Contest: X Avant XXI

X Avant XXI: Memory Mannnnn

October 14-16, 2026 @ First Unitarian Church

The Music Gallery is always in the process of becoming something else, so it's not entirely unusual to note that this year's X Avant Festival comes in a time of transition for the institution. While we wait for new Artistic Director Sara Constant's programming to come online, X Avant comes as retrospectively futuristic, with atrists approaching "effects pedals as inquiry and play, utilizing live processing to expand the sonic palette." (Something close to this blog's heart!)

I've heard excitement expressed by artists and the MG staff towards this year's venue, in Oakwood Village (and a ten-minute walk from Oakwood Station on the new Line 5). Tad Michalak curates the first night, featuring guitar wizardry from Ava Mendoza plus a cool duo from Andrew Noseworthy & Grace Scheele. Night 2 brings Sonic Bikes (" a bespoke ensemble of improvising percussionists will make use of reassembled and sonified bike parts to animate a familiar soundworld of gears, spokes, and pedals") plus Bilal Nasser playing solo and with a cool ensemble. The Festival wraps with Alexis Nanibush-Pamajewong's light and sound installation "For The Youth: Reilluminated" plus Mani Mazinani's Solar Organ Ensemble, which is filled up with a bunch of this blog's fave locals.

Recorded at Collective Arts (Burn Down The Capital presents), November 3, 2024.

• Ava Mendoza - The Shadow Song

Recorded at Sankofa Square (Intersection 2025: Day 2: All Day Music Marathon, August 30, 2025.

• Bilal Nasser - unknown

TICKETS + MORE INFO

Information for all shows and tickets are over at the MG's site. Tickets are available on a Pay What You Can Afford (PWYCA) sliding scale ($20-$30) and you can also grab a Festival Pass as well.

CONTEST

Thanks to the Music Gallery, I also have a Festival Pass to give away!

To enter, shoot me an email to mechanicalforestsound@gmail.com, with "contest" in the title and your name in the body. I'll randomly draw a winner on Tuesday, October 13th.

Recording: Bilal Nasser

Artist: Bilal Nasser

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at Sankofa Square (Intersection 2025: Day 2: All Day Music Marathon, August 30, 2025.

Bilal Nasser - unknown

Back from a year's hiatus, the Intersection Festival was once again bringing some unconventional sounds to the unsuspecting public. The now formally-retitled Sankofa Square sports a decolonized name, but a slightly more carceral vibe — surrounded by metal fencing and closed off by gates right up 'til showtime, there was less of a random just-wander-through sense of invitation than there used to be.

There was also a slightly different curatorial vibe in effect. In the absence of Burn Down the Capital's Tad Michalak, Andrew Noseworthy stepped up as the main programmer, giving the day a flavour that'd be familiar to those following people | places | records, the "DIY genre-fluid 'zero profit' artists-first" label he is involved with.

Windsor's Bilal Nasser brought some elegant classical guitar moves tempered with contemporary technological flourishes (loops, ambient pads) and some airy vox that would twist outward into some concrète/collage zones to provide a thorny edge and quietly-insistent political sensibility.

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!