I have attended a lot of exhilarating concerts in Portland, and the exceptional concert on Monday, February 23, was no exception. Four extraordinary musicians from Europe played in three sets, very different from each other but all concerned with pushing acoustic instruments to their limits–to beyond their limits. (To making a mockery of the idea [...]

The first Portland New Music Society concert took place at Enterbeing on the 22nd of January. Featured were Christopher Penrose, Peter Karman, Michael Hallenbeck, J.P. Jenkins, and Drew Adams.
Penrose opened the show with a Cosmovox set, laptop music files controlled by two i-Phones. This was subtle and graceful music, three short “pieces” of intricately shifting [...]

The October Portland New Music Society concert was a little bit of a departure from the usual eclectic mix of live electronics and improvisation. This evening was all composed music, although compositions with very open structures, to be sure, with electronics and improv.
 The unusually cold evening kept the usual Jáce Gáce crowd away, but [...]

In Portland, OR, the weekend of September 19-21 2008 was devoted, at least in part, to the music of Messiaen, along with that of some other notable twentieth century figures. Asymmetry unfortunately was in Southern California at the time, but fortunately listening to some very skillful jam-rock by Dr. Gorilla. Portland blogger James Bash, however, [...]

If you’re in Portland on the second Wednesday of the month, and you like new music, you might want to visit Jáce Gáce on SE Belmont around 8 o’clock in the evening for the monthly offering of the Portland New Music Society. As Jáce Gáce is also an art gallery and a waffle house, you [...]

The 2007 Bourges festival opened, as had the 2006 one, with a theatrical piece, this time a new opera by Portugese composer Miguel Azguime, Itinerário do Sal, an endlessly inventive, endlessly entertaining one-man multimedia show. Live and pre-recorded video, live and pre-recorded music collided and coincided alternately and simultaneously, dominated by the masterful performance [...]

At the end of this month begins the 38th Festival of Electroacoustic music in Bourges, and at long last Asymmetry presents the reports and interviews from the past two festivals there, the only two so far that Asymmetry has attended. Click the link above or check the sidebar under Upcoming Events for details about this [...]

The Electrogals show at Portland’s Holocene on the 10th of April, co-curated by Heather Perkins and Mary Wright, opened with a short set by Heather herself, filling in for the absent Marianne Messina. Heather’s set was loud, lively, energetic stuff. Starting with high, bright sounds, it went through some complex gyrations until settling into a [...]

Portland New Music Society’s second concert at Jáce Gáce (on April 9) featured the composed music of Scott Stobbe and the free improv of Fiasco.
William McGlothlan, oboe–Scott Stobbe, electric guitar–Becca Schultz, toy piano–Mary Sutton, violin and accordion–Shawn Sheff, trombone
Scott and a few friends played a set of his short pieces, strung together without break. While [...]

Composers Adam Reese and Matt Marble offered up two recent projects for our delectation Sunday evening, the 9th of March, at Gallery Homeland in Portland’s Ford Building. Both used the same basic setup, a drummer in the center of the room surrounded by other musicians, but they couldn’t have been more different otherwise. Adam’s set [...]