![_Dandy Warhols at Emo's East [Show Preview]](http://austinist.com/assets_c/2012/05/DandyWarhols-thumb-250x250-715813.jpg)
Fast Forward Austin this Saturday [Festival Preview]
The idea of an avant-garde, or a leading edge of culture, and the concept of community don't always seem to go together, which is too bad. Communities should not only be involved with the strengthening and maintenance of culture, but also of supporting advanced ideas in local spaces. Just ask people like composers Anthony Braxton and Pauline Oliveros, or consider the work of the late composer-instrumentalist-improviser Bill Dixon (1925-2010), or groups like Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and the now-defunct Black Artists Group from St. Louis. It is these types of models that could be invoked by the first annual Fast Forward Austin festival happening at Space 12, a community space on East 12th Street on Saturday.
Fast Forward Austin is the brainchild of Austin-based composers Ian Dicke, Robert Honstein and Steven Snowden, bringing together new compositions from local and international figures, Austin-based performance groups, dramatic and visual media for a one-day festival. The proceeds will benefit Anthropos Arts, a foundation that provides music education for disadvantaged youth (some of its student-members will be performing Terry Riley's landmark In C to close out the festival).
Among the groups featured in Fast Forward will be the Austin New Music Co-op, the Aeolus String Quartet (currently in residence at the University of Texas), the Bel Cuore Saxophone Quartet, and Line Upon Line Percussion. Chief among the performances will be the New Music Co-op's presentation of Berlin-based composer Arnold Dreyblatt's Kinship Collapse, based on works performed with the Co-op at the Table of the Elements festival during SXSW 2006. In addition to strings and percussion, the instrumentation includes a double bass modified and re-strung with piano wire (creating a staggering array of percussively-generated overtones, like an indeterminately electrified dulcimer) and a guitar re-fretted to Dreyblatt's particular intonation system. Far from being rarefied, this music is extremely rhythmic; the SXSW performance was, in intensity, an experience akin to standing next to a jet airplane during takeoff.
In C (1964) is one of the cornerstone pieces of American minimalism, but it's highly accessible and can be performed by musicians of a wide range of abilities. The piece consists of 53 short phrases that can be repeated any number of times, in order, with the players in close but inexact phase with one another, remaining around three phrases apart. C major is the signal, dominant key and is generally constant throughout. Like the work of the late composer Cornelius Cardew (whose Great Learning will be performed by the New Music Co-op May 6th and 7th at Central Presbyterian) and Frederic Rzewski, it emphasizes gradual change, bonding agents, play, and various skill levels and human experiences coming together. Hopefully Fast Forward Austin will be the start of a yearly event joining contemporary musicians and artists with the broader community, bringing down some barriers in the process.
Festival link: [Fast Forward Austin]
