High Tides 1993 Mission Statement

High Tides - San Francisco New Music Festival of Bay Area Composers is a festival of experimental music held yearly at the Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco, CA.

The goal of this annual festival is to highlight the diverse and vital new music activity here in the San Francisco Bay Area. There exists a need to bring attention to sound artists living and working in the Bay Area who are outside the usual academic new music circles. A festival representing the broad cultural diversity of sound artists living in the Bay Area can act as a regional focus for the new music community in this region. We are making an effort to bring together sound artists from different, and in most cases under-represented traditions who normally are not presented in the context of new music presentation but who make up the diverse cultural community of the Bay Area.

It is the hope of the festival organizers that the composers selected will not only reflect the cultural and ethnic diversity of the Bay Area but also the diversity of younger and older sound artists, both male and female living in the region. It is the festival's intention that the music of the composers selected will represent the recent developments in experimental music whether it be classical avant garde, experimental electronic, or avant garde rock/jazz, world music, or hybrid musics. Additionally, the festival will pay attention to those older Bay Area composers still living in the Bay Area who have contributed to the cultural life of the region as well as to the history of 20th century experimental music.

One concert each evening will be given over to only one sound artist. Giving a composer an entire evening to present her or his work, bringing attention to that artist's output over time, could in effect act as a miniature retrospective. This is the other unique feature of this festival; it avoids the usual many small pieces by many different composers syndrome which so dominates the presentation of new music in this country. Also, the proposed High Tides festival would be an opportunity for these sound artists to present their work in a professionally curated environment, free of promotional and administrative burdens.

High Tides : San Francisco New Music Festival of Bay Area Composers

Wednesday, March 3 - Saturday, March 6, 1993 Intersection for the Arts 466 Valencia San Francisco, CA 94103 (415) 626-2787

////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Wednesday, March 3, at 8:00 PM Obsidian Songs Victor Mario Zaballa

Victor Mario Zaballa - Traditional Mexican and hand made instruments Ed Tywoniak - Narration (English), Electronics Rito Padilla - Voice and electronics Cristal - Actress

Popocatepetl (Smoking Mountain) Zumpanco (In the Place of the Rack of Skulls)

INTERMISSION

Tepeitetl/ The Mountain (Where the Water Came From) Tepeyolotl (Heart of the Mountain)

Special thanks to the Staff of the Headlands Center for the Arts

////////////////////////////////////////////////// Thursday, March 4, at 8:00 PM *Beth Custer & Friends* Beth Custer - Clarinets, Compositions, and Conducting All pieces written by Beth Custer unless otherwise noted

The Quartet Pieces

Beth Custer - Clarinets, Melissa Burton - Cello, Bill Horvitz - Guitar, Kenny Wolleson - Drums, Percussion, Vibs & Marimba

*The Lips That Kiss The Paper* *Holster* *Drop* *Words Upon Our Feet* *One Divided By Two* *The Fall of the Imperialist*

INTERMISSION

Clarinet Thing Meets Clarinet Monster (with members of the Quartet) - Beth Custer, Conductor

Clarinet Thing - Ralph Carney, Ben Goldberg, Peter Josheff Clarinet Monster - Adrian Gormley, Charles Hibbard, Fran Holland, Rick Pestana, Andrea Torrice, Tim White, Rebecca Winterer, Roderick Wyllie

*Train Song* *Conduction 5/10* *Pussy Cat Dues* (Charles Mingus, arranged and conducted by Beth Custer)

Trance Mission Stephen Kent -Didgeridoo, John Loose - Percussion, Beth Custer - Clarinets

*Rig* *Folk Song* (written by Trance Mission) *VeeDeeVu* (written by Stephen Kent)

////////////////////////////////////////////// Friday, March 5, at 8:00 PM *Forth and Back* John Distefano - Percussion, electronics Kalonica McQuesten - Vocals, woodwinds

*Forth And Back* (premier)

An evening-length piece written for this festival week.

This evenings concert funded by MEET THE COMPOSER/California with support from MEET THE COMPOSER, Inc, the National Endowment for the Arts, Dayton Hudson Fund, ARCO Foundation, The California Arts Council, The City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, and ARTS, Inc.

///////////////////////////////////////////////// Saturday, March 6, at 8:00 PM *Timeless Pulse* George Marsh, Jennifer Wilsey and John English

George Marsh & Jennifer Wilsey - Percussion, drum set, congas, glass marimbas, gongs, and assorted percussion John English - Concert Bass, gongs, crotales, shakers

*Starting from the Beginning* by George Marsh

INTERMISSION

*On Body Drumming*

//////////////////////////////////////////////

THE FEATURED COMPOSERS

Beth Custer is a Composer and clarinetist. In addition to performing on B flat, bass and alto clarinet, she performs using saxophone, Mexican clay flutes, and Indonesian bamboo flutes, the soulong and the kan. She has performed with and written music for the Club Foot Orchestra, Kamikaze Ground Crew, ROVA Saxophone Quartet, Elbows Akimbo, Soon 3, Finger Palace Ensemble, Trance Mission, and is founder of Clarinet Thing. She has collaborated with performance artist Nao Bustamente, Todd Herman, Vladimir Kokolia, and sculptors Billie Lynn and Barry Schwartz. She composed and performed the music for Peter McCandless' Pool of Thanatos. She has received grants for her work from the NEA, Marin Headlands Art Center Artist in Residency, and an Arts International Grant to participate in the International Performance Festival, Czechoslovakia.

John Distefano and Kalonica McQuesten began their eight year association in the InterArts Department at SFSU and were founding members of Elbows Akimbo in 1985. As friends and fellow adventurers they have travelled extensively in Indonesia, Southeast Asia and India furthering their musical knowledge and experience and making extensive field recordings which are often incorporated into their work.

Recent achievements include compositions for video artist Lynn Hershman, who featured John's music as part of her interactive laserdisc exhibited at SFMOMA, and music for Elbows Akimbo's 1990 production of Carne Vale. Since 1987 John and Kalonica have created soundtracks for Paul Kwan and Arnold Igers multimedia productions the most recent of which The Anatomy of a Springroll, premiered at the Asian American Theater in the Spring of 1992. This last production is part of a work-in-progress of a soon to be released hour long video funded by ITVS for broadcast over National Public Television in 1992.

George Marsh is a drumset player, percussionist, composer, author and teacher. He has performed and recorded in a wide range of musical settings with people such as Terry Riley, David Grisman, Chuck Berry, Kronos Quartet, Denny Zeitlin, and Pauline Oliveros' Deep Listening Band. He is currently teaching at the University of California, Santa Cruz and at Sonoma State University.

Jennifer Wilsey is a percussionist exploring the healing dimensions of sound through the use of percussion and voice. She received her musical training at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She performs with George Marsh, Stuart Dempster and Pauline Oliveros.

Victor Mario Zaballa is a composer, performance artist, and visual artist who uses the living elements of Pre-Columbian and popular art and the oral tradition of Mexico as a foundation for his work. He has performed with Chico MacMurtrie, Ed Twoniak and Friends, El Teatro Campesino and El Teatro Familia Aztlan. He has performed new works in the Bay Area at Theater Artaud, The Exploratorium, Headlands Center for the Arts, The Lab, Life on the Water Theater, and the San Francisco Art Institute. Outside the Bay Area Victor has had performances at the Tucson Museum of Art; Coconino Center for the Arts, Flagstaff, AZ; Galeria de la Raza, San Francisco, CA; Stanford University; Teatro de Arquitectura; Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico City.

He has lectured on Pre-Columbian and Latin American art and music at the Mexican Museum, San Francisco, San Francisco Art Institute, The Exploratorium, Colorado College, CO, Instituto de Estudios de America Latina, Cuernavaca, Mexico, Northern Arizona University, UCLA, San Francisco State, and University of California, Irvine. He is presently an Affiliated Artist with the Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA.