Born in Addis Ababa in 1967, Girma Yifrashewa's life in music began with the Kirar, a harp-like traditional Ethiopian string instrument, at a tender age. He was introduced to piano at the age of 16 when he joined the Yared School of Music in Addis Ababa, and continued his studies at the Sofia State Conservatory of Music in Bulgaria.  Despite losing his scholarship after only three years due to the fall of the Communist regime in 1989, Yifrashewa emigrated to Italy where, while under the care of Caritas, his talent and desire to return to his studies in Bulgaria was discovered by the Christian Brothers. Through their support he was able to return to the Sofia Conservatory in 1991, where he graduated with a Masters in Piano under Professor Atanas Kurtev.

It was in Bulgaria that he made an impact as a solo pianist, performing the works of Schumann, Schubert, Chopin and Debussy, throughout the country until his return to East Africa in 1995. He has a preference and well-determined approach to the music of Bach as well as Mozart and Beethoven.

Yifrashewa returned to Ethiopia in 1995, teaching piano at the Yared School of Music until 2001. He received scholarships for short-term specialization courses from the British and German Governments, at the Royal Academy of Music in London (1997) and at the Hochschule fur Music Und Theater in Leipzig (1999). Currently Yifrashewa works to promote Ethiopian and Classical Music throughout the continent and beyond.  Girma has held many concerts both in Ethiopia and outside not only on his international tours (solo tour and with Ethiopian vocalists), but also on separate invitations sent to him (Egypt, Djibouti, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Uganda, Mauritius, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, South Africa, Seychelles, Zambia, Malawi, Bulgaria, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Australia, USA).

Leticia Castaneda (Riverside): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj2tFV-sKmk
Mitchell Brown (L.A.): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixi8LiN_beQ
Eric Glick Rieman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-D6cQwmyjc
Gustavo Pastre: https://soundcloud.com/gustavopastre
Parineum
Spooky Action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soaFEa...
Eurostache: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzx3wiZpn8M
Music For Hard Times:  https://edengully.bandcamp.com/music
Le Seige: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=proWnhIz-Ys

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Leticia Castaneda

“a compositional strategy of subtle disorientation”

The protean nature of the amplification system and the unpredictable abandonment of personal inhibitions dominate the spontaneity of her live composition. As a performer, she can be shatteringly emotional in word and action. If perplexed by acoustics or system interference, she compromises sabotage with blatant disregard until a satisfactory control is established. Notable performances have included; Wooden Octopus Festival, Seattle WA, An Audible Instigation Toward the Discovery of Instant Confession Ausland, Berlin, Beyond Music Festival Beyond Baroque, Venice, CA, Center for Experiments in Art, Information, and Technology CEAIT Festival Cal Arts, Valencia, CA, Sound Shift, Big Sur, CA, SASSAS presents sound. Schindler House, Los Angeles, CA, Line Space Line Festival of Improvised and Experimental Music, Los Angeles, CA and SFEMF San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, CA. Leticia’s means of participation in these events include; solo electro-acoustic improvisation, composition exhibition, audio environments to accompany sculpture, collaborative improvisation, audio drama, and site-specific installation. Collaborations in public or private settings include; Antoine Chessex, Lionel Marchetti, Jerome Noetinger, Jessica Catron, Mitchell Brown, Dave Phillips, Aaron Ximm, Rick Potts, Joseph Hammer, Raionbashi, Smegma, Omid, Reynols, Albert Ortega, Fanon Flowers and Josie Roth. Association has been noted with the Los Angeles Free Music Society and Fluxus.

Leticia’s debut full-length CD, On the Verge of Redundance, was released by Chicago-based CIP in 2004. Criticism has documented comparison with electronic composers such as Eliane Radigue, Mary-Anne Amacher, Francisco Lopez, Subotnick, Maxfield and Oliveros, has been cited as possessing “a richness and warmth that recalls an earlier generation of analogue pioneers”, compositions which “revel in a thrift store brutism that engages the aesthetic of musique concrete with a lo-fi sensibility”. Her live performance, recognized by The Wire’s Christopher DeLaurenti writes: “Castaneda’s carefully calibrated volume and gorgeous timbres evaporated the barrier between loudspeaker and raw sound in a singular fashion”.

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Los Angeles native Mitchell Brown is a DJ on radio stations KXLU and Dublab (as Nanny Cantaloupe), a music label owner (Melon Expander Records) and an assistant to developmentally disabled children. As a sound artist/musician he improvises and composes with analog synthesizers & other electronics, magnetic tape manipulation, electro-acoustics, drums and percussion. Brown's artistic sensibilities can sometimes be related to various natural psychological and physiological states one can channel when casting aside social judgments in favor of a more solipsistic approach to the human senses. Current musical projects include Sana Shenai (duo w/ Jimmy Tamborello), the Sun Araw Trio, Golden Hits, Points of Friction, Fancy Space People, Plasmodian Telecaves, Brain Sucking Peanunanners and collaborations with Joseph Hammer, M. Geddes Gengras, Jean-Paul Jenkins, John Wiese, Ahnnu and Matthewdavid, among others.

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Performing on a variety of instruments, including the prepared/extended Rhodes electric piano, as well as piano, melodica, celeste, organ, Waterphone, and toy piano, SF Bay Area composer/improviser Eric Glick Rieman performs improvised and previously structured music in several settings, both solo and in groups, He has performed with the Mills College Contemporary Performance Ensemble in Oakland, CA, USA since 1999, and received an MFA from Mills in Electronic Music and the Recording Media in 2001. Rieman writes for piano, Rhodes electric piano, and ensembles.

Rieman has recorded with Fred Frith (of Henry Cow, Naked City, Keep the Dog, Cosa Brava), Lesli Dalaba (of 2005 Tzadik solo release "Timelines", Jeff Greinke's Land, Elliot Sharp's Carbon), Carla Kihlstedt (of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Tin Hat Trio, Two Foot Yard, Cosa Brava), Stuart Dempster (Merce Cunningham Dance Troupe, Deep Listening Band), Zoe Keating, and Tom Heasley. He has performed with Ikue Mori, Fred Anderson, Daniel Godston, David Boykin, Marcos Fernandes, Amy Denio, Matt Ingalls, David Slusser, Kristin Miltner, and John Ingle, and he has performed the work of Roscoe Mitchell, Eliane Radigue, Meredith Monk, Fred Frith, Cecil Taylor, Alvin Curran, Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, James Tenney, George Lewis, and Alvin Lucier under the composers' supervision.

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Spooky Action aka Moo Kau, is the project of solo sound artist Douglas Benner who teaches synth building in San Francisco. Working on a homebrew analog modular synthesizer, armed with, vco's, slope generators long frequency oscillators and variable filters, Douglas weaves for us a tapestry of sounds, chemical landscapes, cacophonous sweeps & drones...... Moo Kao is Douglas' latest incarnation, it is a story of the discovery and interaction with non-localized trans-variable phenomena. Through careful modulation of vibrational harmonic field ratios relative to local fields, and the tertiary core conjunction unit, long frequency oscillations are bounced off satellites and Mr. Kao makes these non-local anomalous variations apparent in 3 dimensions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soaFEa...

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Eurostache
The Eurostache group is a project centering around electro-acoustic real-time collaborative experiments in sound. The core ensemble is frequently augmented with guests from the San Francisco Bay Area. We explore sound-space through the lens and energy of child-like wonderment. Listeners often comment on being drawn into a dreamy escape. Our key experimental technique is using novel instruments, found objects, meta-processing and sound recordings in unusual combinations with traditional instruments. Vocalists employ extended techniques to humanize the highly transient and diverse cacophony. Musical constructs such as composition and melody are set aside as we travel toward the fringes of sound. Performances often incorporate additional layers of audience interaction, such as improvisational comedy, body movement, and live scoring to films. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzx3wiZpn8M and http://www.eurostache.com

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Music For Hard Times is an iconoclastic, non-idiomatic, free improvisational, amplified acoustic noise duo from San Francisco that features the home made, self invented, experimental instruments of Tom Nunn and the deconstructed electric bass stylings of Paul Winstanley. Formed in 2011 and recording virtually every time they get together (weekly) MFHT has released a barrage of their sonic experiments online - https://edengully.bandcamp.com/music, in limited run hand-made CD packages - https://dockingstation.bandcamp.com/ and more recently on the Public Eyesore label - http://www.publiceyesore.com/catalog.php?pg=3&pit=128  with the release 'City of Cardboard'. In reviewing this CD Rotodzzaj (the jazzdoctor) says"...moments filled with every second of your wildest after-hours nightmare. For those who freak totally on great noise, this gets my MOST HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, though I’d caution those who are too deeply embedded in “normal” to move on to the next rack in the record shop. “EQ” (energy quotient) rating is 4.97. (out of 5)" while The Sound Projector reports " I’d defy anyone to deny that what they were hearing was a recently unearthed session where Robert Rutman (he of the steel cellos semi-fame), was discovered guesting with k-rock free cosmo-jazzers Annexus Quam !! Captivating sounds from humble sources indeed."

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LeSiege
Tax-paying Bay area resident in good standing for 8 years. In the year 2009 placed third for World's Longest Duration Spent in an Apartment without Opening the Curtains at a qualifying time of 3 years, 10 months, six days, and 57 minutes. Has been pooped upon by pigeon no less than twice in the span of a decade. Enjoys miracles, conversations with solipsists, and celibacy. No flash photography.

Film Screening: Thursday, March 19, 2015
7:15pm
The Wattis Institute, 360 Kansas St, San Francisco, CA 94103

Performance for Organ and Piano: Friday, March 20, 2015
9pm doors, concert begins promptly at 9:30pm
The Lab, 2948 16th St, San Francisco, CA 94103

Born in Brooklyn, NY, Charlemagne Palestine investigates movement and repetition, the performer’s body as a sonic instrument, and the relationship between sound and trance-like states of being. This is a two-part event co-presented with our friends at the The Wattis Institute.

Cologne-based Marcus Schmickler’s quadrophonic performance "Fortuna Ribbon" toys with perception. Combination tones and OAEs, acoustic emissions produced by the cochlea, Schmickler’s interest revolves around the brain’s adaptation to auditory stimuli. In his recent Palace of Marvels release on Editions Mego, Schmickler explores a new interpretation of the 1960’s "Shepard tone" discovery. When listening to a Shepard tone, we are faced with the illusion that the pitch is either continuously ascending or descending though it is apparently never reaching a limit. Starting from such phenomena, Schmickler’s multi-channel piece, "Fortuna Ribbon," twists the fundamentals of musical practice – rhythm, sound, and pitch.

Marcus Schmickler is a Cologne-based researching composer and has produced numerous electronic works, pieces for ensembles, choirs and orchestra. Many of his works are informed by scientific subjects as well as methods. A multi-faceted composer and producer, his interests revolve around the brain and its adaptation to multiple auditory stimuli. Schmickler has written music for ensembles, installations, theater, and radio, meanwhile also producing under multiple pseudonyms like Pluramon, and Wabi Sabi. A recipient of multiple prizes and scholarships, including the Ars Electronica; Schmickler held a lengthy seat as a member of the jury for the German Music Council, and is a co-creator of the eclectic A-Musik record distributor, known for its avant-garde and experimental releases. Schmickler is part of the faculty at Bard College in Music/Sound MFA program in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. In 2014, he was a guest-faculty for composition at Calarts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb3Al8vumjs

Cameron Shafii was born to parents that emigrated from Tehran, Iran and was raised in Darmstadt, Germany before relocating to San Francisco. He studied German and Philosophy at UC Berkeley. He lives in San Francisco and works in the East Bay with machine learning classification systems for natural language processing. Cameron's musical interests include computer-based composition with emphasis on algorithmic panning systems and granular synthesis. He employs object-oriented synthesis languages for DSP and pairs them with regular expression string searching algorithms for filtering use cases. He runs the label Ge-stell. http://ge-stell.net

On Sunday, March 1st, RVNG Intl’s digital visionary Holly Herndon will bring her conceptual edge of surround sound to The Lab. Whether she's studying for her PhD at Stanford or spending all night in a Berlin techno party, Holly Herndon is obsessed with the intersection between mind and body and beat and technology. On releases like Movement and the Chorus EP, she tackles her complicated relationship with the internet, the NSA, Max/MSP software, and her own voice; creating a unique brand of cyber-pop that is equally beautiful and frightening, academic and dancefloor-ready.