Submissions for scores and applications for guest artists are open on our website! Click here if you have a score you'd like us to play for our New Music Festival on October 15th-16th, 2022, and click here if you're interested in performing a 30-minute set on one of the concerts. The Festival will feature three concerts in downtown Eugene, from the Park Blocks to the First Christian Church and the New Zone Gallery. The Light and Art show in the Park Blocks will draw on the energy of ArtCity's BEAM, with amplified music and an interactive light exhibit for audience members. Our audience participation concert draws trained and untrained musicians alike into a collective sound-making space at the First Christian Church, and our concert at New Zone will set pieces for the ensemble in an inviting visual atmosphere. The Call for Scores closes June 1st, and the Guest Artist Application closes July 1st.
AMBIENT ECOLOGY
Sponsored by City of Eugene Art in the Parks
May 31st, 5:30pm
EUGENE DIFFICULT MUSIC ENSEMBLE
Featuring Works by
Pauline Oliveros - Aphex Twin - Cory Arcangel and Stine Janvin - Chin Ting Chan - Hiroshi Yoshimura - Cheryl Leonard - Caroline Shaw - Lauren Auder
June 7th, 5:30pm
GUEST MUSICIANS
Featuring Performances by
Free Static - Jennifer Wright - Luke Wyland
June 14th, 5:30pm
GUEST MUSICIANS
Featuring Performances by
Daniel Menche - Owen Atlansky - Don Haugen
ALL CONCERTS AT MAURIE JACOBS PARK
EDME’s Ambient Ecology Festival seeks to create a dialogue between music, nature, and human experience by presenting calming soundscapes within Maurie Jacobs Park. We will present three 90 minute-long shows, one each on May 31st, June 7th, and June 14th. Works by the deeply influential 20th century composer Pauline Oliveros will be a throughline for all three shows. Oliveros’ concept of Deep Listening serves as inspiration for this project. According to Oliveros, “Deep Listening explores the difference between the involuntary nature of hearing and the conscious nature of listening. The practice includes bodywork, sonic meditations, and interactive performance, as well as listening to the sounds of daily life, nature, one’s own thoughts, imagination, and dreams. It cultivates a heightened awareness of the sonic environment, both external and internal, and promotes experimentation, improvisation, collaboration, playfulness, and other creative skills vital to personal and community growth.”
Each concert in the series will open with one of Oliveros’ Sonic Meditations, during which we will invite the audience to participate alongside the musicians.
We hope to introduce intentional audience members and passers-by both to unique musical styles outside a traditional concert hall, including an array of composers and performers from diverse backgrounds, such as non-white, LGBTQ, and female-identifying individuals. Performing at Maurie Jacobs near the Willamette River, we invite people to listen to both the music and the environment it is placed in, including its anthropocentric setting. We hope people will hum, sing, move, or otherwise participate with the music, especially as part of the Sonic Meditations. We will provide programs at each concert to help people learn more about the music, the park, and the Willamette River. The hope is for the Series to annually recur every spring.
The Ambient Ecology Series seeks to create a cultural exchange through music that inspires dialogue and wonder. These qualities are fundamental to experimental music. We hope that stumbling into the outer edges of musical performance -- such as ambient, drone, and contemporary classical -- on a Saturday afternoon in the park will introduce passers-by to new musical styles. Folks who already know these genres will have the rare treat of hearing them performed live amidst the beauty of one of Eugene’s loveliest parks. One of our goals is to create a vibrant atmosphere, transforming Maurie Jacobs Park into a space where people can relax and enjoy curious musical experiences–a distinctive atmosphere that cannot be replicated in a concert hall, let alone through speakers or headphones.
and Courtney Stubbert. In their recordings and performances, they utilize electronics, acoustic instruments, and other objects as a guide for improvised sonic exploration that exists in the space between chaos and order.
freestatic.bandcamp.com
FREE STATIC
is an experimental music collaboration featuring Chris Ruiz
JENNIFER WRIGHT
M.M., B.M. is a pianist, composer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, and
producer. Her work is deeply rooted in investigating social and environmental issues through dynamic sonic experiences. She has been described as “a real force of nature”, “[a] most entertaining, exciting, and important composer!”, “New music glam!”, and “brassy, nutty, classy…mad, quite mad.”
Jennifer performs regularly as a solo and collaborative artist. She has built numerous large-scale instruments and sound installations from materials like industrial debris and trash that confront issues like climate change, rampant overconsumption, and human frailty. Her instruments and music have been exhibited in the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education in Portland, OR and the permanent collection of the Alaska State Museum in Juneau and featured on OPB’s Think Out Loud, KGW TV, and in shows across the U.S., U.K., Europe, and Cuba.
LUKE WYLAND
is an interdisciplinary artist, composer, and performer
based in Portland, OR (USA). Wyland has been releasing critically acclaimed records for the past 20 years in the groups AU and Methods Body, as LWW, and under his own name, working with such labels as New Amsterdam, Beacon Sound, Balmat, The Leaf Label, and Aagoo Records. His most recent solo record, Kuma Cove, was released on Balmat in November 2024. As a person who stutters, Wyland’s approach to music is informed by his idiosyncratic relationship with language. Wyland believes deeply in the cathartic power of live performance as a means for collective healing. Through an interdisciplinary art practice that focuses on improvisation, somatic embodiment, bespoke tuning systems, the cadences of dysfluent speech, and time manipulation technologies, he’s collaborated with choreographers, high-school choirs, filmmakers, sound designers, and renowned musicians such as John Niekrasz, Holland Andrews, Colin Stetson, and Abraham Gomez-Delgado.
DANIEL MENCHE
is an iconic experimental musician from Portland,
Oregon. His extensive history of recording and performance spans three decades and counting. Menche's sonic abstractions manifest through intense noise, immersive drones, dense ambiance, poly-rhythmic percussion, turbulent nature field recordings, abused acoustic instruments and many other sources. His music is adventurous in execution as well as presentation, creating an absolute, abstract sonic world.
Menche’s lengthy discography contains over 60 albums, many of which have been published by some of the most esteemed experimental record labels. Over the years he has worked with Editions Mego, Sige, Touch Music, Alien8 Records, Ash International, Utrecht Records, and many others. He has collaborated with Mamiffer, Andrew Liles, KK Null, John Wiese, Aaron Bradford Turner, Joe Preston, Anla Courtis, Zbigniew Karkowski, Kiyoshi Mizutani, and Kevin Drumm. He has performed extensively in North America, Japan, Europe, and Australia.
OWEN ATLANSKY
is a performer, producer, composer, and radio jock from Portland,
OR. He knew he wanted to devote his life to music when he played Guitar Hero as a toddler. Owen releases music under the name XDL and is inspired by hip hop, electronic music, jazz, video game soundtracks, and all music and sounds. He placed 1st in the University of Oregon’s 2023 Electronic Music Composition Competition and was recognized as a “School of Music and Dance Outstanding Undergraduate Scholar in Music Technology” when he graduated from the University of Oregon with a BS in Music Technology. He has performed in the Oregon Electronic Device Orchestra and has run live sound for events at the University of Oregon and the Jazz Station. He works full-time in radio and can be heard Sundays 12-4pm on 104.7 KDUK. In his free time, he enjoys kicking it, chilling, hanging out, and relaxing.
DON HAUGEN
is based in Eugene, Oregon, USA. Since the late 1980’s,
he started working with tape loops, oscillators, synthesizers, feedback, contact mics and more.
Haugen’s work focuses on experimenting with location specific sound and room dynamics. Utilizing a vast arsenal of home-built electronics and re-purposed test instruments to create sonic-scapes.
Haugen has had the opportunity to perform throughout the Western United States; sharing the bill with such artists as Phil Niblock, Todd Barton, Thomas Dimuzio, Caspar Brötzmann, The Boredoms, Z’EV, Emil Beaulieau, Illusion of Safety, Non, Death in June, Negativeland, members of Skinny Puppy and The Melvins.
He has composed for performance artists, sound installations, film and ensembles. Haugen is curator and founder of the Eugene Noise Festival, which started in 2005.
