Experimental Music Panel Discussion and Performance

Drummer/percussionist Karen Stackpole started out as a rock drummer in the late ‘80s and soon became fascinated with improvised music and multi-media collaboration. She became active in the creative music scene, playing new music and stretching beyond established boundaries as well as working with dancers, spoken word, and experimental film. She has a long-standing passion for gongs. In her exploration of metals, she has cultivated some distinctive techniques for drawing harmonics out of tam tams with various implements. She specializes in dynamic soundscapes and textures and has contributed gong sounds to more conventional musical genres as well as recording source material for film soundtracks. In addition to solo work, she has performed and recorded with various projects including Machine Shop: Live Amplified Gong Experience (a duo with electronics master, Drew Webster), Sabbaticus Rex, Ghost in the House, Vorticella, the Francis Wong Unit, and the rock band Steel Hotcakes, as well as being involved in numerous other collaborations. Most recently her work has focused on duo performances and recordings with experimental instrument builder Krys Bobrowski (Gliss Glass & Gongs), contrabassist Bill Noertker (Talking Frog), and guitarist extraordinaire, Fred Frith.

Born and raised in France, a 20-year resident of Fiji and traveller to all the Pacific Islands, Franck Martin is now based out of San Francisco. His musical journey encompasses this multicultural experience. His search for sounds, emotions, going outside the rules, led him to experiment with micro-tones and quadraphonic music using either his modular synthesizer or producing music in 5.1 surround sound, ambisonic or Dolby Atmos/Spatial Audio. Franck Martin performs long sets, 15-30mn or more of live music on his quadraphonic modular synthesizer. He produces electronic music, organizes and promotes well attended events and concerts.

Julius Dobos is an award-winning, platinum-album electronic music and film composer, sound synthesist and mastering engineer, best known for his eleven album releases and film scores. His scoring and production credits include Dragon Ball Z, NCIS, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Zookeeper, and work with Grammy®-winning performers. Under his pseudonym, forgotten future, Julius builds musical universes and creates epic-ambient organic electronic music with a distinct character, which heavily relies on cutting edge musical sound design and philosophical themes. Dobos’ digital installations and live multi-media performances promote the organic expression in electronic music and have attracted audiences internationally. His 2019 Los Angeles Human Intelligence Control show featured an inventive musical experience through digitally-tracked physical interaction with the audience. With a background in composition, sound synthesis and audio production, Dobos has also engineered, mastered hundreds of records, beta-tested and preset-programmed synthesizers and music technology tools for the past three decades. Dobos is a university professor, the Vice Chair of AES San Francisco, and the founder of the AI-Free Organization. He enjoys designing unique sonic concepts in his Studio CS, a modular space is filled with vintage and cutting edge electronic musical instruments, giving talks on the topics of creativity and electronic music culture.

William Winant has collaborated with some of the most innovative and creative musicians of our time, including Joelle Leandre, John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, Pierre Boulez, Frank Zappa, Keith Jarrett, Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, Fred Frith, James Tenney, Terry Riley, John Zorn, Cecil Taylor, Gerry Hemingway, Mark Dresser, Barry Guy, Marilyn Crispell, George Lewis, Steve Reich and Musicians, Nexus, Charles Wuorinen, Jean-Philippe Collard, Frederic Rzewski, Ursula Oppens, Joan LaBarbara, Annea Lockwood, Danny Elfman/Oingo Boingo, Ash Fure, Sonic Youth, Marc Ribot, Keith Rowe, Ikue Mori, Joey Barron, Lin Culbertson, Bill Frisell, Yo-Yo Ma, Rova Saxophone Quartet, Lawrence “Butch” Morris, and the Kronos String Quartet.

Krys Bobrowski is a composer, sound artist and musician based in Oakland CA. In addition to French horn, she plays acoustic and electronic instruments of her own design. She is an active performer and improviser, a long-time member of the improvisation ensemble Vorticella, the Bobrowski/Stackpole Gliss Glass Gong project, and a current member of Wendy Reid’s Bird Ensemble. Bobrowski earned her M.F.A. in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College and her B.A. in Computers and Music from Dartmouth College where she first met Jon Appleton and Christian Wolff and became interested in electronics and experimental music. At Mills she studied computer music with Larry Polansky and developed an interest in interactive computer music. She has a long association with the Exploratorium as a sound exhibit developer, artist-in-residence, guest performer and speaker. Currently, she teaches and directs the Electronic Music Program at the College of San Mateo. Bobrowski has presented her work in a number of music festivals and venues including the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, the Metronom Festival in Barcelona, the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival in NYC, the Ex Teresa Arte Actual Sound Art Festival in Mexico City, and at the Konzerthaus Berlin with the Unitedberlin ensemble. Recent commissions include a work for choir and kelp horns for the SF Bay Area Chamber Choir, a wind activated sound installation for Aeolian Day at a park in Oakland, and a piece for Dan Goode’s Flexible Orchestra which included ten bassoons, NYC.

Brent Miller (b. 1978) is a composer, performer, and arts administrator based in San Francisco, CA. Recent projects include works for Rova Saxophone Quartet, violinist Eric km Clark (Southland Ensemble, EAR Unit), Dither Electric Guitar Quartet, and Sqwonk. He has received grants from Zellerbach Family Foundation and American Composers Forum to fund his work. He studied composition at the University of Arkansas with Robert Mueller and University of Missouri-Kansas City with James Mobberley and Paul Rudy. Brent is active in the arts administration field founding and serving as Managing Director for The Center for New Music in San Francisco, a work/performance space that supports creative music, as well as managing Rova:Arts, a non-profit organization that supports Rova Saxophone Quartet. He also has worked with Other Minds, helping to produce the annual Other Minds Festival, and is a founding member of The Collected, a group dedicated to the advancement of new music.