OMG next week!

Tuesday June 21: Garden of Memory at Chapel of the Chimes
The annual walk-through new-music event with over 50 performers stationed throughout a stunning labyrinthine Julia Morgan building. Always a magical experience.
4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. 5 to 9 PM. Tickets HERE.

Friday & Saturday June 24 & 25: “They will have been so beautiful” with the Paul Dresher Ensemble
For this concert ten diverse composers (Lisa Bielawa, Jay Cloidt, Conrad Cummings, Paul Dresher, Fred Frith, Guillermo Galindo, Carla Kihlstedt, Amy X Neuburg, Ken Ueno and Pamela Z) created songs inspired by photographs, on the theme of the everyday here and now—in all its glory, grit and banality. Each song is performed by Amy on vocals and electronics, accompanied by the 6-piece ensemble, against a backdrop of projected photographs.
Z Space in San Francisco, 8 PM. Tickets HERE.

Sunday June 26 at 4 PM: Solstice vocal ensemble 20th anniversary concert & party
The wonderful Solstice ladies perform works from their diverse repertoire as well as some new commissions, including a piece by Amy: “Gehim Vaa” for 6 voices and 6 cell phones, in her made-up language Vleesk.
St. Alban’s Church in Albany, CA. Tickets HERE.

May 25 opening for The Security Project in SF

April 29 to May 1: Amy’s first orchestra piece!

Hunger Strike is a new commissioned 35-minute song cycle for the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra with the Squid Inc string quartet, and Amy on vocals and electronics. It’s a dense, avant-musical-theatery romp through many musings on solitude and solitary confinement. This is Amy’s most ambitious work to date — and the concerts are FREE!

Performed alongside Stravinsky’s Suite No. 1 and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, on a program entitled Revolutionaries.

FRIDAY APRIL 29  7:30pm
Herbst Theatre
401 Van Ness Ave, San Francisco

SATURDAY APRIL 30  7:30pm
First United Methodist Church
625 Hamilton Ave, Palo Alto

SUNDAY MAY 1  3:00pm
Valley Center for the Performing Arts
Holy Names University
3500 Mountain Blvd, Oakland

All performances are FREE OF CHARGE, first-come first-serve seating.

Amy is in a book

Amy is pleased to be included among the many interesting women profiled in this recently released book from German press Buddy’s Knife — Giving Birth to Sound: Women in Creative Music.

A nice review in All About Jazz.
To order the book, click the image above.

“Is it conflict free and were any animals harmed in the making of it?”

Mark Palmer did a lovely job of editing this video from the December 2014 performance of my piece for the Paul Dresher ensemble. We perform the entire concert again (10 songs by 10 composers, with projected images) in San Francisco in spring 2015.

A new interpretation of Jerry Hunt’s “Song Drapes”

This week! “They will have been so beautiful” at Zellerbach Playhouse

what I’m working on now

• Writing a piece for the Truman State University percussion ensemble, to premiere in October. They’re good! Look/listen. My piece, entitled Crowd Source, is for voice and 10 players (including 4 steel drummists). The lyrics were (mostly) crowd-sourced.

• Learning and writing music for December CalPerformances premiere of They Will Have been So Beautiful — my collaboration with the Paul Dresher Ensemble in which we perform photography-insired songs by 10 composers, including Paul and myself. Tickets are on sale Here, Now.

• Enjoying singing and recording with this fabulous band Vacuum Tree Head for their forthcoming CD extravaganza.

And in the planning stages:
• Creating my own interpretation (voice and electronic percussion) of Jerry Hunt’s classic 40-minute song cycle Song Drapes, to be performed at reiheiM series, Cologne, Germany, spring 2015.
• Finishing up the recording of my Fill as Desired song cycle for Solstice vocal ensemble, for a spring 2015 CD release.
• Then for the rest of 2015 will be hard at work on Hunger Strike for the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra with the Squid Inc. string quartet, voice, and live electronics; spring 2016 premiere.

And slowly amidst all that, enjoying the occasional spurt of solo weirdness, recording new studio songs in once-a-month day-long ICS sessions. Eventually this will result in a new release for your Spotifying pleasure.

-ing -ing -ing!

Next up: Starry Plough July 18

Latest news: Gerbode commissioning grant

I’m pleased to report that the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and I will be recipients of a $50,000 Gerbode/Hewlett commissioning grant for composition and production of a song cycle for voice, electronics and orchestra. The full work, tentatively titled “Hunger Strike” and exploring aspects of hunger both literal and figurative, will premiere in spring of 2016 as part of the SFCO’s Main Stage concert series (San Francisco, Berkeley and Palo Alto).

Read the press release and this year’s list of recipients and projects (pdf).

Read about the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. Their shows are always free!

Read about the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation.