This concert series celebrates new, traditional and world music through monthly performances. Concerts take place on the second Wednesday of the month in the intimate setting of Meridian Gallery. The series is devoted to the memory of Heather Leinss, one of Meridian Gallery's first teen interns.

All concerts begin at 8:00 PM. Arrive early for preferred seating.
$10 general $5 students/seniors; no one turned away for lack of funds

Call (415) 398-7229 for more information

Concerts re-broadcast Friday after concert @: http://www.luver.com

Tattoos and Other Markings by Thea Farhadian

Wednesday May 14, 8:00 PM

Meridian Music: Composers in Performance completes its spring season with a performance by Thea Farhadian. Tattoos and Other Markings explores the experience of memory, weaving together concepts of the old and the new, past and present; traditional and processed sounds from Armenia and Egypt, spoken text, and machine sounds. The piece explores the incompleteness of memory and the places in-between where things are less remembered and memory is more obscured. This laptop piece is comprised of three sections, a total of approximately forty minutes.

Thea Farhadian is an interdisciplinary artist and performer based in the Bay Area. Her work has been seen internationally at venues that include Meridian Gallery in San Francisco, the Center for Experimental Art and the Aram Kachaturyan Museum in Yerevan, Armenia, the Alternative Museum and Issue Project Room in New York City, Raumschiff Zitrone in Berlin, and the International Women's Electroacoustic Listening Room Project in Amsterdam and Los Angeles.

Farhadian studied Arabic classical music in New York City and in Cairo, Egypt. She has an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from San Francisco State and an M.F.A. in Electronic Music at Mills College.

UPCOMING 2008:

May 14: Thea Farhadian, electronics

July 23: Tintinnare by Tom Bickley

Meridian Music: Composers in Performance past performers list

Are you interested in performing on the Meridian Music: composers in performance series?

We welcome your interest and want you to know more about our series and our space. We are a point of connection for musicians and listeners. Actually we are several points of connection. We present performances at 8 pm on the second Wednesday of months September - May. We invite performers to present a single set of 50 minutes - 1 hour. We are open to other formats/structures.

Resources:
We do this primarily through in-kind support: For musicians selected for the series we provide, without charge:
1. an excellent performance space in a prime location in downtown San Francisco
2. enthusiastic, supportive curator and curatorial staff
3. publicity for your performance
4. professional location recording of your performance by Michael Zelner of Zoka Productions
5. if needed we can bring in a stereo sound system that will take the output from your mixer
6. video projector and screen
7. (with the performer's permission) excerpts from your performance in a streaming webcast at http://www.luver.com/
8. (with the performer's permission) excerpts from your performance in our gallery's podcast (http://www.meridiangallery.org/mp3/mr2.xml is the podcast feed, it is available from our website and via iTunes)

Challenges:
Finances. There, I wrote that word that scares too many people. Frankly, we wish we could provide guaranteed financial compensation to you for your performance in our space, but the reality of the situation is that we do not have the funds to do so. We understand that this means that it may not be possible for everyone interested in our series to perform on it. The music series is a program of this not-for-profit community-focused gallery. When possible, we will help you apply for funding for your work with us. A number of composer/performers on our series have received funds from Meet The Composer (a $250 stipend).

So who would be ideal candidates for our series? Composer/performers who have external funding and need a venue for their work; composer/performers working with funders who support performances in a community-focused location; composer/performers who need the sort of in-kind support we offer. We encourage your creative thinking regarding your use of this opportunity.

We are seeking financial support for the music series. If you are a funding agency interested in our work, please let us know. We are open to various possibilities, coalitions, collaborations, etc.

Opportunities:
The space is a wonderful, intimate venue, a rectangular gallery space, windowed at one end, hardwood floored, 14 feet by 50 feet with a 10 1/2 foot ceiling. We can seat a maximum of 60 people. We're on the third floor of a building in downtown San Francisco, generally quiet, but with some street sounds audible. There is not a piano in the space. We can project video and provide a stereo sound system (a pair of the earlier model of JBL EON 15 powered speakers). The audience usually sits on comfortable folding chairs. Because it is an active, vibrant art gallery, the music always occurs in relation to the current exhibition. So, we are interested in music that works well in this resonant space.

Each concert is professionally recorded by Michael Zelner of Zoka Productions. With this opportunity, those selected will also share their unique musical perspective with a group of about 15 low-income, high school aged, interns in a one-hour workshop.

We invite proposals from composer/performers for solo or very small ensemble performances that take into account the size of the room. Quiet, "lower case" music works well here, so do sonically saturating pieces. It's a small space, and we respect the ears of our audiences and we want performers who understand that. We host a wide range of styles and approaches, including free improv, structured improv, minimalism, new (and old) complexity, as well as streams from jazz, "concert" music, art music from all world cultures, experimental music, and performance art when those lineages are represented by composer/performers. We hope to present a wide variety of these sorts of art music, and we need your proposals to help us to do that.

Your proposal needs to let us know what you wish to perform and how you sense your work fitting into the Meridian Music series. Just a few lines of text are fine; we're not after pages of information. You're also very welcome to enter a conversation with us about what you'd like to do. We're working artists and musicians and educators and we always enjoy talking with others in these fields. We want your experience with us to benefit you as well as us and that is why we look thoughtfully for good matches of performer, sound and space.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Sincerely, -Tom

Tom Bickley, Curator, Meridian Music: composers in performance tbickley@metatronpress.com