Join us on Wednesday - May 10, 2023 at Crashbox in East Austin !

Marco Antonio Santos is a guitarist, composer, arranger, and music educator from Minas Gerais, Brazil. Based in Austin, Texas, he specializes in jazz and Brazilian music, improvisation, and composition. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin Butler School of Music (DMA), he maintains a busy calendar arranging, teaching, and performing with various artists.

The instrumentation of About: Silence is modular, allowing for live performance by groups of various sizes and configurations: jazz trio, jazz trio plus woodwind or string quartet, or a full ensemble of 11 musicians. In its most complete format, the performance also includes an improvisational dancer and a voice actor for poetry recitation. The May 10th album release concert will feature the full, multimedia configuration including a visual arts exhibition that dialogues with the thematic content.

About: Silence, recorded in 2022, is a conceptual album that comprises diverse forms of art and media—visual arts (video, painting, and digital drawing), dance, poetry, and music. As a musical composition, the work consists of 11 audio tracks that can be understood either as a multi-movement work or as free-standing compositions.

The album’s 11 tracks feature a jazz guitar trio—guitar, upright bass, and drums—joined on four tracks by a woodwind quartet and on five tracks by a string quartet. Tracks are supplemented by videos combining improvisational dance, musicians performing in the studio, visual art, and poetry. Taken together, the elements express varied meanings of silence—introspection, grief, oppression, the absence of sound. Only one movement forgoes the chamber quartet element and is written solely for guitar trio. A website unites each of the art forms in one place, bringing the full experience of the album to its listener/viewer. 

“There is certainly a paradox about composing music to portray different aspects of silence,” says Santos. “One of the biggest reasons for writing this work was the urge to express thoughts and experiences regarding the idea of silence itself. It was heavily influenced by the months of isolation and the loss of so many lives during the worst of the COVID pandemic; the suppressed voices in recent cases of racial injustice; and my personal experience as an immigrant in a very individualistic culture. In addition, the debut of any work, especially one that involves audio recording, is inherently a ‘break’ in artistic self-silence.”

The live ensemble includes: Fabio Augustinis (drums), Dominique Reilly (flutes), David Blackwell Jr. (oboe/ english horn), Evan Schnurr (clarinet), Brigit Fitzgerald (bassoon), Corina Santos (violin), Camille Schiess (violin), Rebecca Lester (viola), Matt Armbruster (cello), Chris Jones (upright bass), Sarah Wales (dance), John Mills (conductor), Marco Antonio Santos (guitar/composition)

Join us Friday 1/27/2023 for Portal Sounds at Museum of Human Achievement !

Hosted & Produced by COTFG
Presented by The Contemporary Austin

The Museum of Human Achievement is located in the complex next to SaTen and Canopy in East Austin.

Doors: 6:00pm

Seylon Stills: 7:00pm

Tongue In The Mind: 8:00pm

Seylon Stills is a composer, artist and musical performer, heavily influenced by the natural beauty of her birth place, the island of Srilanka. 

Her live performances and installations are interactive creations that include nature inspired soundscapes and immersive sonic textures with contributions from members of the audience. By weaving field recordings collected while out in nature and exploring proprioception, she allows participants to get a sense of where their body is in relation to the other participants, creating a sense of interconnectedness with one another and with the natural world. 

Her performances, installations, and artist talks have been seen and heard at The University of New Mexico, the Albuquerque Museum, the Cole Art Center, Currents New Media Festival, UTOPiAfest and Stephen F. Austin State University. 

Juliana Huxtable & Joe Heffernan are Tongue In The Mind

Juliana Huxtable & Joe Heffernan have been performing and playing together since 2013. Their collaborations have taken many forms, incorporating Juliana’s poetic metaphysical process and lyric, culminating into an entrancing portal opening experience called Tongue In The Mind. They will be releasing music this year. 

Juliana Huxtable is an artist, writer and american musician, she lives and works in New York. Her multidisciplinary practice involves the body, identity and internet, as well as music and text. She had numerous exhibitions at New Museum, MoMA PS1, Reena Spaulings and Project Native Informant à Londres. 

Joe Rinaldo Heffernan aka Jealous Orgasm is a producer, DJ, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist composer living and working in NYC. He has performed his solo work and collaborated with Juliana Huxtable in prestigious venues all over the world including Moma (NY) and Performance Space. 

Free admission with reservation << here >>

Join instructor Juan Cisneros in an informal introductory course into the methods and theory of sound-based art practice using free and low cost software.

The class will cover history of the development of sound art as a practice and will be focused on several exercises for creating work and exploring processes relevant to student's interest. Sessions 1-3 will focus on field recording, audio manipulation, deep listening, and music concrete. Sessions 3-6 will focus more on working with freeware music tech, synthesis, expanded composition concepts, and working with MIDI.

The class is free but an RSVP is required. Space is limited so sign up soon.
Sign up for Sessions 1-3 July 2nd, 9th, and 16th
Sign up for Sessions 4-6 July 30th, August 7th, and 14th.

All that's required is a laptop and headphones. If your laptop turns on and can connect to the internet, it’s good to go for this course!


Juan is a practicing artist, musician, and educator with 20 years of experience working with experimental music, video, and media-based art. He has worked with Christine Sun Kim, Hyperreal Film Club, Totally Wreck production institute, and performed and exhibited with NMASS festival, Mass Gallery, Big Medium, and Space 1026.

Save the date - Saturday June 25th for 'We Are Here', a presentation in cooperation with Fast Forward Austin 

Join us for performances of music by composers Anthony R. Green, Alexandra Gardner, Specer Arias, Derek Tywoniuk, Darian Donovan Thomas, and Alex Temple played by Kyle Jones, and Spectrum Ensemble (Jaime Esposito and SA Hall).

In addition to the performance of new works, the event will include a discussion/learning opportunity in the form of a panel that addresses the question, "What is Queerness in Art?" facilitated by the performing artists with Sarah Schoonhoven, Christian Wurst, SA Hall, and Anthony R. Green.

Note that this event begins early in the day at 3:00 PM. ASL interpretation will be provided.

3:00pm - Discussion Panel
3:50pm - short break
4:00pm - performances by Kyle Jones & Spectrum Ensemble

Crashbox is located at 5305 Bolm Rd. #12, Austin, TX 78721 Admission is $10 and the proceeds go towards paying the artists. Additional donations are always appreciated and welcome!  

Hello 2022! See you Saturday, March 5th evening at Ivester Contemporary located in the Canopy Complex - 916 Springdale Rd, Austin, TX 78702 for some video presentations and community chat about our upcoming 2022 activities.

Ariadna Ortega (b. 1997) is a Mexican cellist and improviser who graduated from the University of Mexico (UNAM) in 2021. Her interests range from classical and contemporary academic music to experimental music. She has played in diverse orchestras and ensembles from baroque to contemporary music, as well as commissioned and released music from young Mexican composers.

Ariadna has played on several stages of Mexico City, including Nezahualcoyotl Hall and the Blas Galindo Hall. She has been part of festivals like SA' Oaxaca, Leon cello festival and the DECODA Chamber Music festival in 2018. In 2019 she organized an event at the Music Faculty in UNAM, for promoting improvisation and experimentation in classical musicians, called SLAM. She has also collaborated with short films and pop artists in Mexico.

As a free improviser Ariadna has played with different ensembles with whom she recorded an album called "Aristas" featuring two cellos and electronics, a piece for cellist and reader with violin, improvising with objects and voice, and has played in venues in Mexico City such as Pizza Jazz, in the Action and Performance festival and the Sound Plus festival.

Ariadna Ortega’s video will feature her performance of 2 pieces by young Mexican composers:

"Untitled for cello and electronics"- Tobías Álvarez

 "Punto y Línea (Dot and line)" - Fermín León

Samuel Hee Chan Lim, based out of Oakland, CA, is an artist that focuses primarily on ambient music compositions and video pieces. Kactus Kooler (탄산선인장), is a music project that encompasses psychedelic pop songs as well as tape-loop based ambient pieces. He also enjoys circuit bending and ultimately breaking any electronics he comes into contact with.

Ivester Contemporary is an Austin-based contemporary fine art gallery committed to connecting people with leading local and regional artists and ideas. Rotating exhibitions are focused on creating a context for contemplation, deepening appreciation for the visual arts, and facilitating a dialog between the artist and their viewers. Ivester Contemporary is located within the Canopy Creative Complex in East Austin, a central hub for artists, gallerists, and other creative types.

“Our primary mission is to introduce the artists that we represent to a supportive and interested community. It is our goal to promote meaningful experiences with the visual arts so that artists can continue to engage with an ever-growing audience.

It is also our belief that through the arts we are offered the space and opportunity to form a deeper relationship to ourselves, to each other, and to the world. We strive to curate a program and to cultivate a space that enriches Austin’s appreciation for the visual arts."

On Saturday, December 11 at 8 PM, Phonography Austin will present its fourth annual report at a live event of performances by  Phonography Austin members, co-sponsored by the Church of the Friendly Ghost, at CRASHBOX, 5305 Bolm Rd. #12, Austin, TX 78721. Admission will be $7. Masks will be required for entry.

Artists performing will be Sarah King/Zach Smith, Megan Gette/Harrison Montgomery, Amanda Brannin, R. Lee Dockery/T Putnam Hill/Sean O’Neill, Las Raras, and Bricoleurs.

The release will coincide with the release of the annual report compilation for free on Bandcamp at phonographyaustin.bandcamp.com, showcasing the work of local field recordists to capture and recontextualize a diversity of acoustic environments.

Phonography Austin’s fourth annual report is part of the sound arts organization’s ongoing program of educational workshops and listening experiences designed to foster artistic investigation of sound environments, acoustic phenomena and other aural situations through the practice of field recording. The listener is encouraged to listen to the recordings presented as sound objects in and of themselves—or to embrace the sense of place and context as they occur in the recordings. This Bandcamp release is Phonography Austin’s fifth compilation release.

Lineup:

8:00-8:15: Sarah King and Zach Smith

8:20-8:35: Megan Gette and Harrison Montgomery

8:40-8:55: Amanda Brannin

8:55-9:15: Intermission

9:15-9:30: R. Lee Dockery, Travis Hill, and Sean O'Neill

9:35-9:50: Las Raras

9:55-10:10: Bricoleurs

Join Douglas Laustsen on a guided walk and listen to music on your phone generated using the Echoes app that plays sound based on city data. Following the walk we’ll have a group discussion about issues at hand and geolocated sound projects in general.

Where: in the Govalle neighborhood, starting at Dimension Gallery Sculpture Park and looping back around.

Overlooked, Overheard is an Augmented Reality listening experience that looks at how our city is maintained in ways that we can’t see.

To get prepared for the soundwalk before Saturday morning:

-Find 'Echoes' application from your Android Play Store or iTunes App Store. The application takes up about 450 MB. The app is free to download and use.

-Go back to Doug's page https://overheard.lownote.net/echoes/ and click the link for "Eastview" or within the Echoes app, search for 'Overlooked, Overheard' and then find the "Eastview" walk

-Use the green symbol of an arrow within a circle to download, then use the blue rectangle that says 'start' to play from the app as you attend the guided walk.

We will listen to sounds from the application track-list when we reach specific locations on the sound walk in the Govalle Neighborhood.

It will be best to download everything before you arrive for the walk at 10am so you aren't waiting around using up all your data away from home. *Remember to bring earbuds or whatever you usually use to listen to music on your phone*

This project is supported in part by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department. Funding has also been made possible by the Puffin Foundation, Ltd

Join us for an online presentation via Twitch or YouTube Saturday, October 16th of 2021!

4:00pm Alec Toku Whiting is a composer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist based in Boston, Massachusetts. Primarily a koto player, his improvisatory approach is rooted in his experiences studying modern music for the instrument while growing up in Yokohama, Japan. His technique foregrounds the manipulation of timbre and its relationship to physical gesture. As a composer Alec’s work results from the investigation and synthesis of abstract formal processes and intuitive structures in pursuit of a multiplicitous musical event. His music has been performed in the United States, France, Spain, and Australia and he has collaborated with musicians including Mark Fell, the Mivos Quartet, Wendy Eisenberg, Lina Tullgren, and Ted Reichman.

4:20pm Cedar Choppers is the project of composers Andrew Stoltz, Travis Weller, and Brent Fariss. With origins in concerts produced by Austin New Music Co-op, their collaboration is a departure from the one-composer-per-piece approach and occupies the muddy borders between composition, improv, production and performance: sounds from instruments new and old, traditional and custom-made, woven into a fabric of compositional ambient Americana.

4:40pm Gabby Wen was born in 1995 in Toisan, Canton, raised in Shenzhen, and currently lives in Oakland, CA, Gabby Wen is an electroacoustic music composer and improviser, working with synthesizers, electronics, guqin, field recordings, and miscellaneous instruments and objects to create captivating auditory experiences and narratives. Gabby works towards bringing aesthetics and musical traditions that are valuable but overlooked to the forefront of the improvised music scene. Their works include solo and collaborative live improvisation performances and fixed-media electroacoustic compositions, fueled by spontaneity and uncertainty, reflecting introspective experiences and their relationship to their upbringing, memories, desires, and surroundings.

Join us for an online presentation with Episodic Memory & Sources and Methods!
Find us online Thursday, September 30th between 7pm and 8pm via YouTube or Twitch

Episodic Memory is the moniker for audio visual artist Chris Svoboda. Formerly performing with such acts as Besnyo, Cinnamon Aluminum, & as Kristachuwan, Chris has been creating experimental music and video art since 2009.  

As Kristachuwan, He has opened for such acts as Future Islands, Holy Fuck, Neon Indian & Phantogram.

​In 2016 Chris relocated from Buffalo, NY to Austin, TX and has been part of the upcoming electronic/ neu jazz scene in Austin. ​

Being a formally trained jazz musician, he uses the saxophone as an organic element that breathes life into the electro/ trip hop beats, and dynamic synth-wave melodies.

Archival video of the Episodic Memory set here.

Sources and Methods is a new beat-heavy instrumental collage project by Aaron Miller and Reagan VanMatre creating a multi-genre vibe using drums, guitar, bass, synthesizers, DAW-less live looping and samplers.

Aaron Miller aka Multi-Tracker, was born in Austin, under a blood moon, just south of the river on a date he won’t divulge. Aaron also produces mind-bending, instrumental music from hip hop to experimental to slap-boxing beats -- with all analog equipment; drums, guitars, beat machines, you name it.

Reagan VanMatre aka Reaganometry has lived in Texas his whole life. Growing up in Temple, then moving to Austin, he has played in the groups: Attack Formation, BANGAAR, and BOSS EYE as well has honing his own solo production work.

Archival video of the Sources and Methods set here.

Join us for an online presentation about
Indian Classical Music Theory!
An Interview with Shankar Melkote of Bangalore, India

Many of us in the West are familiar with Indian classical music through sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar’s influence on the Beatles and ‘East Meets West’ type collaborations in 70’s jazz/rock fusion bands like Mahavishnu Orchestra and Shakti. However, this is just a tiny window into its vast cultural history and mind-blowing theoretical foundation. In this interview with the brilliant artist and polymath, Shankar Melkote, we will take a deeper dive into the roots of Indian Classical Music, exploring its highly complex mathematical rhythmic cycles, tonal intricacies, and other fascinating theoretical elements.

Outline of Interview
I. Origins of Indian Classical Music: timeline and evolution
II. Raga, Swara, and Pitch Ratios
III. Mathematics of Time: Meter and Rhythmic Cycles
IV. Significance of the Drone and Relative Tuning Modulations
V. Improvisation and Virtuosic Elements of Ornamentation

Meet us online on Saturday - September 4, 2021 at 4pm via our YouTube channel

NMASS 2021 takes place online between 4pm and 7pm on Saturday – July 24, 2021!

The 2021 artists include: 

Joey Reyes & Jordan Willis, Christopher Whitley (with McKenzie Bezic, Julia Dixon, Douglas Friesen , khat knotahaiku, Zach Matteson, Kumiko Sakamoto, Camille Schiess , and Mark Sutherland), Lily Taylor & Sean Miller, Tonya Lyles & Mickey Delp, Juan Alfredo Rios-Rodriguez w/Héctor Tednoir, Erica Saucedo, Donny Who Loved Bowling, Chris Payeur, Ciyadh Wells & Matt LaComette.

Watch online from the comfort of your home via our YouTube or Twitch pages.
Find more information online at www.nmassfest.org

Thursday June 24th 7:30 PM CDT. Streaming on cotfg's youtube and twitch .

Ghost Play is a cycle of 5 pieces for dancer, electric guitar, and electronics. Each piece utilizes a unique conceptual system for improvisation that was developed over several months. The aim was to create a practice that unroots traditional, hierarchic aspects of creative interaction between dance and sound, and to create an improvisational work that is endlessly in communication with itself. 

Each piece is a performance/ritual that serves as an analogy for the way we experience time; specifically the idea that a life or existence is created through the layering of perception as memory over time––and action (and the future) is informed by the essentially unstable, limited nature of memory. 

By utilizing non-notated, non-formalized development of themes and gestures, we rely on our memory to guide us from past performances into new iterations which reveal fresh turns and digressions. This interaction reflects our experience of the present––action informed by our innately limited, fragmented, distorted perception of the past through memory. Each iteration is recorded and sampled for use in subsequent performances in the form of processed/distorted audio samples which are played live (randomly generated, outside of the performer’s control) for the improvisers to hear and incorporate into their immediate creative choices. In this way, the piece and the improvisers are in communication with ghosts of themselves. This interaction reveals unexpected developments and directions, symbolizing our inability to fully control what we think of as the future. Combined, these processes become an endless cycle of interactions with fragments or ghosts of our own experiences and actions, and each present moment becomes itself an unreliable figment in communication with future presents. 

In addition to this thematic material, we have also developed a wide ranging system of conceptual prompts to inspire our thinking and action for each piece. Some of these ideas and directives include: disintegration, stasis vs momentum, contrast, repetition, divergence, waiting for your 2nd or 3rd impulse to act, moving with the first physical impulse to act, speed, density, working with negative space, visual architectural thinking, etc. 

To name and develop individual pieces, we wrote random ideas and inspirations onto little strips of paper after each rehearsal and dropped them into a jar. These strips were then pulled randomly out of the jar and used as the creative impetus for a subsequent performance. Of the many strips of paper we created, we ended up choosing the five pieces that are presented here. 

Egg, Seed, Smoke, Lip by Isabel Eatherly Legate
Performed by Isabel Eatherly Legate and Anastasia Vayner. Camera by Nevin Martin. 

Isabel Eatherly Legate is a cross-disciplinary artist whose artworks explore shadow feminisms and sensations of (un)becoming. Legate works across drawing, sculpture, video and choreography to animate the ways in which ‘manufactured’ or ‘plastic’ desires move through the body and congeal within our physical anatomies. Legate received her BFA from The Cooper Union (New York, NY) in 2015. She has participated in Darsena Residency (Venice, IT) and Rupert (Vilnius, LT), She has had a solo show at Motel (Brooklyn, NY), and And Now (Dallas, TX), and has exhibited at the LUMA Foundation, Galleria Massimodeluca, The Power Station and MX Gallery. Legate is currently based in Mexico City.