BEAST FEaST 2019

Since its inception, electronic music has been wedded to notions of modernity and futurity. Composers like Edgar Varese and Iannis Xenakis styled themselves as musician-scientists, blazing a path into the future, while popular electronic music from Louis and Bebe Barron to Kraftwerk frequently drew on images of space travel and nuclear power to frame the new sounds of electronic synthesis. Recent years have seen postmodern tropes of revivalism, pastiche, and appropriation make an appearance, as musicians have become increasingly interested in plundering the past as a resource for the present. Yet this fervour has not taken hold universally, and much work remains at least outwardly committed to an ‘old’ ideal of the new, rather than a ‘new’ fashioning of the old. For this edition of BEAST FEaST, we invite composers and listeners to rewind in order to fast-forward: What new paths may open up by engaging more closely with works, idioms, and technologies from the past? What ideas, old and new, might take us forward?

Join us for three days of music, meeting, and ideas, along with featured guest artists Norah Lorway, Pete Stollery, AnoThai Nitibhon, Jean-David Caillouët, Anton Lukoszevieze and Apartment House.