Preview/Contest: FutureStops Festival

Thursday September 29 — Saturday, October 1, 2022

An unexpected blending of traditional instrumentation and contemporary composition, the FutureStops Festival is bringing some avant approaches to the pipe organ to town next week. With five concerts as well as several spin-off interviews and ancillary events, it's a chance to see some legends (like Amina Claudine Myers) plus musicians who have been covered in these pages (including Raven Chacon, Charlemagne Palestine, and Sarah Davachi) performing — quite literally! — on some bigger stages. It's also a chance to hear music in some impressive spaces, including at the Cathedral of St. James and Metropolitan United Church.

Here's what's gonna be happening at the festival:

• Kali Malone, Thomas Mellan, Kara-Lis Coverdale @ Cathedral of St James, Thursday September 29th, 7:30 p.m. Entitled "Dark Matter", thai night features works from three emerging and vital composers.
• Raven Chacon, Amina Claudine Myers, Sarah Svendsen, Rashaan Allwood @ Roy Thomson Hall, Friday, September 30th, 7:30 p.m. The centrepiece presentation of the festival, this ambitious and large-scale program features the Canadian premieres of Chacon's "Voiceless Mass" and Myers' "Improvisational Suite".
• FUJI||||||||||TA, Sandra Boss @ Roy Thomson Hall Lobby, Saturday, October 1st, 1:00 p.m. This Saturday matinée (concert and talk) has the intriguing title of "Hacking the Organ", with "two performers who built their own instruments to offer a unique sonic interpretation of the organ which can be activated in any space."
• Charlemagne Palestine, Matthew Larkin, Sarah Davachi @ Metropolitan United Church, Saturday, October 1st, 7:30 p.m. "Forces of Nature" is dedicated to exploring "new directions and possibilities for the organ" from a trio of eclectic and unique artists.

TICKETS + MORE INFO

You can find everything you'd want to know about the festival on their website, and ticket info is right here. (there's also a "virtual pass" for those who'd like to experience nearly all of the festival in the comfort of their own space.)

CONTEST

Thanks to the festival organizers, I have a pair of tickets to give away to the big Friday night show (that is, of course, the one with Raven Chacon, Amina Claudine Myers, Sarah Svendsen, Rashaan Allwood at Roy Thomson Hall).

To enter, shoot me an email to mechanicalforestsound@gmail.com, with "contest" in the title and your name in the body. (The winner will need to provide me with their first & last name, phone number and address.) I'll randomly draw a winner at noon on Tuesday, September 27th.

Recording: Raven Chacon

Artist: Raven Chacon

Song: Raven Chacon - [excerpt, in two parts]

Recorded at The Music Gallery @ 918 Bathurst (Raven Chacon mini-fest – Night 3), April 14, 2019.

Raven Chacon - [excerpt, part 1]

Raven Chacon - [excerpt, part 2]

The final night of this three-show mini-fest matched a pair of musicians who are busy collaborators in their communities, but working here in solo mode. After a variety of group approaches over the first two nights, Raven Chacon got the last word in a noisy solo outing. Or almost the last word, as the grey and rainy day welled up in time with his set to provide vivid flashes of lightning through the room's side windows and thunderous background rumbles that were hard to distinguish from their electronic counterparts. Whether casting Chacon as a storm-summoner or kindred natural element, there was an apt correspondence between the sonic adventures the the electricity in the air.

At this posting, you can still watch this whole show on the archived livestream:

Recording: Laura Ortman

Artist: Laura Ortman

Song: For Zitkála-Šá [excerpt] [composer: Raven Chacon]

Recorded at The Music Gallery @ 918 Bathurst (Raven Chacon mini-fest – Night 2), April 13, 2019.

Laura Ortman - For Zitkála-Šá [excerpt]

Three nights examining the work of composer/musician Raven Chacon from different angles served as an interesting mirror to the X Avant festival earlier in the season. I wasn't able to make the first night, with the Array Ensemble surveying some of Chacon's chamber pieces, but I was eager for this night. A tribute to the Dakota violin teacher, activist, and librettist for the first American Indian opera, "For Zitkála-Šá" is a modular composition, with a series of solo segments created by Chacon to deploy and challenge the skills of a series of specific collaborators. Each with a graphic score that provides structure but leaves a lot of room to interpretation, there was anguish, joy, and technically-demanding sounds from all the performers. This section, performed by violinist Laura Ortman, collapsed the bow/bough distinction, a tree branch sweeping across her strings and planting a forest of reverb.

At this posting, the archived livestream of the full concert is still available online:

Recording: c_RL with Raven Chacon

Artist: c_RL with Raven Chacon

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at The Music Gallery @ 918 Bathurst (Raven Chacon mini-fest – Night 2), April 13, 2019.

c_RL with Raven Chacon - [excerpt]

Three nights examining the work of composer/musician Raven Chacon from different angles served as an interesting mirror to the X Avant festival earlier in the season. I wasn't able to make the first night, with the Array Ensemble surveying some of Chacon's chamber pieces, but I was eager for this night. Geographic dispersion has meant that c_RL is not performing together much right now, and the special occasion-ness of this reunion was enhanced with the trio's first (as far as I know) collaborative set. Their soundscape of noises and buzz-bursts was a friendly terrain for Chacon to add some guitar-sounds and cassette crackles.

At this posting, the archived livestream of the full concert is still available online:

Recording: Postcommodity

Artist: Postcommodity

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at Double Double Land, April 12, 2015.

Postcommodity - unknown

Presenting an installation at the Images Festival, two members of this Albuquerque-based multidisciplinary collective also presented their musical side at this DDL gig. Their raw materials were flutes and voices processed into electroacoustic forms, re-presenting Indigenous roots as post-digital sound-spatter. (There's some more musical work on their bandcamp, in the most evocatively-titled album Your New Age Dream Contains More Blood Than You Imagine.)

^* I'm not sure if this was an improvisation or a recreation of a titled piece. Please leave a comment if you know the title.