The LSG New Music Series is the longest standing experimental music series in the Bay Area, with weekly Thursday night shows since 1991. Founded by LSG Gallery Directors Laurie Lazer and Darryl Smith, the series has been curated by several Bay Area musicians.
Since 2002 the New Music Series has been curated by Outsound Presents and local improvisers/sound artists Rent Romus and Matt Davignon, and Polly Moller. They present a wide cross section of sound artists from every experimental genre.
Thursdays 8-10pm Admission $6-10 sliding scale All ages welcome, no one refused for lack of funds.
The series is an artist-run, grass-roots DIY effort that relies on volunteers. Please join us in setting up chairs, curtain, lights, sound once a week, and contact Outsound Presents to get involved in marketing and project coordination.
The Luggage Store Gallery is a non-profit corporation funded by the City of San Francisco, grants, and your contributions. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday, Noon to 5pm. For gallery information call 415-255-5971.
BOOKING Please read the policies here. Contact Rent Romus for booking and all other inquires.
Principle
Artist-run, volunteer, grass-roots DIY effort with little money and extraordinary results
Type of Music Presented
Experimental: new sonic, improvised, noise, electronic, lowercase, avant-jazz, outrock, 21st century composition, and sonic art. See artist list below.
Format
Weekly on Thursday Nights 8-10pm (Usually) two acts per night 7:00pm Setup 8:10pm Set One 9:10pm Set Two
Booking Lead Time
Two to three months in advance
Terms & Policy
70% of door equally split among artists 30% of door to gallery One comp admission per artist. No Power tools, or destructive devices of any type allowed. No fire or fume generating devices unless under a controlled environment and is 100% non-toxic. No smoking of any kind allowed in the space.
Facility and Equipment
Visual arts gallery with simple PA (mixer and speakers). A few tables, 35 folding chairs and 2 music stands are available. Capacity 100
Location
Second story storefront on Market near Sixth 1.5 blocks from Powell Street BART station, and several San Francisco buses stop right outside. If you are driving to our space, please email us for advice on where to unload and park.
Do Not Have
Piano, projector, microphones, instrument cables, power strips
Do Not Provide
Guaranteed payment, guest passes, hotel accomodations, transportation, rehearsal space/time, or a sound person.
To Book a Gig
Check calendar for date availability. Submit performance description with proposed dates, brief artist bios, website information and links to audio/video to Rent Romus
Past Curators/Volunteers
Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Sean Rooney, Steev Hise, Scott Looney, Matt Ingalls, Damon Smith, Bob Boster, Melissa Metrick, Jon Brumit (send us a note if you presented over the past 17 years, we'd love to hear from you).
Past Performers
Over the course of its Thursday night concerts, the series has presented hundreds of artists drawn from a vanguard roster, among them Cecil Taylor, Miya Masaoka, Alan Silva, Carl Stone, Biggi Vinkeloe, Joe McPhee, Janet Feder, Peter Kowald, Henry Kaiser, Fred Frith, Gino Robair, Koji Asano, Andrea Neumann, Axel Dorner, Kitundu, Pamela Z, Wolfgang Fuchs, Amy Denio, Jason Kahn, Eddie Prevost, Karen Stackpole, Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Gianni Gebbia, Karen Borca, Oluyemi Thomas, Saadet Turkoz, Yasuhiro Otani, Eddie Gale, Jim Ryan, Dina Emerson, Burton Green, Jane Rigler, Jack Wright, Assif Tsahar, CJ Reaven Borosque, Glenn Spearman, Danielle DeGruttola, Bob Marsh, Shoko Hikage, Bob Ostertag, Xome, Randy Yau, Stimbox, Kaffe Matthews and countless others both local and international.
Directions : 1.5 blocks from the Powell Street BART station
Joseph Rosenzweig is a composer/artist whose works for performance and installation concern the extrapolation of form from complex communication systems. His works for solo voice and live electronics are structured as improvisations in which the distribution of phonemic values and prosodic patterns is procedurally constrained. He currently resides in Oakland, CA.
Aurora Josephson is an accomplished musician and visual artist residing in Oakland, California. Building on a foundation of operatic training and a BA in Music Performance from Mills College, she has forged a bold vocal style that is uniquely her own. To unleash the limitless range of sonic possibilities in the voice, Josephson employs a variety of extended and unconventional techniques drawn from the worlds of contemporary composition, improvisation, and rock. She has performed and recorded with international talents like improvising musicians Martin Blume, Alvin Curran, Gianni Gebbia, Henry Kaiser, Joelle Leandre, Phillip Wachsmann and William Winant, musical groups like Big City Orchestra, The Molecules, the Flying Luttenbachers and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
"bran(...)pos is the solo experimental electronic music project of Jake Rodriguez. Given life in 1995, bran(...)pos focuses on real-time sonic plasticization and voice manipulation, achieving these ends with both hardware synthesizers and a custom set of software-based sound grapplers that interface with the real world via tactile control. bran(...)pos' recordings (heavy and heady like Cannibal Corpse doing Xenakis covers) and performances (rounded out with facial interpretations and physical gesture-butoh and Max Fleischer-inspired) are consistently praised for their inventiveness and attention to detail. Come explore the Valley of the Dead as casino with bran(...)pos, gambling wildly with life issues as you teeter on the precipice of securing a good afterlife or another horrid reincarnation. Mix an aural palette that encompasses such disparate elements as The Residents in the late 1970s, Dick Hyman, Stockhausen, Runzelstirn and Gurglestock, and maybe Emerson Lake and Palmer circa Brain Salad Surgery. Assemble this palette with the compositional complexity of Ennio Morricone and Beethoven and you get close to COIN-OP KHEPRI, a collection of tracks ranging from beautifully dense and complex to whimsical, making multiple stops between: folks, place your bets! For fans of: '70s electronic music (Peter Thomas, Gert Wilden), Runzelstirn and Gurglestock, German Shepherds, Caroliner." - Forced Exposure
Amar Chaudhary is a longtime composer and performer specializing in contemporary and electronic music, and artist, and a developer of advanced software for creativity. Amar remains actively involved in local electronic and experimental music in the San Francisco Bay Area, and performs regularly. His recent music involves experimentation with new sounds and sound-synthesis/processing techniques and new modes of musically expressive performance. He is also interested in the use of folk instruments and toy instruments in electro-acoustic music. He currently composes and performs in the group Reconnaissance Fly. more information can be found at his web site: http://amarchaudhary.com/
“Johnston explores the limits of his instrument with a hankering for originality…running away and never looking back.” San Francisco Bay Guardian Ontario-born trumpeter Darren Johnston has built a web of alliances, from avant-guard excursions with the likes of the ROVA saxophone quartet, Myra Melford, and Ben Goldberg, to straight-ahead jazz outings with the likes of bassist Marcus Shelby. He was recently listed by Downbeat Magazine as one of “25 Trumpeters of the Future.”
Cory Wright grew up in L.A., lived in NYC and now operates in the bay area. Education: Topanga Elementary, Samohi, ISOMATA, Oberlin College, USC (M.M.)
Thursday, Sep 23 2010 8:00 PM
A Birthday Tribute to John Coltrane. Come celebrate the life and times of Trane! Music by: Dan Plonsey Steve Horowitz Vinny Golia Plus other special guests TBA
Readings by: Craig Clevenger - novelist Nicole Henares – poet D. Scott Miller – afro-surrealist
Master of ceremonies: Bernard Meisler (publisher, Sensitive Skin Magazine)
Dan Plonsey was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He studied composition with Martin Bresnick and David Lewin at Yale, with Roscoe Mitchell at the Creative Music Studio, and with Anthony Braxton at Mills College. Since 1978, he has written several hundred works, mostly for his own ensembles, but recent commissions have come from The Jewish Music Festival (Berkeley), Real Time Opera (New Hampshire), the Bang on a Can People's Commissioning Fund (New York), Theatre of Yugen (San Francisco), the Museum of Children's Art (Oakland), Milkbar International Film Festival (Oakland), the Berkeley Symphony Children's Concert Series, and New Music Works (Santa Cruz). Plonsey was awarded several "Meet the Composer" grants, and an American Composers Forum "Subito" grant for the work with Theatre Yugen. Plonsey was one of just seven musicians nationwide to win a United States Artist Broad Fellowship in 2009. Much of Plonsey's music has been documented on more than 20 CDs. As a saxophonist, clarinetist, and oboist, he has recorded the music many others, including Anthony Braxton, Eugene Chadbourne, and Tom Waits. Plonsey is profiled in Tim Perkis's documentary film, Noisy People.
"Steve Horowitz is a creator of odd but highly accessible sounds and a diverse and prolific musician. He has released 15 albums of original music ranging from classical to funk and back again. He penned the score to the indi-film sensation Super Size Me as well as other high profile TV and Video Game projects. Mr. Horowitz is a bass player and the founder of The Code International. Steve studied composition at the California Institute of the Arts with Morton Subotnik, Mel Powell, Steven Mosko, and Mike Fink, and has received performance underwriting and commissions from numerous organizations. For more information on Steve Horowitz, visit www.thecodeinternational.com.
Thursday, Sep 30 2010 8:00 PM
Outsound Presents 8pm Animal Vegetable Television "Street Noise, Passing BART Train, Brian Eno, Chainsaws, Stockhausen, Squeaking Door, Skronkathon, Coil, John Cage, John Zorn, Morton Feldman, more....." 9pm AU:TONE:NAL w/André Custodio/Kevin Yuen/Dave Ed
About Animal Vegetable Television Ron Chornow has been a percussionist for over 20 years and recently has added the clarinet. He is a veteran of many Punk, Industrial and Alternative Bands such as Forms of Things Unknown, Samsara, Color Failure, Dinosaur Lullaby, Lots of Trees, New Assault and Krunk. In addition to traditional percussion instruments, Ron likes to create unusual sounds with objects originally intended for other purposes.
Gary Schwantes-Saxophone, Bamboo Flutes, Electric Guitar Gary Schwantes has toured and recorded 2 CDs with North Carolina based Hip Bones. He is founder of Ultra World X-tet, and has performed with S.F. Guzheng Music Society, Klezmania, Pam Tillis, Lou Harrison, Allen Ginsberg, John Cipolina, Animal Vegetable Television and many others. He has performed on many recordings and released a CD with Chinese composer Gang Situ. He has composed music and done sound design for many organizations including Lily Cai Chinese Dance Company, Mickey Hart, Craig Baldwin, Dimensions Dance Theater, ACT, and S.F. Legion of Honor.
Equally comfortable playing jazz, hardcore punk, soft rock or free experimental improv, Custodio's drumming draws from a myriad of influences without genre boundaries. He is in demand as a performer and improviser, working with the Valerie Mih Trio, Eddie Gale, Rent Romus, David Slusser and The Splatter Trio, among others. He has several critically acclaimed independent recordings to his credit as a sideman, including those with Ernesto Diaz-Infante, LX Rudis, Tri-Cornered Tent Show and Say Bok Gwai. In addition to his work as a drummer, he has developed recordings and performances in experimental electronics under the moniker Nihil Communication.
Thursday, Oct 7 2010 8:00 PM
Outsound Presents 8pm Slumgum Jon Armstrong tenor sax David Tranchina Bass, Rory Cowal piano (Los Angeles) 9pm Walsh Set trio Brian Walsh clarinet and bass clarinet Trevor Anderies drums Colin Burgess bass (Los Angeles)
Slumgum is a perpetually inventive quartet of adventurous modern musicians. Their blend of grit and finesse has been celebrated in reviews that contain both caution: “try to hold on for the ride” (Gabe Meline, North Bay Bohemian) and praise: “their soloing is masterful, their veneer metropolitan and their technical prowess top-notch” (Jonathon Lopez, Good Times Santa Cruz).
Walsh Set Trio is dedicated to exploring improvisation through contemporary classical music, jazz, and noise making. The group draws inspiration from the music of Bobby Bradford and Thelonious Monk, just to name a few.
Thursday, Oct 14 2010 8:00 PM
Outsound Presents Y2k10 Looping Festival - Experimental Night Krispen Hartung (USA) Roberto Zorzi (Italy) Andreas Willers (Germany) Nat Grant (Canada)
Thursday, Oct 21 2010 8:00 PM
Outsound Presents Full Moon Concerts - Blood Moon How dark can it get and the moon still be full?
8PM: Forms of Things Unknown 9PM: TBA
Thursday, Oct 28 2010 8:00 PM
Outsound Presents Guest Curation with Pete "Rat" Martin & Chris Golinkski 8-10pm Daniel Steffey Conner Lacy Gretchen Jude and Peiling Kao duo
Daniel Steffey is an active composer and percussionist in the San Francisco Bay area, and is currently attending Mills College for an MA in Composition. At Mills, he studies composition and theory with David Bernstein and Roscoe Mitchell, and percussion with William Winant. Recently, Daniel composed music and administered the sound design for Helen Pau’s award winning play "The Stone Wife". His composition Radio Piece #7 was chosen for the “60x60 Concert Series” which was performed at the 2010 International Computer Music Conference. Daniel received his BA in Music Performance from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas where he studied percussion with Tim Jones and Dean Gronemeier. As a percussionist, he is currently an active member in the William Winant Percussion Group, and has performed extensively throughout the United States with groups such as the Iron Beats Drum and Dance Group, the Ragtime Rebels Marimba Band, and his psychedelic rock group Easysleeves.
Conner Lacy is an artist and art technologist. In addition to making art in a variety of mediums, he develops practical tools which catalyze and bolster creativity. His own artwork often treads boundaries between (sometimes false) dichotomies, and employs multiple vantages of resonance (sonic, emotional, symbolic, spiritual, electromagnetic, etc.). Conner earned a B.A. in Music and Digital Art from the University of Virginia and an M.F.A. in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College. He was born in Arkansas and grew up in Virginia. He’s very interested in Buddhism, likes humidity, cicadas, and running, to name a few things.
Gretchen Jude is a composer, performer, writer and artist from Boise, Idaho. Vocal and electronic sound are often juxtaposed in her work, which crosses borders between human and machine, analog and digital, East and West, self and other. Gretchen recently completed her MFA in Mills College's Electronic Music/Recording Media program; she has also studied koto, shamisen and tea ceremony in Japan.
Peiling Kao was born in Taipei, Taiwan. She has worked as a freelance dancer for 13 years and was a full-time teacher at Cloud Gate Dance School in Taiwan. She graduated from Taipei National University of the Arts in 1996 with a BFA in Dance and has completed technique training in ballet, contemporary, Chinese folk dance, and contact improvisation. She was awarded the Taiwan-England artists’ residency, hosted by the Independent Dance based at Siobhan Davis Studios in London in 2007. This spring, Peiling finished her MFA in Choreography and Performance at Mills College; this year she was selected as an apprentice for ODC. Among the artists/dance professionals that she worked with are: Hwai-Min Lin (Founder of Cloud Gate Dance Theater), Mary Anthony, Molissa Fenley, Brenda Way, Sonya Delwaide, Sean Curran, Ross Parkes, Men-Fei Lo, Min-Shen Ku, Susan Van Pelt, Shinichi Iova-Koga, Nancy Lyons, Rachel Berman, Alyce Finwall and Joumana Mourad.
The Emergency String (x)tet rose up from the ashes of too many departures and is now stronger and more visionary than ever. The ESX engages in non-structured free improvisation. The "X" in the name refers to both the fluctuating number of players (4-6) as well as their venture into the unknown at each performance. CURRENT MEMBERS for this project: Bob Marsh, cello; Doug Carroll, cello; Adria Otte, violin; Angela Hsu, violin, Tony Dryer, bass.
Kinji Hayashi was raised in Tokyo, Japan. A solo Butoh dancer since 1991, has collaborated with numerous artists and groups such as Polish Theater director Miroslaw Kocur and San Francisco playwright Helen Pau. He has performed throughout the Bay Area with the Asian American Theater Company, Theaterworks, and Theater of Yugen. He also toured with HRG in California and with Harupin Ha in Japan and the US. He has received Dance Bay Area's Commissioning Project Grant, Zellerbach Family Fund, City of Oakland Cultural Arts Division's Creative Artist Fellowship, and the Pritzker Foundation Endowed Fellowship. He and Momo received a commission from the American Composers Forum to perform with composer William Ludke. Caring for turtles is a source of his inspiration in this fast-paced world.
CMBLS is a solo project from Michael Carreira: The cymbals are touching at the edge, all linked together. With continuous and consistent (not necessarily loud) strikes, the whole mass of 30-50 cymbals all vibrate together sending thick waves of shimmering noise throughout the room. Slow changing rhythmic and timbral variations explore the cymbals' wide sonic range.
Michael Carreira spent most of his time over the past several years as a drummer touring and/or recording with bands including Cryptacize (Asthmatic Kitty), Odawas (Jagjaguwar), Donnovan Quinn (Soft Abuse), and Danielson (Secretly Canadian). In addition to playing drums he's kept busy with a variety of related activities including musically mentoring a homeless child, creating a telephone based music distribution project called Sonic Supper (featured on NPR’s The Next Big Thing), writing a weekly column for NonsenseNYC, and teaching music in several New York and Oakland public schools.
Thursday, Nov 11 2010 8:00 PM
Outsound Presents SoundSpeak a series presenting pairings of sound and voice artists 8:00pm Lorin Benedict with Kasey Knudsen 8:35pm Hugh Behm-Steinberg (words) with Matt Davignon (sounds) 9:10pm CJ Borosque
Joseph Rosenzweig is a composer/artist whose works for performance and installation concern the extrapolation of form from complex communication systems.
Aurora Josephson is an accomplished musician and visual artist residing in Oakland, California. Building on a foundation of operatic training and a BA in Music Performance from Mills College, she has forged a bold vocal style that is uniquely her own. To unleash the limitless range of sonic possibilities in the voice, Josephson employs a variety of extended and unconventional techniques drawn from the worlds of contemporary composition, improvisation, and rock. She has performed and recorded with international talents like improvising musicians Martin Blume, Alvin Curran, Gianni Gebbia, Henry Kaiser, Joelle Leandre, Phillip Wachsmann and William Winant, musical groups like Big City Orchestra, The Molecules, the Flying Luttenbachers and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
"bran(...)pos is the solo experimental electronic music project of Jake Rodriguez. Given life in 1995, bran(...)pos focuses on real-time sonic plasticization and voice manipulation, achieving these ends with both hardware synthesizers and a custom set of software-based sound grapplers that interface with the real world via tactile control. bran(...)pos' recordings (heavy and heady like Cannibal Corpse doing Xenakis covers) and performances (rounded out with facial interpretations and physical gesture-butoh and Max Fleischer-inspired) are consistently praised for their inventiveness and attention to detail. Come explore the Valley of the Dead as casino with bran(...)pos, gambling wildly with life issues as you teeter on the precipice of securing a good afterlife or another horrid reincarnation. Mix an aural palette that encompasses such disparate elements as The Residents in the late 1970s, Dick Hyman, Stockhausen, Runzelstirn and Gurglestock, and maybe Emerson Lake and Palmer circa Brain Salad Surgery. Assemble this palette with the compositional complexity of Ennio Morricone and Beethoven and you get close to COIN-OP KHEPRI, a collection of tracks ranging from beautifully dense and complex to whimsical, making multiple stops between: folks, place your bets! For fans of: '70s electronic music (Peter Thomas, Gert Wilden), Runzelstirn and Gurglestock, German Shepherds, Caroliner." 
“Johnston explores the limits of his instrument with a hankering for originality…running away and never looking back.”
Cory Wright grew up in L.A., lived in NYC and now operates in the bay area.
"Steve Horowitz is a creator of odd but highly accessible sounds and a diverse and prolific musician. He has released 15 albums of original music ranging from classical to funk and back again. He penned the score to the indi-film sensation Super Size Me as well as other high profile TV and Video Game projects. Mr. Horowitz is a bass player and the founder of The Code International. Steve studied composition at the California Institute of the Arts with Morton Subotnik, Mel Powell, Steven Mosko, and Mike Fink, and has received performance underwriting and commissions from numerous organizations. For more information on Steve Horowitz, visit www.thecodeinternational.com.
8pm 
Kinji Hayashi was raised in Tokyo, Japan. A solo Butoh dancer since 1991, has collaborated with numerous artists and groups such as Polish Theater director Miroslaw Kocur and San Francisco playwright Helen Pau. He has performed throughout the Bay Area with the Asian American Theater Company, Theaterworks, and Theater of Yugen. He also toured with HRG in California and with Harupin Ha in Japan and the US. He has received Dance Bay Area's Commissioning Project Grant, Zellerbach Family Fund, City of Oakland Cultural Arts Division's Creative Artist Fellowship, and the Pritzker Foundation Endowed Fellowship. He and Momo received a commission from the American Composers Forum to perform with composer William Ludke.