September 22-27, 2009 - Washington, DC

The Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music was initiated by the American Composers Forum (ACF) to provide DC's music and art communities with the opportunity to sample experimental and avant-garde electronic music, with an emphasis on improvisation and artistic use of new technologies.

Now heading into its ninth year, the Washington DC chapter of the ACF has expanded the scope of the festival to include electro-acoustic compositions, free jazz, noise rock, electronic drone and experimental folk, as well as live video and film programs, presented year round.

Sonic Circuits seeks to foster the spirit of collaboration through the diversity of participating artists, and its varied programming appeals to arts enthusiasts of all types.

Its Improv Fireworks with Liz Meredith, vsls, Wilson Shook, Canid @ Pyramid July1

July 1 show

Wednesday July 1
Doors 730pm Music 8pm SHARP
$7
PYRAMID ATLANTIC
8230 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring MD 20910
301.608.9101
located three blocks south of the silver spring metro station (red line)
Free parking in gated lot out front
DIRECTIONS: www.pyramidatlanticartcenter.org
INFO: dc-soniccircuits.org

Liz Meredith
Liz Meredith is a violist, improviser, and composer originally from Baltimore, Maryland. Her music is improvisatory in nature, and frequently moves towards the outer limits of musical genres, providing a delicate, faint, beautifully ephemeral connection between visual imagery and music performance. She works primarily with strings, found sounds, and electronics for wonderfully anarchic compositions that feel like shattered chamber sonatas splattered with loud samples of the everyday ranging into more source divorced abstract drone compositions. sounds and otherwise can be found at myspace.com/lizmeredith, as well as www.lizmeredith.com

vsls
Vsls is the nom de plume of San Francisco composer and sound artist Travis Johns. Using a combination of processed field recordings, sine wave oscillators and analog electronics, he attempts to weave textural tapestries of gestures, thoughts and experiences into a singular mass of infinite sonic possibilities. Most recently, his work has concerned itself primarily with two notions – namely that of the desolation and excess of human industry, as well as the mysteries and intrigue of subconscious mind, often sounding something like the distant swarming of well oiled mechanical bees woven with fissures of dark tones and noise rips. Sounds, etc. = myspace.com/thoughtcollection001, as well as www.think-tankmedia.net.

Wilson Shook
Wilson Shook is an improvising saxophonist living in Seattle, Washington.

Wilson’s music emphasizes focus, texture, chance and exploration. It exists in dialogue with its specific and contingent contexts; it is “new music” in that it explores each new moment and seeks to develop a critical awareness of the present. Perhaps better characterized as “present music”, it is less concerned with staking out new musical territory than it is with creating relevant and personal communication that places equal value on intention and sensitivity.

Sonically, Wilson’s music is informed by lower case and minimalist aesthetics, while embracing the full range of his instrument. Always aware of balance and the fundamental importance of space, Wilson is especially interested in incidental or ‘between’ sounds: material that exists on the edges and in the cracks of the conventional sonic palate.

Much of Wilson’s art concerns itself with the actualization of feminist and libertarian ethics. Investigating the interplay between artistic freedom and freedom at large, Wilson views improvisation as a model of interaction that can inform diverse situations and relationships.

Wilson currently performs solo, as well as with the Gust Burns Quartet and in various ad hoc and piece-oriented collaborations.

Previous and continuing collaborators include: Gust Burns, Nate Wooley, Bob Marsh, Gino Robair, Tyler Wilcox, Greg Kelley, Jaimie Branch, Joshua Manchester, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Jonathan Zorn, Michael Thieke, Robert Blatt, Jonathan Sielaff, Mark Collins, Tom Yoder, Teri Nelson-Zagar, Dave Knott, and the Seattle Improvisers’ Orchestra.

Wilson is the director of Gallery 1412, an artists’ collective and performance space, and is a member of the Seattle Improvised Music board of directors. http://www.gallery1412.org/wilsonshook.html

Canid
My name is Colin. I’ve lived in the DC area all my life. I want to make music that combine influences from the dawn of music to the digital age. I want to make sounds that are both visceral and otherworldly, appealing and unsettling. I am not a purist. Nothing is ever the same. http://www.myspace.com/canidsounds

One Response to “Its Improv Fireworks with Liz Meredith, vsls, Wilson Shook, Canid @ Pyramid July1”

  1. Liz Meredith / Vsls / Wilson Shook / Canid in DC | Avant Music News says:

    [...] DC’s Sonic Circuits: Wednesday July 1 Doors 730pm Music 8pm SHARP $7 PYRAMID ATLANTIC 8230 Georgia Avenue, Silver [...]

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