The San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, founded twenty years ago, is an artist run, multi-day showcase at the Mission District’s Brava Theater Center that reliably spotlights an international cast of composers, improvisers, synthesists and sound artists. Programmed by a rotating committee of local artists, the lineup this year features headliners John Wiese, the noise figure known from Sissy Spacek and Sunn O))); Carl Stone, the minimalist and sample-based electronic music innovator; and the electro-acoustic composer Maggi Payne, a Bay Area experimental fixture through her longtime post at Mills College. (The Space Lady, psych-pop busker of the 1990s lately enjoying a resurgence, is no longer playing.) The roster balances academic or programmatic work with less cerebral yet still challenging fare, and brings together different generations of artists. A separately ticketed prequel to the festival occurs Thursday at Envelop, an immersive audio venue involving 32 speakers within the Midway (“the entire room is an instrument”), with prerecorded multi-channel works by Amy X Neuburg, Jim O’Rourke and My Cat is an Alien. —Sam Lefebvre
San Francisco Electronic Music Festival Marks 20 Years of Challenging Sound
Dohee Lee is among the performers at this year's San Francisco Electronic Music Festival. (Scott Tsuchitani / Courtesy SFEMF)
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