[NewMusicEvents] Second Annual Switchboard New Music Festival-March 29

[Lisa Petrie]

PRESS CONTACTS:

Ryan Brown, Co-Director


415.407.9794  switchboardmusic at gmail.com


Lisa Petrie, Publicist

415-707-9489  lisa at nicolisa.com



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

SECOND ANNUAL SWITCHBOARD MUSIC FESTIVAL

PRESENTS A GENRE-DEFYING SPECTACLE

Sunday, March 29, 2009, 2:00-10:00 PM



SAN FRANCISCO, January 21, 2009: The second annual Switchboard Music  
Festival is an 8-hour, non-stop music spectacle presenting composers  
and musicians who push the boundaries of their respective genres. No  
other Bay Area music festival or concert series offers such an  
eclectic, genre-crossing, convention-breaking, bastardizing group of  
experimentalists, innovators, and musical omnivores in a single event.  
This is a concert designed for an audience grown accustomed to the  
boundary-free world of the internet and the iPod, where all music is  
equal and must meet only one criterion: It must sound good.

The Switchboard Music Festival will feature some of the Bay Area’s  
most original performers, including the ADORNO Ensemble, Classical  
Revolution, Edmund Welles, Japonize Elephants, Melody of China, Moe!  
Staiano, Pamela Z, Paul Dresher and Joel Davel, Ted Brinkley and  
Neptune's Rogue Apothecary, and Zoyres. The festival also presents  
living composers whose work challenges traditional ideas of notated  
music, including Mason Bates, Ryan Brown, Jonathan Russell, Max  
Stoffregen, Ken Thomson, and Damon Waitkus.

Switchboard Music Festival was founded by local composers and  
performers Jeff Anderle, Ryan Brown, and Jonathan Russell to bring  
together many of the unique musicians working in the Bay Area. Their  
goal is to highlight musicians and composers who effortlessly float  
between genres, challenging and re-defining the music scene--Bay Area  
and beyond.

ADORNO Ensemble captivates audiences through live chamber music  
performances, vital public dialogue, and multifaceted, innovative  
programming. Richard Scheinin of the San Jose Mercury News hailed a  
recent concert as, "...a beautiful, blazing performance by the ADORNO  
Ensemble, a crackerjack new music band that plays with conviction and  
vitality and blows the dust off classical music."

The mission of Classical Revolution is to present concerts involving  
both traditional and modern approaches while engaging the community by  
offering chamber music performances in highly accessible venues, such  
as bars and cafes, and collaborating with local musicians and artists  
from various styles and backgrounds.

Damon Waitkus is a composer and songwriter. Much of his recent work  
has been for recorded media, combining field recordings collected from  
various natural, domestic, and urban environments with passages for  
traditional instruments.

Edmund Welles, the bass clarinet quartet, has the distinction of being  
the world's only original, composing band of four bass clarinetists.  
They invent and perform heavy chamber music. There is no precedent for  
this type of wind-based ensemble building such bridges between avant  
jazz, new music, black metal and classic rock.

Ted Brinkley's music sounds like jazz, but in truth is the sum total  
of a vast range of stimulating sonic environments. His music is  
copious quantities of written material bracketed by moments of free  
and/or collective improvisation. There are grooves, some of which come  
and go at the whim of the rhythm section. Some of it "swings," some of  
it "rocks."

Japonize Elephants plays self-described “hard-core gypsy circus  
bluegrass klezmer pirate clown madness". Blink and you’ll think you’re  
back in the orchestra of a French circus (with Mingus and Willie  
Nelson sitting in) with songs fusing Appalachia with Romania, Vegas  
with Marrakesh.

A uniquely creative and versatile musician, composer and clarinetist,  
Jonathan Russell is active in a wide variety of music, from classical  
to experimental to klezmer to church music, and has composed for  
ensembles ranging from orchestra to bass clarinet quartet to rock band.

Ken Thomson is a Brooklyn-based clarinetist, saxophonist, and  
composer. In demand as a composer and freelancer in many settings, he  
moves quickly between genres and scenes, bringing a fiery intensity  
and emotional commitment to every musical situation.

Mason Bates composes for a wide variety of media, with a portfolio of  
orchestral, chamber, theatrical, and electronic works. Spanning the  
classical concert hall to the clubs and lounges where he DJs  
electronica, his music was hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as  
"lovely to hear and ingeniously constructed." He was commissioned by  
the San Francisco Symphony and Chanticleer this season.

Max Stoffregen is a San Francisco based composer and keyboardist who  
has written music for a variety of genres, from songs for children's  
chorus, electro-acoustic ensembles of various configurations, to multi- 
movement works for chamber orchestra.

Melody of China is the premiere Chinese music ensemble based in the  
San Francisco Bay Area. The ensemble has a two-fold mission: to  
promote Chinese classical, folk and contemporary music, and to provide  
quality entertainment through the synergy between an ancient cultural  
tradition and youthful, multi-colored American culture.

Moe! Staiano is a percussionist who usually uses found objects, often  
drumming on found objects on his trap set. One can expect to see  
Moe!'s show as a visual eye pleaser: running around throwing pipes on  
concrete, walking on pans with his feet to mute sounds or running  
amok, throwing his body into old cassette tapes or two dozen cymbals  
in any given performance.

Pamela Z is a San Francisco-based composer/performer and audio artist  
who works primarily with voice, live electronic processing, and  
sampling technology. She creates solo works that combine operatic bel  
canto and experimental extended vocal techniques with found percussion  
objects, spoken word, and sampled concrète sounds.

As both a composer and performer, Paul Dresher is uniquely able to  
integrate different musical influences into a coherent and remarkably  
personal style. A polymath who makes music in an astounding variety of  
ways, he composes and performs experimental opera and music theater,  
chamber and orchestral music, and instrumental electro-acoustic music.

Composer Ryan Brown draws heavily on his omnivorous musical tastes,  
including the myriad rock and pop genres, jazz, minimalism, gamelan,  
and mbira, while maintaining a unique sound that directly imitates  
none of these. His works are often noted for their energy and off- 
kilter, foot-tapping rhythms and have been called "modern composed  
music at its best; nimble, expressive, ear-turning and strange in an  
accessible way, highly virtuosic but never pretentious." --Washington  
City Paper

The Zoyres energy and sound is complex and catchy, dynamic and dancy,  
down-home and dirty, alternately cerebral and simple, dark and  
delightful. Drawing from Eastern European folk music, free  
improvisation, jazz, rock, and drum-n-bass, the Zoyres recipe is a  
fusion nonpareil; an exciting new taste from Old World flavors!

PUBLIC EVENT LISTINGS:

WHEN: Sunday, March 29, 2:00-10:00 p.m.

WHAT: Switchboard Music Festival

WHERE: Dance Mission Theater
                   3316 24th Street
                   San Francisco, CA
                   (at 24th St./Mission BART station)
                   Food and drink available for purchase.

PROGRAM: Non-stop, 8-hour marathon concert with performances by the  
ADORNO Ensemble, Classical Revolution, Edmund Welles, Japonize  
Elephants, Melody of China, Moe! Staiano, Pamela Z, Paul Dresher and  
Joel Davel, Ted Brinkley and Neptune's Rogue Apothecary, and Zoyres;  
and music composed by Mason Bates, Ryan Brown, Jonathan Russell, Max  
Stoffregen, Ken Thomson, and Damon Waitkus.

TICKET INFO: $10-35 sliding scale, come and go as you please. Call  
800.838.3006, or visit www.switchboardmusic.com to purchase tickets  
online.

PHOTOS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST.


  
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