Factsheet
Ubu, Incorporated is a non-profit, artist-run corporation registered with the Internal Revenue Service and the State of California as a tax-exempt, charitable organization. It was founded in 1975 to support new music and theater activities in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In the first ten years of it's existence it served as an umbrella organization for several alternative performance spaces including the Pangaea Center for the Arts, The Blue Dolphin, the Advance Arts Series, and Walkabout Dance Theater in San Francisco, and Blind Lemon in Berkeley, at which literally hundreds of events were presented.
Among the artists presented on these series were the Rova Saxophone Quartet, The League of Automatic Music Composers, The Hub, John Zorn, Wayne Horvitz, Robin Holcomb, and many others who have found wider recognition in the 1980s.
In 1978 Ubu, Incorporated also received a grant from the California Arts Council for the production in San Francisco of a new music opera "The Spirit Catcher", and it has also been the sponsor of Chris Brown and Room, members of the CAC Touring Roster 1986-90.
For a number of years Ubu, Inc. also sponsored Ear Magazine, a journal of new music which later moved to New York City and enjoys a wide national circulation.
In 1989 the Board of Directors of Ubu, Incorporated established Artifact Recordings, a recording company dedicated to high quality documentation and distribution of electronic and experimental music.on compact disc. Recordings from this series have been reviewed favorably in such journals as The Village Voice, OPtion magazine, and the SF Bay Guardian, and are distributed by North Country Distribution and Frog Peak Music in the U.S., Recommended Records in Europe, and Jazz & Now in Japan.
The role of the organization has been to support experimental, non-commercial art and artists at early points in their careers while staying small enough to preserve independence and flexibility. Ubu, Incorporated is dedicated to preserving a place in the American cultural environment for controversial, experimental and risk-taking work.
Chris Brown, Secretary John Bischoff, Treasurer