The Main Street area on Chattanooga’s South Side will be the home for a festival of new music and art, June 24-26, featuring the New Dischord ensemble, local artists, and the Nashville band “Hands Off Cuba.”
All events are free to the public, and a complete listing of events, locations, and times may be found below and at www.newdischord.org.
Comprised of young and energetic musicians, the New Dischord ensemble presents concerts of stylistically diverse and experimental music that most audiences would otherwise never hear. By avoiding many of the traditions of concert etiquette and “classical” programming models, and by playing in unconventional spaces, New Dischord attracts an audience that is younger, or young at heart, with wide-ranging interests, and that might or might not ever set foot in a symphony concert hall. This ensemble is enthusiastic about new music that is engaging, eclectic, and sometimes challenging. The group also collaborates with local artists to create multimedia performances that transcend genre classification.
The members of New Dischord are highly trained musicians – symphony players, university professors, jazz and rock musicians, composers – and each one shares a passion for playing music that reaches the audience, often in surprising ways.
Here is a complete listing of the New Dischord Festival events:
Friday, June 24
• 6 p.m. - Conga Restaurant Patio, 207 E. Main St.: Open-mic performances by experimental musicians
• 8 p.m. - Barking Legs Theater (1307 Dodds Ave.):
Trevor Watts & Veryan Weston.
British saxophonist Trevor Watts has been associated with the British free jazz and improvised music scene since the mid-'60s. He is perhaps best known for his involvement in the Spontaneous Music Ensemble and in other projects with drummer John Stevens. While this work filled the first two decades of his career, he has focused more on his Moiré Music projects since the 1980s. These Moiré Music groups -- which have ranged from a 14-piece band to a drum orchestra to a trio -- have recorded for the ECM label and Watts' own Arc label. In 1999, Watts reuniting with violinist Peter Knight (of Steeleye Span), who had once played in Moiré Music, for a series of duo shows. Over the years, Trevor Watts has toured all over the world, from the Americas to New Zealand. He has run workshops, received numerous grants and commissions for his music, and has collaborated with a number of other widely respected jazz musicians, including Archie Shepp, Steve Lacy, Don Cherry and Jayne Cortez.
Saturday, June 25
• 10 a.m. - Windfarm Coffee Bar (1427 Williams St.):
Student Musician Workshops with Composers. Catch a glimpse of the inner-workings of a composer's mind! Local student musicians have applied to work with composers on their new compositions. The selected students will perform and be coached in this new music with the composers and members of New Dischord in a forum that is open to the public.
• 2 p.m. - Windfarm Coffee Bar (1427 Williams St.):
New Dischord and Hands Off Cuba in concert. Hands Off Cuba is a band from Nashville. Inspired in equal measure by the throbbing pulse of German progressive rock, the expansive sonic alchemy of Miles Davis and other electric jazz pioneers, and the mold-breaking compositions of the postwar avant-garde, Hands Off Cuba’s sound is a compact distillation of wide-ranging ideas and musical personalities. Moments of crackling electronica flow organically into burly rhythms, angular melodies and roiling pools of ambience.
The group originated in 2005 as the bedroom electronica project of Scott Martin and Ryan Norris. After releasing CoLab, a collaborative EP with the band Lambchop (which now claims both Martin and Norris as members), Hands Off Cuba expanded to include Lambchop mainstays William Tyler and Jonathan Marx. With the recent addition of Adam Bednarik and Matt Glassmeyer, the band's lineup continues to grow, with instrumentation ranging from digital samplers and keyboards to guitars, woodwinds and homemade percussion.
• 8:30 p.m. - (location t.b.a.):
World premiere of Dekacophony with Ron Ulen, Aaron Roche, Susan Creswell, and New Dischord ensemble.
Local composer Tim Hinck’s new genre-bending music entitled Dekacophony has been called “...a Renaissance-Pop Opera,” where lutes are replaced with electric guitars and the hero is a disgruntled office worker. Elements of Jazz, electronic music, Pop-Rock, and avant-garde Classical music combine in this semi-staged work. The lead role is sung by renowned baritone Ron Ulen, who has recently returned from over a decade of touring German opera houses, and is known locally for his work with the “Hops and Opera” concerts on Main Street... a Chattanooga favorite!
Hands Off Cuba will open this show with a fascinating set.
Sunday, June 26
• 3 p.m. - The Well/Loose Cannon (1800 Rossville Ave.):
New Dischord is joined by DJK7, dancers Monica Ellison and Cornelius
Heard, and art students from UTC.
Visual imagery, film, movement, and music will make this final event of the festival a multi-sensory experience. The early American silent film “Broncho Billy's Sentence” will be shown along with a ‘live’ performance of local composer Jonathan McNair’s original score for the film. A sometimes-humorous story of redemption, “Broncho Billy’s Sentence” is one of several very early Westerns starring W. G. Anderson. Also on this concert, dancers Monica Ellison and Cornelius Heard will perform with the New Dischord Ensemble, DJK7 will spin his web of sound, and students of Philip Lewis, (a Digital Media and Art Professor at UTC), will offer a multimedia presentation.
For more information, contact Tim Hinck at 774-6252.