Tune in to relive a selection of great concerts featuring CMC faculty, students, and partners. Each Monday we’ll feature an encore concert from the CMC Concert Hall archives which will be available to view on-demand on our website. Concerts can be viewed for one week, and will be available on our YouTube Channel.
New concerts will be available on Mondays, following the schedule below. Click the links for more program information, or check our online calendar for more schedule details.
August 31–September 6 features the 18th Annual Outsound New Music Summit. Outsound Presents is a local nonprofit organization that holds their annual New Music Summit in CMC’s Concert Hall every summer, showcasing some of the most innovative and pioneering new music happening in California and beyond with a week of performances, workshops, and interactive events. We’re excited to include performances from last year’s festival in our Encore! Summer Concert Series, as this year’s festival was cancelled due to COVID-19.
We’ll be presenting Free Flowing: a Night of Original Comprovisation, originally performed July 23, 2019, with performances by Social Stutter Quartet and duo B Experimental Band (can you spot CMC staff member Polly Springhorn in the bunch?!).
Social Stutter Quartet:
Social Stutter, a saxophone quartet led by composer/altoist Beth Schenck, blurs the line between strictly written chamber music and soaring free jazz. Solos emerge from the natural order of intricately written lines that, although begin simply in structure, twist and distort themselves into surprisingly complex shapes and forms. Unlike traditional saxophone quartets, some of the pieces are composed for two altos and two tenors, which leads itself to denser harmonic territory and a uniquely homogenous sound. Masters of texture and nuance, the quartet has a keen awareness of how to support and push one another’s creative boundaries.
The duo B. Experimental Band (dBxB) is an improvising orchestra co-led by duo B. (Lisa Mezzacappa, bass and Jason Levis, drums). The new endeavor, launched in December 2018 at Temescal Art Center in Oakland, CA. The 13-member ensemble plays compositions by Levis and Mezzacappa that explore the thrilling boundaries between composed and improvised musical worlds; between avant-garde jazz and contemporary chamber music aesthetics; and between inspiring music of the past and a new musical language emerging from our current place and time.
duo B., the San Francisco Bay Area improvising and composing ensemble of drummer Jason Levis and bassist Lisa Mezzacappa, is a musical think tank of grand schemes and impossible scenarios. For more than a dozen years, the ensemble has developed and refined its singular approach to improvisation and composition, through cross disciplinary projects with film, collaborations with improvising instrumentalists at home and abroad, study of repertoire by like-minded composer-improvisers, and immersion in the improvised-composed musical worlds of masters Wadada Leo Smith, Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, Henry Threadgill, and others. duo B. has released three recordings: the limited edition CD, these things seem natural to us (Evander, 2006); the LP, start this before dawn touches the skyscrapers (Edgetone, 2013); and most recently, No Ins & Outs (Queen Bee, 2017). This year, duo B. is in Ensemble-in- Residence at the Center for New Music in San Francisco, with video artist Charles Woodman.
You can learn more about Outsound Presents and the New Music Summit online.
Encore! Summer Concert Series Schedule:
• July 20–26: Teen Jazz Orchestra Winter Concert 2019
• July 27–August 2: Cultural Traditions in Diaspora featuring CMC Faculty (2019)
• August 3–9: El Son de la Misión – Juntos Contra el Hambre PART I in collaboration with Carnaval San Francisco (2016)
• August 10–14: El Son de la Misión – Juntos Contra el Hambre PART II in collaboration with Carnaval San Francisco (2016) note that this performance will only be available for 5 days.
• August 17–23: Revolution! Music in Times of Turmoil, Trouble, and Triumph Acts I–II 16th Annual CMC Faculty Keyboard Marathon (2019)
• August 24–30: Revolution! Music in Times of Turmoil, Trouble, and Triumph Acts III–IV 16th Annual CMC Faculty Keyboard Marathon (2019)
• August 31–September 6: Outsound Presents 18th Annual New Music Summit: Free Flowing Night of Original Comprovisation (2019)
Watch a playlist of selected Encore! Summer Concert Series videos here.
