Austin's New Music Coop was founded in March 2001 to present new works and under-heard compositions from the 20th and 21st centuries. For the past decade, the NMC has drawn performers not just of classical composition, but improvisers, rock musicians and sound artists into the fold, allowing the collective to function with a level of diverse experience that is rare in contemporary music ensembles. more ›

British composer Cornelius Cardew (1936-1981) would be celebrating his 75th birthday on Saturday; he was a student of and assistant to Karlheinz Stockhausen, and was also associated with the French composer Pierre Boulez early on in his career. He eventually rejected that music, even writing a tract titled Stockhausen Serves Imperialism in 1974. New York School composers John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff became part of Cardew's lexicon in the late 1950s and their adoption of such principles as indeterminacy, chance, and the Feldman adage to "let sounds be themselves" became a principle, almost democratic in its application to his work. more ›

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. more ›

When one listens to the throaty growl of Coleman Hawkins or the lithe elisions of Lester Young, or even the chirps and twirls of Steve Lacy, the first thing to come to mind might not be sound at its nakedest. Phrases and how they're put together, trying to follow a melodic line - those aspects of saxophone playing appear front and center. Sound is, after all, an abstract and very large thing that's difficult to narrow, whereas the things one makes with sounds are easier to connect with one's observations and experience. English tenor and soprano saxophonist and improviser John Butcher is, in some ways, a sound artist who has chosen the saxophone as his medium, working quite often as a soloist and paring down his litany of materials to breath, air, reed, teeth, tongue, fingers, pads, metal and the various sounds or actions that result (sometimes abetted by amplification/electronics). While certainly direct and specific, Butcher's work is not entirely "minimal" or "micro," despite not at first glance being obviously connected to the instrument's history, especially in jazz and improvised music. In fact, some of what he conjures seems related more to electronic or non-saxophone sounds than anything possible from a reed instrument. There is an inherent logic and engagement within this approach - not only that of the mechanics of instrumental music-making, but also with the space or environment in which the work is occurring (check out his solo CD Resonant Spaces on Confront from 2006, recorded in both indoor and outdoor settings; he's also performed in dialogue with artworks by Dan Flavin and James Turrell). more ›

This weekend will be a long-awaited return to Austin for inventor, composer and sound artist Ellen Fullman, who spent twelve years here developing her instrument/sculpture and approach, in a Manor Road studio. Fullman's work mostly hinges upon the Long String Instrument, initially conceived as an enveloping, spatial string-and-movement activated installation. more ›

The Arizona-based composer Jeph Jerman's "Animist Orchestra" is group-based performance art that uses the elements of our natural world - "dried leaves, stones, pine cones, seeds, and bleached bones" - as instruments in creating an organic work of sound. more ›

American minimalist composer Alvin Lucier made a life of the physicality of music. Working on the fringes of experimental music and sound installations, he explored acoustic phenomena and auditory perception like no other. A longtime professor at Wesleyan, Lucier's music is heavily influenced by science, seeking to identify and toy with the physical properties of sound itself. The resonance of spaces, phase interference between closely-tuned pitches, and the transmission of sound through physical media have been major areas of focus. more ›