RE: BAY AREA new music scene: was Noise Pancakes in the news!

[Warren Sirota <wsirota@wsdesigns.com>]

I loved the Bay Area when I lived there, but certainly the new music scene
was struggling for an audience, but not for excellent artists. Rick left 
out
one vital component of the scene there: the schools. I was at the Mills
College CCM (along with Art Simon and I'm sure others from this list), 
which
was (and, I presume, still is) an amazing place, but there's also CCRMA at
Stanford, CNMAT at UC Berkeley, SF State, Hayward, SJ State - all have
internationally-recognized staff and programs in electronic music (and
related courses). 

So there does tend to be a core group, a built-in audience, for
university-related events in the Bay Area(at least there was when I was
around). How much that helps those who aren't exactly in that community, I
don't know. Interest in new music events by the general public - in any
urban center - seems to have a lot to do with whether the sponsor has
promotion dollars and/or is well-known, and how theatrically-conceived the
event is. I've seen a fairly sizable auditorium filled for a new music
performances at Stanford, for instance - but the performance also featured
tribal drums and costumes and the posters were colorful and exciting. I'd
also characterize at least some of the Laurie Anderson tours as "new 
music",
and she was packing very large venues (by my standards).

Anyway, where else but the Bay Area do you have a daily morning radio show
on a major station (KPFA) that interviews new music composers, including
many unknowns, and showcases their work for - I don't know, maybe tens of
thousands of listeners? I don't know what the current state of the Morning
Concert is, but Charles Amirkhanian and Russ Jennings were doing an amazing
service there for many years.

Best wishes,
Warren Sirota
 
Come hear *The Sandbox* at The Monkey in NYC, April 23rd, 8PM  - details at
www.warrensirota.com/sandbox


> -----Original Message-----
> From: loop.pool [mailto:looppool@cruzio.com] 

> Lately there has been  a amazing collection of new music 
> people in the East 
> Bay because many of the bay areas best and brightest
> young musicians lost there lucrative software day jobs and 
> could no longer 
> afford to live in the pricier cities of
> San Francisco, San Jose and Santa Cruz.    I'm on tribe.net 
> which is full of 
> electronica musicians and it seems like
> 1/3 of the people on that website are from Oakland.
> 
> Is there a scene there?    No?     The reason?      Well, at 
> least one of 
> the reasons is that there are very , very few places to play 
> and even if 
> people would play the people would not come out to see them.  
>    The other 
> reason I think is that like a lot of people on this list,  a 
> lot of people 
> who do new or unusual musics are not particularly social 
> people to begin 
> with but that's the subject for another discussion.
> 
> My own wife once said,  "How ironic is it that we live in the 
> wealthiest 
> empire in the history of the entire planet and that we
> live in one of the wealthiest per capita urban areas in that 
> vastly wealthy 
> country and that,   instead of the arts flourishing
> with support and patronage, that they are, instead,  barely breathing.
>
>