13th Annual Music for People & Thingamajigs Festival

Description

The Music For People & Thingamajigs Festival is an annual event dedicated to promoting experimental music that incorporates made/found instruments and alternate tuning systems. Each year, MFP&T invites artists who design their own musical instruments to join in a festival of workshops, music making, and performances with the goal of reaching a large, diverse audience of all ages. It is also a festival where the public can participate in instrument building and tuning educational workshops, as well as hear unique sounds and compositions from up and coming artists. Now in its 13th year, Thingamajigs’ genre-crossing MFP&T Festival is the only annual event completely dedicated to music created with made/found materials and alternate tuning systems. Past participants include Karla Kihlstedt, Walter Kitundu, Pauline Oliveros, Brenda Hutchinson, William Winant, and Laetitia Sonami.

This year’s festival features music and world premiere performances from over 15 exciting artists and groups from the Bay Area and beyond. Noted works include a piece for multiple performers and two parrots by Mills College faculty Wendy Reid; “Music for Breathers” -a musical instrument that analyzes participants’ breath patterns designed by Conner Lacy; a hybrid guitar called “The Global Guitar” that can play Traditional Indian tunings by Matthew Montfort; and a modified instrument called “Photo Koto” created and performed by Gretchen Jude. Many of these artists will perform in the evening concerts as well as demonstrate their instruments at the family event at MOCHA. The family event will welcome some of Bay Area’s most interesting new music groups and artists for an exhibition of musical installations, performances, and instrument building workshops for kids. This event will take place outside in MOCHA’s beautiful courtyard as well as in their classrooms inside the museum.

With concerts, artist talks/demonstrations, and a free community outing, we expect the 13th Annual Music For People & Thingamajigs Festival to be our most far reaching and successful event to date.

Thursday, September 23rd 8pm: NOHspace, 2840 Mariposa Street, San Francisco, CA 94110 ($10-$15 sliding scale).
Friday, September 24th 8pm: Uptown Body & Fender, 401 26th Street, Oakland, CA ($10-$15 sliding scale).
Saturday, Sepember 25th 8pm: Vessel Gallery, 471 25th Street, Oakland, CA ($10-$15 sliding scale).
Sunday, September 26th 1-4pm: MOCHA, 538 Ninth Street, Suite 210, Oakland, CA 94607 (free with museum admission)

Artists involved:

Matthew Montfort is the principal composer for and leader of the pioneering world music ensemble Ancient Future. Featured in the December 2009 commemorative Les Paul issue of Guitar Player Magazine, Montfort is a pioneer among guitarists who have had their fretboards scalloped in order to play various forms of world music that require intricate note-bending ornaments while still being able to play chords. Montfort immersed himself in an intensive study with vina master K.S. Subramanian in order to fully apply the South Indian gamaka (note-bending) techniques to the guitar. He is also known for his work on Glissentar, an 11 string fretless guitar that is able to render music in any tuning system. He has performed concerts worldwide, from the Festival Internacional de la Guitarra on the golden coast of Spain to the Festival of India in Mumbai. He has worked with many world music legends, including tabla phenomenon Zakir Hussain and Chinese zither master Zhao Hui. Montfort wrote the book Ancient Traditions - Future Possibilities: Rhythmic Training Through the Traditions of Africa, Bali, and India, which has been used by many musicians to improve their rhythm skills.

Wendy Reid received degrees from Mills College (M.A.), the University of Southern California, School of Performing Arts (B.M.), and attended Stanford University, Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. Between 1975-77, she was a private pupil of Nadia Boulanger in Paris and Les Écoles D'Art Americaines at Fontainbleau. Composers she has studied under include Terry Riley, Robert Ashley, Halsey Stevens, James Hopkins and film composer David Raksin. She is the recipient of numerous awards and grants including Meet the Composer/California, Meet the Composer/New York, an ASMC grant, Subito grants and the Paul Merrit Henry Prize. Her works have been performed and broadcast throughout the United States, Europe and Asia by the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Kronos Quartet, the New Music Works Ensemble, the San Francisco String Quartet, the Tree Ensemble, Ruffled Feathers Tree-o. and others. Reid is producer of the new music series NEW MUSIC WITH BIRDS, FROGS AND OTHER CREATURES sponsored by the Natural Sciences Department of the Oakland Museum and the San Francisco Art Institute, and currently teaches music composition at Mills College and violin/ensemble/composition at Holy Names University PMD.

Gretchen Jude is a performer, composer, writer and artist from Boise, Idaho. Acoustic and electronic sound are juxtaposed in her work, which explores the borders between human and machine, analog and digital, East and West. In addition to her studies in vocal technique, music theory and electronic/computer music, Gretchen has studied koto, shamisen and tea ceremony in Japan, where she lived from 1997 to 2005.

Terry Berlier is an interdisciplinary artist who works primarily with sculpture, installation, and video. Her work is often kinetic, interactive and/or sound based and often focuses around everyday objects, the environment, ideas of nonplace/place and queer practice.

Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows both nationally and internationally (Europe, Australia, Middle East) including Barcelona, Venice, Girona, Meinz, Tel Aviv, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sacramento. She recently received the Kala Art Institute fellowship and residency for 2009-10 in Berkeley, CA and a residency in Budapest at the Hungarian Multicultural Center for July 2010. In 2008-9 she received the Visions from the New California Residency at the Exploratorium: Museum of Science, Art and Human Perception in San Francisco through the Alliance of Artists Communities. She has received grants from California Council for Humanities California Stories Fund, City of Cincinnati Individual Artist Grant, and the City of Davis Art Contract. She was a fellowship recipient for a residency at the Millay Colony for Artists in New York in 2004.

Ben Taylor is a composer whose work centers around internet art and instrument building. His web installations have been seen in the US and Germany, and his sample-based web collages have been performed at Mills College, UC Davis, and Cal Arts. While at Mills College, he recently developed a system for rapidly updating content to websites, allowing him to interact with his websites kinesthetically. In addition, Ben is a piano tuner and often incorporates complex tuning systems into his works. Ben was born in Charlottesville, VA. He graduated from Kenyon College with a B.A. in Music studying under Brian Harnetty and received his M.F.A. at Mills College studying with Chris Brown, John Bischoff, and James Fei.

Bart Hopkin is maker of acoustic musical instruments and a student of musical instruments worldwide. He received a B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard University in folklore and mythology specializing in ethnomusicology in 1974, and later picked up a B.A. in music education and a teaching credential at San Francisco State University. From 1985 to 1999 he edited the quarterly journal Experimental Musical Instruments (www.windworld.com). The journal served as an essential resource and clearing house in an otherwise scattered, but lively and growing field. Since 1994, Bart has written several books on instruments and their construction, and produced several CDs featuring the work of innovative instrument makers worldwide. He has taught musical instrument construction at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, presented talks at the Acoustical Society of America, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University and MIT's Media Lab, and he has consulted and presented workshops for the Exploratorium in San Francisco.

Adam Fong is a composer, performer, and producer of new music. A San Francisco Bay Area native, he holds master's degrees from both Stanford University (English) and California Institute of the Arts (Music Composition), where he studied with James Tenney. He has also studied composition with Christian Wolff and Wadada Leo Smith. He performs regularly in new music concerts and festivals. His own works have been performed internationally in Auckland, London, Berlin, Tübingen and Darmstadt, at many US universities, and throughout California, by performers including the two-piano team Dennis Russell Davies and Maki Namekawa. As Associate Director of Other Minds, Fong has since 2006 produced the annual Other Minds Festival, dubbed the "premier new music festival on the West Coast" (Los Angeles Times), and many special projects including the CD reissue of Conlon Nancarrow's Studies for Player Piano, tribute concerts to Ruth Crawford Seeger and Henry Cowell, and the American Premiere of 18 Microtonal Ragas based on "Solo for Voice 58" by John Cage.

Michael Carreira spent most of his time over the past several years as a drummer touring and/or recording with bands including Cryptacize (Asthmatic Kitty), Odawas (Jagjaguwar), Donnovan Quinn (Soft Abuse), and Danielson (Secretly Canadian). Over the years he has worked with local musicians including Eric Glick Rieman, Jorge Boehringer, Jacob Zimmerman, and Cenk Ergun. Michael studied drums with Tim Genis (Boston Symphony), Willie Winant, and Scott Kettner (Maracatu NY) and hold degrees in composition from Boston University and Mills College.

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