Sandia Soundscapes Sounds Sweet

NEWS | TUESDAY, AUGUST 11 | BY FUSION STAFF WRITER, RUDOLFO CARRILLO

This morning, I had a chat with Chris Meyer, one of the artistic instigators at Sandia Soundscapes, a local arts organization determined to bring the storied—often admired and recently missing—electronic sound scene back to the forefront of all things musical in Burque.

A big part of achieving that estimable goal can be experienced by taking in the concert residency that Meyer and Sandia Soundscapes co-founder Jim Coker have established at FUSION. The next iteration of this deep dive into the sounds the universe makes when filtered through minds and technological accoutrements of such sonic psychonauts happens on Saturday, August 15, at 7:00 PM.

Importantly, Sandia Soundscapes’ next journey at FUSION features Siphonophores, an improvisation-based trio comprised of Jesse Tatum on flute, Peter Gilbert on electronics, and the projected images of artist Nick Tauro Jr.

Multi-media artist and master of grooves Morgan Barnard will open the night’s proceedings with his chill tendency toward downtempo deconstructions. 

Historically, Albuquerque musicians and artists have long been known as part of the worldwide development and ascendance of electronic and electro-acoustic music. This concert at FUSION will be an awesome example of how that creative tendency continues its homegrown ways, building and sustaining art and music communities at levels from local to world-wide.

Peter Gilbert, one of the featured musicians in the upcoming August concert, is currently part of the much-lauded UNM music composition and theory faculty. His work is notable for its cinematic depth and intimate improvisations; he says his musical goal is to “become enveloped in a musical experience, disappearing into sound.”

Siphonophores’ Jesse Tatum is the principal flautist at the Santa Fe Symphony as well as a core member of legendary local chamber music mavens Chatter, while Nick Tauro Jr.’s art is all over town and all over the world, too; he’s worked with Werner Herzog, for example. Both artists worked with Raven Chacon on his recent epic Albuquerque composition Tiguex.

Now if all I read about this show at FUSION were the last three paragraphs above, I’d be so sure about going that I’d have already ordered a Lyft, more than a month out. That’s how cool this show is going to be; I feel it in my bones. I first got that feeling when I chatted with Meyer about what he was doing, and the names Dwight Loop and John Donald Robb came up.

Robb was one of the progenitors of American electronic music in the 1950s and 1960s. Robb was the Dean of the College of Fine Arts at UNM; he built an on-campus electronic music lab in the basement of the fine arts center, complete with Moog synthesizers, that I used to sneak into back in the day. They named an entire symposium after him. After he passed, his daughter Nancy used to attend every performance at Keller Hall, where she was treated like a queen from an ancient realm.

Dwight Loop was, for all intents and purposes, the high priest of electronic music in this city, the state, the West, and for that matter, the world we live in now. His KUNM radio show, Earwaves, set off a sonic earthquake that not only portended the continued importance of electronic music, but set the genre on a collision course with Albuquerque popular culture, creating beauty, growth, and vitality in its wake.

All of the above revelatory stuff led to quite an interesting discussion with Meyer about how Sandia Soundscapes proposes to build on the legacy left by folks like Robb and Loop, how what’s going on now in the midst of a scene that is still vitally important, and why attending Sandia Soundscapes concerts at FUSION are methods of support and affirmation that can also be transcendent, joyful, thought-provoking…and fun! 

Rudolfo Carrillo: I really love the fact that you are helping create and sustain a new and vibrant chapter for what’s really a deep part of Albuquerque’s creative and musical culture. How did you get involved with Sandia Soundscapes?

I’m an electronic musician working mainly in the ambient or cinematic styles, and I found a lack of venues in New Mexico to play that type of music. So I decided to go ahead and start. That’s what Sandia Soundscapes is, working with my partner Jim Coker, who’s also a musician. We had a few different venues in mind, but I sat in on a meeting on a different project with Dennis [Gromelski of FUSION], and he said something that really stuck with me. He said, “It’s not my job to say no; it’s my job to ask how.”

That's great because it really speaks to building affiliation and community among many different scenes; things that were really important to innovators like Robb and Loop, que no? How are you embracing innovation in this series of concerts?

I wanted to do things differently than your typical concert appearance. I have a few pillars that I stand by: respect the artist, respect the audience, improve the bond between the audience and the artist. With the audience, it’s like running shows on time, making sure everyone has a good view of what’s going on, and creating a comfortable listening environment. A couple of things that we do differently compared to other concerts is one, we interview the artists before they perform, because we want the audience to have some idea what they’re about to hear; particularly electronic music, it might be something they’re not used to. So you get to hear about the compositional process for these artists, and also why they chose these particular instruments to express themselves. The other thing we do, which is a little different, is we have video cameras and video projection running, but the cameras are not aimed at the artist’s faces; they’re aimed at what they’re doing on their instruments and on their gear. The idea is we want everyone in the audience, not just the front row, to see what the performers are actually doing… They’re working really hard during a performance to try to fly a plane basically. We want the audience to experience that process.

Why should audiences flock to the performances offered by Sandia Soundscapes at FUSION; why is electronic music still an important part of the arts landscape in Albuquerque and New Mexico?

We know we’re rebuilding a scene from scratch. We’ve been doing this for at least two years to try to build that scene and to build that audience. We’re committed. We’re not a “one-and-done.” We’re not going to get scared. We're trying to really foster a sense of community. We’re really trying to build a bond between the musicians and the listeners. At our last concert, people likened the experience to a living room concert. It was that intimate of a feeling we created, even with 100 people in the room. We want people to take a chance on us; we think they’re going to be very pleasantly surprised. We’ve received just exceptional feedback from people who’ve attended our first two events, saying they had no idea that people in town were making or creating this type of music. I want more people to know about this music and this scene. It’s important.

Sandia Soundscapes presents Siphonophores + Morgan Barnard
Saturday, August 15, 20267:00 PM–9:00 PM
FUSION | The Cell
700 1st Street Northwest
Albuquerque, NM 87102

SCHEDULE
6:30  Doors open
7:00  Introductions
7:05  Conversation with Morgan Barnard
7:15  Morgan Barnard Performance
7:40  Intermission
8:00  Conversation with Siphonophores
8:15  Siphonophores Performance
9:00  Evening Concludes

Tickets Here.