High Zero, one of the nation's largest experimental music festivals, brings in musicians from all over the country, and has established Baltimore as a mainstay for experimental music nationwide.
The festival is organized into concerts, workshops, installations and "hijinx." The concerts will be held primarily at the Baltimore Theater Project in the evenings and will showcase three to five musicians out of the 28 invited to the festival to perform together. The musicians come from many different training and musical backgrounds, but the idea is that the more improvised the music, the better the experience. Here are some of the acts that aren't to be missed:
--Thursday, Sept. 30, 8:30 p.m. @ Theatre Project
Daniel Higgs of Baltimore will play solo Jew's harp, and try his best to make it sound like a synthesizer. On the same night, Jack Rose of Philadelphia will play guitar along with Susan Alcorn of Houston on pedal steel guitar and Kristen Toedtman of Baltimore on violin. This would provide the inexperienced listener an excellent introduction into the world of improvisational and experimental music.
--Saturday, Oct. 1, @ Theatre Project
This show breaks away from the format of the rest of the festival in that the performance is to create a soundtrack to Dog Star Man, one of the key films of the 1960's American avant-garde movement. That night will also feature "The Wheel of Zero," a game piece where random factors control how long each of the musicians plays.
--Saturday, Oct. 1, @ Theatre Project
As unconventional, invented musical instruments are an essential part of the experimental music scene, the Saturday night concert includes a performance by instrument inventor Catherine Pancake. She will be playing with vocalist and electronic musician Jesse Quattro, "tapes" player Howard Stelzer and synth-guitarist Tom Boran.
While the evening performances will be an experience unto themselves, the most entertaining parts of the festival will be the hijinx and installations set up all over Baltimore. Last year, in an event called "Musical Investments," Michael Muniak, a Hopkins senior studying Neuroscience and member of the Red Room collective, set up his laptop in the middle of the financial district of downtown Baltimore to play noise as loudly as possible. There was also an event called "Honkers," where horn and saxophone players were invited to honk at incoming morning traffic. And finally, there was a Water Taxi Band, an impromptu group of musicians invited to pile into a water taxi and play as loudly as possible while they toured the Baltimore harbor.
The hijinx are meant to be as impromptu and secretive as possible. However, the public is encouraged to participate and enjoy. The full schedule for this year's festival is available on the organization's Web site, http://www.highzero.org.
