 PM

Outsound Presents
Full Moon Concerts - Mourning Moon
Death and rebirth with Andrew Raffo Dewar (Alabama), his friends, and his music...featuring Liz Allbee, Gino Robair, and John Shiurba.

Thursday, Nov 12 2009 8:00 PM

8pm Mem1
9pm 15 Degrees Below Zero

Mem1 (Mark + Laura Cetilia) seamlessly blends the sounds of cello and electronics to create a limitless palette of sonic possibilities. In their improvisation-based performances, all sounds are derived from the cello as the sole source material, which is manipulated in real time. Their music moves beyond melody, lyricism, and traditional structural confines, resulting in organically revealed narrative. Hailing from Los Angeles, CA, Mem1 has traveled extensively, performing at Roulette (NYC), REDCAT / Disney Hall (LA), Levontin 7 (Tel-Aviv), the Orange County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Electronic Church (Berlin) and, in Spring 2009, the Borealis Festival (Bergen, Norway). In 2007, they were awarded an artist residency at Harvestworks in New York for the creation of a new Surround Sound piece, Sonodendron. Throughout the next year, they will travel throughout Europe, Norway, and Israel to take part in residencies at STEIM (NL), Kunstenaarslogies (NL) and USF Verftet (Norway), and to perform and create a sound installation for the Museums of Bat Yam (Israel). Their third full-length album, +1, consists of collaborations between Mem1 and artists such as Steve Roden, Jan Jelenik, and Frank Bretschneider. It will be released in early 2009 by Interval Recordings.

Thursday, Nov 19 2009 8:00 PM

8-10pm: Droneshift - a 2 hour drone

Thursday, Dec 3 2009 8:00 PM

Outsound Presents
Full Moon Concerts - Long Night's Moon
8:00 pm: organ of qwerty
9:00 pm: 60 x 60 International Mix

Thursday, Dec 10 2009 8:00 PM

8pm: TBA
9pm: The Pmocatat Ensemble and Chorus

The Pmocatat Ensemble presents works combining improvisation and composition by recording the sounds of their instruments onto various forms of consumer media (cd, tape, ipod), then using the recordings as the only instruments for live performance. Tonight, they will be joined by the Pmocatat Chorus - a series of cassette machines, ipods and cd players projecting the disembodied voices (literally, not aesthetically) of the ensemble's performers.

Thursday, Dec 31 2009 8:00 PM

Outsound Presents
Full Moon Concerts - Blue Moon New Year's Eve
artists TBA

Thursday, Jan 21 2010 8:00 PM

8pm: TBA
9pm: Guillermo Galindo and Hugh Behm-Steinberg present a workshop version "Terrible Things Will Happen But It's Going to Be Okay: A Donner Party Opera"

Thursday, Jan 28 2010 8:00 PM

Outsound Presents Full Moon Concerts - Cold Moon
An evening with the VoxMaids

Thursday, Feb 18 2010 8:00 PM

8pm Michael Straus (Amsterdam-based saxophonist/improviser)
9pm TBA

Thursday, Feb 25 2010 8:00 PM

Outsound Presents Full Moon Concerts - Quickening Moon
artists TBA

Thursday, Oct 14 2010 8:00 PM

Y2k10 Looping Festival

Friday, Oct 14 2011 8:00 PM

Y2k11 Looping Festival (10th anniversary!)