African American Composer Initiative

The musicians of the African American Composer Initiative will present the 16th Annual Concert of Music by African American Composers on January 30 and 31st at 3 pm at the Performing Arts Center of Eastside College Preparatory School, featuring art songs, spirituals, instrumental concert music, jazz, and more.

The African American Composer Initiative (AACI) is dedicated to presenting live concerts of music by African American composers, historical and living; preserving this music through commercial CDs and online video recordings; and commissioning and publishing new works. Comprised of classical and jazz musicians of the San Francisco Bay Area, AACI strives to increase awareness of this vast, rich repertoire, with the hope of sparking further explorations and performances among presenters and musicians.

AACI was founded by a group of Bay Area musicians interested in exploring the significant but little-known repertoire of music by African American composers. What began in 2009 with a concert that included music by William Grant Still, presented by five musicians, developed the following year into an ensemble of singers and instrumentalists dedicated to the performance of music by African American composers.

The music AACI presents spans a wide variety of genres, including spirituals, art songs, vocal/instrumental chamber music, and jazz ensemble, reflecting the breadth and depth of African American composers’ contributions to American musical heritage. Through concert narration and projected images, the sharing of information deepens the audience’s acquaintance with these important composers.

Committed to the musical life of East Palo Alto and surrounding communities, AACI presents concerts at the Performing Arts Center of Eastside College Preparatory School. Now in its sixteenth year, AACI has performed music by over forty-five African American composers, commissioned and/or premiered numerous new works, recorded four CDs for Cambria, and published commissioned works by four composers.

Anne Sajdera

Anne Sajdera will record nine new jazz works, scored for different configurations of a jazz quintet, 9-piece string ensemble, string quartet, and solo piano. The project will be recorded at SFCM’s recording facility and Opus Studios in 2027, with a corresponding album release concert in San Francisco.

As a pianist, composer, and bandleader, Anne Sajdera, is a creative force whose music exhilarates listeners with emotion. Known for her burnished lyricism, she relies on her roots in American and Brazilian jazz, and her classical training, to create a genre-blending sound that’s melodically verdant, harmonically sophisticated and rhythmically compelling.

Her first release, Azul (Bijuri Records, 2012), was co-produced by Ray Obiedo and featured a performance from percussion legend Airto Moreira, earning a spot on JAZZIZ Magazine’s Top Ten Critics Poll for 2012 and inclusion in Latin Jazz Corner’s Great Latin Jazz Albums for the same year. Her second release, New Year (Bijuri Records, 2018), features two composer/instrumentalists from Prague, a special guest appearance by saxophonist Bob Mintzer, and musicians from the San Francisco Bay Area. Also produced by Ray Obiedo, it was chosen by Down Beat Magazine for the December 2018 Editor’s Pick list and can be heard on jazz radio stations throughout the U.S.

Sajdera has performed at Bay Area venues including The California Jazz Conservatory, Herbst Theater, Piedmont Piano Company, and SFJAZZ. In 2020, she performed with Hindustani master violinist Kala Ramnath for the Global Fusion concert in Dubai. Her most recent album, It’s Here (Bijuri Records, 2024), which was released in September 2024, earned a semifinalist rank in the 2025 Unsigned Only Music Awards international music competition.

Ben Goldberg

The Second Annual Ben Goldberg Festival of Music will be held October 1–3, 2026, at Wyldflowr Arts in Oakland, and on October 4 at Bird & Beckett in San Francisco. The festival will spotlight two bands and a solo set each night, featuring Things That Move, Invisible Guy, Archimedes Lullaby, Trouble Trouble, Flower-Radish, and Ben Goldberg’s Brainchild.

Ben Goldberg is a clarinetist, improvisor, and composer who has lived and worked in the East Bay since 1985. Though his career has expanded internationally, the Bay Area is where he has developed and nurtured his work, beginning in 1990 when his group New Klezmer Trio “kicked open the door for radical experiments with Ashkenazi roots music” (SF Chronicle) and continuing through more than 50 albums of original compositions, appearances at Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, European festivals, SFJAZZ, and the Stone in New York.

The New York Times has written that Goldberg’s music “conveys a feeling of joyous research into the basics of polyphony and collective improvising.” In the Downbeat Critics Poll, he has twice been named Rising Star Clarinetist and is consistently rated highly in the clarinet category. Many of his albums have been released on his own record label, BAG Production, and since 2016 he has taught “Improvisation in the Jazz Tradition” in the Music Department at UC Berkeley.

Early in his career, Goldberg studied privately with clarinetist Rosario Mazzeo and improvisors Joe Henderson, Steve Lacy, and Joe Lovano. From these teachers, he learned the importance of conducting his own inquiry into the fundamentals of music. Drawing from his experience in classical music, jazz, klezmer music, and the blues, he has found his voice as a composer and improvisor.

Circadian String Quartet

Circadian String Quartet with guest singer, Melinda Martinez Becker, and others will premiere the five act Chamber Opera, Eurydice’s Defiance, composed by David Ryther with a libretto by Kimiko Guthrie in April of 2027 at Cal State East Bay Hayward, with a repeat performance in San Francisco in May.

Bay Area–based Circadian String Quartet was founded in 2013 to perform classical and contemporary repertoire of folkloric or cultural significance. One of the quartet’s hallmarks is music that bridges cultures, creating something new from the collision and fusion. Founded during more hopeful moments of the Arab Spring, CSQ also hoped to create a chamber group nimble enough to respond to current events.

Since its inception, CSQ has become known for bold original programming ideas that break boundaries or reach across cultures. The quartet frequently works with living composers and is proud to have given world and U.S. premieres of new chamber music by Sahba Aminikia, Ben Carson, Noam Lemish, Hamid Taghavi, Ian Venables, Davide Verotta, and David Ryther. In 2015, CSQ first performed Sahba Aminikia’s One Day Tehran live on KPFA’s “Music of the World” with Joanna Manqueros. In 2016, CSQ commissioned Iranian-born composer Aminikia to write a new piece for string quartet and narrator. The result, The Weight of the World, a glowing kaleidoscopic mixture of text by Allen Ginsburg and Hafez, premiered in 2017 at the Piedmont Arts Center and can be heard on Circadian Stories.

CSQ has also become known for original transcriptions and compositions. In 2017 and 2019, its transcriptions of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and The Firebird premiered to enthusiastic crowds and critical acclaim. In 2016, CSQ collaborated with narrator and historian Nikolaus Hohmann to tell stories from World War Two, creating short original pieces called Chiaroscuros, now a regular part of CSQ concerts. Circadian String Quartet can be heard playing commissioned works and original transcriptions on their recently released album, “Circadian Stories” which was recorded at Skywalker Ranch and is available on all streaming platforms including: Spotify, Apple Music, Band Camp and CD baby.

David Steinberg

Composer and producer David Steinberg will record Tunes From Our Backyard, a project created to reimagine songs from the WPA California Folk Music Project, a New Deal-era folk music survey conducted by Sidney Robertson Cowell. Funding will go towards the project’s first studio recording to be completed in 2026.

David Steinberg has long been fascinated with the musical history of the Bay Area. His research led him to the WPA California Folk Music Project archived in the Library of Congress. Here, he discovered the hundreds of recordings collected by ethnomusicologist Sidney Robertson Cowell from 1938 to 1940 in her quest to document the folk music practices of a diverse set of immigrant and migrant groups in the state.

Tunes From Our Backyard began in 2022 when Steinberg received a Shenson Foundation Faculty Grant through his work on the faculty at the San Francisco Community Music Center. The grant went towards presenting a concert that brought songs from the WPA California Music Project to life through new performances by contemporary artists.

Following the Shenson concert, Steinberg was inspired to continue his work on the project after seeing numerous connections between the music and people that Sidney Robertson Cowell encountered and Steinberg’s collaborators and audiences. The breadth of Robertson Cowell’s collection makes it easy to find a link to the subject matter through a song or a photograph or a reference to a place or time. His own personal connection was made in the many recordings of Armenian music collected in Fresno, CA, where Steinberg’s maternal ancestors first settled in the United States before moving to San Francisco.

Bululú

Bululú will produce and premiere DOMÉSTICO, an all-original Latin music album inspired by the everyday lives of Latinx communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Blending traditional Latin American genres with contemporary global production, it explores immigration, LGBTQ+ identity, women’s rights, spirituality, domestic life, and cultural empowerment.

Bululú is a Bay Area–based Latin band dedicated to creating original music rooted in Venezuelan, Colombian, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, and broader Caribbean cultures. A women-led, minority-led, and LGBTQ+-led ensemble, Bululú amplifies Latinx voices, stories, and rhythms while celebrating heritage, equality, and social justice.

Earhart Trio

The Earhart Trio will professionally record two commissioned works of contemporary art music: Spiral Arm for piano trio by Ben Dorfan, and two movements of Piano Trio No. 2 by Lera Auerbach, on July 5/6, 2026 at Berkeley Piano Club with recording engineer Samantha Bounkeua.

The Earhart Trio is committed to performing lesser known works as well as works from the traditional canon. The trio presents works that address environmental concerns and social/historical narratives that remind listeners of their connection to the earth. It is also committed to presenting at least one work by a female composer or a living composer on its programs. In their chamber music performances, they seartch for a spiritual togetherness right on stage through music.

Formed in fall 2023 after a lengthy discussion about creating a piano trio with the objective of addressing environmental changes on the planet, the Earhart Trio later widened its scope to social concerns. The trio began presenting concerts in spring and fall 2024 and most recently performed a February 2026 concert that included the world premiere of a commissioned work by Northern California composer Ben Dorfan.

The Earhart Trio is comprised of Kumiko Uyeda, pianist; Kate Stenberg, violinist; and Mary Artmann, cellist. Stenberg and Artmann had collaborated previously in piano trios, performing in many venues throughout the Bay Area. Uyeda and Artmann met at the Berkeley Piano Club as new members in 2023 and performed together in piano quartets. It was a natural step for all three members to create a piano trio together, especially after discovering that all had coached extensively with Burton Kaplan. To date, the Earhart Trio has performed over a dozen concerts in the two years since it began, mostly to full capacity audiences.

Earplay

In May 2027, Earplay will present Voicings, a program celebrating the human voice. Featuring multiple vocal works, the performance includes a new collaboration between composer Josiah Catalan and poet Brandon Gagante. Earplay’s 2027 season, entitled Carbon-Based, is a broad musical reflection upon the new age of artificial intelligence.

Earplay nurtures the finest new chamber music of our time, linking audiences, performers, and composers through concerts, commissions, and recordings. Launched in 1985 by composers and musicians impacted by the lack of opportunities for practitioners of new music, Earplay advances its mission by performing concerts that wholly encompass music written in the 20th and 21st centuries. In its 41-year history, the ensemble has performed over 625 works by more than 350 composers, including over 150 world premieres and more than 100 new works commissioned by the ensemble.

With the exception of 2020–2022, Earplay’s Home Season has produced 3–6 concerts annually in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1985. In 2025, the ensemble established its primary venue as Noe Valley Ministry, a space with a long history of chamber music and an excellent Steinway D piano.

In addition to the Home Season, regular engagements have included West Edge Opera’s Snapshot; participation in the Festival of New American Music (FeNAM); SF Music Day; faculty composer concerts at Stanford University’s CCRMA; and coaching activities at San Francisco State University. Since 2000, Earplay has conducted the Donald Aird Composers Competition, awarding 25 prizes since its inception. The ensemble launched the Vibrant Shores Composers Competition in 2022, focusing on works by composers of color. Earplay has recorded seven CDs since 1996.

Edward Schocker

Edward Schocker will compose Epiphanic, a multimedia community-driven work with members of Sacred and Profane Choir and Thingamajigs Performance Group. The project incorporates community storytelling; live projected images combined with electro-acoustic instruments and an ensemble of vocalists. Events will take place in Alameda, Contra Costa and San Francisco counties.

Edward Schocker is a composer and performer who creates music with made/found materials and alternate tuning systems. A graduate of Mills College, where he studied under avant-garde pioneers Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Curran, and Lou Harrison, Schocker’s projects often extend beyond the traditional concert hall. With the belief that anyone can make meaningful music with objects found in everyday life, he co-founded Thingamajigs, an Oakland arts nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting music created with unusual instruments and tunings.

Schocker develops pieces directly with local and underserved communities of all ages, with recent collaborations with Cury-J and RYSE Youth Centers, as well as Elder Ashram Assisted Living Community. He was artist in residence at the European Dance Development Center in Düsseldorf, Germany, where he took part in and conducted workshops on instrument building and composer-choreographer collaborations. He also composed music for a UNESCO-sponsored work with Echo Arts, a large bi-communal project in Cyprus aimed at building understanding between communities in conflict.

In recent years, Schocker’s works have been performed at Berkeley Art Museum, Stanford Lively Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Sacred and Profane Chamber Choir, Firebird Youth Chinese Orchestra, National Gugak Center in Seoul, and International House in Tokyo. As a performer, he has presented work at festivals around the world. He is an ensemble member of the Thingamajigs Performance Group and the Northern California Gagaku Group, and an associate member of Theatre of Yugen.

Simon Music Productions Inc.

Latin Heart - commissioned by Chamber Music America's New Jazz Works program - blends the rhythmic vitality and melodic richness of Latin American music with jazz. Recorded at Tin Roof Studio in Sonoma, CA, it features the Edward Simon Trio with bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Adam Cruz, the Del Sol String Quartet, and saxophonist Chris Potter.

Simon Music Productions Inc. is dedicated to the creation, performance, and dissemination of innovative music that bridges jazz and Latin American musical traditions. Through composition, collaborative projects, and interdisciplinary works, the organization seeks to expand the artistic language of contemporary jazz while honoring the cultural heritage and rhythmic diversity of Latin America.

Founded to support music projects by pianist and composer Edward Simon, the organization serves as a vehicle for developing new work while fostering collaboration among world-class artists across disciplines. Through Simon Music Productions Inc., Simon has produced recordings, performances, and multidisciplinary projects that reflect a commitment to artistic excellence and cultural dialogue. These projects bring together collaborators from the international jazz community as well as artists working in chamber music and other genres, expanding the scope and reach of the work.

The organization has played a central role in acclaimed recordings, including Femeninas: Songs of Latin American Women (2023) and Venezuela: Latin American Songbook Vol. 2 (2025). These recordings highlight Simon’s focus on reimagining Latin American repertoire through a contemporary jazz lens and have contributed to his reputation as a leading voice in modern jazz composition and performance.

Rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area and connected to a global network of musicians and audiences, Simon Music Productions Inc. advances its mission to create innovative, culturally resonant music while contributing to the artistic community.

Faye Carol

Faye Carol & Her Octet will record 'The Funky Latin Getdown,' an ambitious suite of music blending jazz, blues, funk, and Latin music, to be released on her Getdown Records. 

Faye Carol is an internationally renowned vocalist, educator, and recording artist whose professional career began in the early 1960s and spans jazz, blues, gospel, and R&B. Her artistic vision is to uplift Black musical traditions of jazz, blues, gospel, R&B, and hip-hop, uniting these traditions into a singular musical voice. Through acoustic, creative, improvisational, collaborative ensemble music, she brings diverse communities together through multigenerational and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Carol has toured the U.S., Canada, Italy, Germany, and France, and her work has been featured in the Oakland Museum of California exhibit Oakland, I Want You to Know and the documentary film Evolutionary Blues. She has been honored with proclamations of “Faye Carol Day” by the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, along with awards recognizing her artistry and public service.

A prolific recording artist, Carol has released over a dozen projects including Forever Dynamic (2026). She has shared stages and studios with legendary artists across genres and generations including Marvin Gaye, KRS-One, Taj Mahal, Albert King, Pharoah Sanders, Otis Redding, Sun Ra, Joan Baez, Twista, and Robert Randolph.

A prolific arranger and music conceptualist, Carol has developed large-scale commissioned works for string quartet, jazz ensembles, choral groups, and multidisciplinary projects with poets, dancers, and spoken word artists. A dedicated educator and arts activist, she founded School of The Getdown to uplift Black arts through performance and education, conducting vocal workshops and instrumental masterclasses, presenting festivals, and offering free youth arts programs. She has mentored some of the premiere talent to emerge from the Bay Area including Ledisi, Kehlani, Benny Green, and Marcus Shelby.

Legacy Symphonic Orchestra

Kev Choice will lead and present Legacy Symphonic, a 20–25 piece ensemble presenting diverse, contemporary repertoire rooted in the music of the Black diaspora, spanning Hip-Hop, Jazz, and classical traditions. The project centers Black and underserved communities, expanding diversity and representation within orchestral spaces.

Kev Choice is an Oakland-based pianist, composer, producer, arranger, and musical director whose work bridges Jazz, Hip-Hop, Classical, R&B, and Soul traditions to create innovative, inspirational, community-rooted music. Known for his dynamic artistry, high-level performance, and leadership, Choice has established himself as a vital voice in the Bay Area’s music landscape.

Choice has performed and collaborated with artists including Ms. Lauryn Hill, Goapele, E-40, Too Short, The Coup, LyricsBorn, Mistah F.A.B., Martin Luther McCoy, Marcus Shelby, and Vietnamese virtuoso Vân-Ánh Võ through her Blood Moon Orchestra. His work has been presented at SFJAZZ, Stern Grove Festival, Yoshi’s Oakland, Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, and San Jose Jazz NewWorks Festival.

A prolific recording artist, Choice has released projects including Oakland Riviera (2014), Love & Revolution (2015), 88 Steps to Eternity (2018), Social Distancing (2020), and All This Love (2024). He has also collaborated with DJ Fresh on their Lush & Luxurious Vibes series and contributed to Jill Scott’s Billboard #1 R&B single “Pressha” (2026).

A sought-after musical director, Choice has led numerous high-profile productions, including the Living Jazz Martin Luther King Jr. celebration for three consecutive years, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee’s inauguration, and multiple community and fundraising events. In 2025, he served as co-Musical Director for E-40’s NPR Tiny Desk performance and Musical Director for the first-ever off-site Tiny Desk pop-up in San Francisco during Super Bowl week. Choice is also an Assistant Professor of Music at San Francisco State University and a Recording Academy chapter board president.

Mat Muntz

Mat Muntz will create Phantom Islands II: The Bag of Winds, a composition combining traditional Croatian and Bulgarian bagpipes with contemporary improvisation and chamber music, channeling Mediterranean maritime mythology, Jack Vance's post-apocalyptic surrealism, demonological readings of Herman Melville, and Ornette Coleman's Skies of America.

Mat Muntz’s music explores volatility, unexpected combinations, and an egalitarian approach inspired by free jazz. Trained as a jazz double bassist, his musical world has expanded to Croatian and Bulgarian bagpipes, traditional instruments of Korea, microtonal tunings, live electronics, collective improvisation, and notated composition.

Melody of China

Melody of China will present its “Legacy Concert (1993-2027)” featuring Melody of China artists, and guests, to celebrate the ensemble’s accomplishments, its many cross-cultural collaborations over the years, as well as the Bay Area arts community that has supported new and traditional Chinese music for 34 years.

Melody of China (MOC) promotes the beauty and versatility of Chinese music and instruments through concerts, performances, and workshops, while providing a platform for cross-cultural collaboration and community arts engagement. Since 1993, MOC has performed new and traditional music on traditional Chinese instruments including yangqin (hammered dulcimer), guzheng (table harp), erhu (2-string bowed fiddle), pipa (lute), sheng (mouth organ), and dizi (bamboo flutes).

In addition to traditional Chinese repertoire, MOC performs newly commissioned works by contemporary composers. MOC commissioned composers include Gene Coleman, Kui Dong, Gang Situ, Francis Wong, Yuanlin Chen, Carl Stone, and many others. MOC frequently collaborates with other artists and organizations; collaborative partners have included SF Symphony, Del Sol Quartet, Earplay, Lines Ballet, Zeak Nealy, Swapan Chaudhuri, and many others.

Melody of China also conducts education programs, including SF Symphony’s AIM, CAC’s artist in schools, and others. The organization offers classes and workshops on Chinese instruments including guzheng (zither), yangqin (hammered dulcimer), erhu (2-string bowed fiddle), ruan (moon guitar), sheng (mouth organ), dizi (bamboo flute), paigu (drums), and others. Melody of China’s home season concerts always include both traditional repertoire and the presentation of a new work for mixed ensemble, with Melody of China artists performing alongside guest artists from a variety of backgrounds.

Motoko Honda's Simple Excesses Quartet

The Simple Excesses Quartet, led by composer-pianist Motoko Honda with Cory Wright, Jordan Glenn, and Matt Small, will create a modern chamber jazz album through rehearsals, studio recording, and production (Oakland, Aug 2026–Sept 2027), culminating in a public album release performance in Fall 2027 (Oakland).

Motoko Honda is a pianist and composer who believes music is like life itself—unpredictable, often surprising, and at its best when breathing freely and carving its own path. Creating and experiencing music can reveal our true nature and connect us across cultures, languages, and experiences.

Her artistic voice began in childhood, when she constantly invented songs about everything she felt. These playful explorations carried over to the piano, where she began improvising deeply personal and emotional music. Reclaiming that voice became a transformative journey that brought her from Japan to the United States, where she slowly reconnected with the freedom that first drew her to music.

Through improvisation, sound exploration, and spontaneous composition, Honda creates musical environments where audiences can enter a space of curiosity, freedom, and shared discovery. Over the past three years, she has significantly expanded her international performance activity while continuing local performances and collaborations throughout the Bay Area.

Honda has performed across Europe and presented more than 50 concerts throughout Japan. Locally, her recent appearances include the Outsound New Music Summit, Old First Concert Series, SF Music Day, Flower Piano Festival, Montalvo Arts Center, Center for New Music, SFJAZZ, and West Oakland Sound Series. Her recent artistic focus centers on Simple Excesses Quartet and her solo piano program Emergent Piano. Simple Excesses Quartet highlights innovative musicians and improvisers from the Bay Area, with activities expected to expand through national and international festival appearances and touring opportunities.

Nippon Kobo

Nippon Kobo Vol. 3: Tradition × Evolution will present a world premiere by Ken Ueno for a Japanese traditional instrument and two open instruments TBA in San Francisco in April 2027. The project brings together a leading Japanese instrumentalist from Japan and Bay Area musicians to explore new possibilities for traditional instruments in contemporary chamber music.

Nippon Kobo (“Japanese Workshop”) presents curated music concert series paired with contemporary Japanese art and culture in the SF Bay Area, creating a vibrant community where people meet, learn, and experience cross-cultural dialogue. The organization fosters an innovative community of artists, creators, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts who co-create immersive cultural experiences that connect people and contribute to a healthier, stronger, and more multicultural society.

As a multidisciplinary creative community, Nippon Kobo has become a destination for musicians to present chamber music in a nontraditional setting. By providing opportunities to collaborate with diverse creative professionals, it expands the possibilities of classical music and strengthens engagement with existing and new audiences.

Nippon Kobo was founded in 2019 by Creative Director Haruka Fujii, an Albany-based percussionist, member of the Grammy Award-winning Silkroad Ensemble, and associate artistic director of Silkroad. Inspired by Fujii’s decade-long experience performing with artists from over 30 countries, as well as Jikken Kōbō, a pioneering 1950s Japanese artist collective, Nippon Kobo was envisioned as a space for cross-cultural dialogue and artistic experimentation through contemporary Japanese art and music.

Since the inauguration of the event series in 2024, Nippon Kobo has presented eight enthusiastically attended events in the Bay Area, reaching more than 996 attendees, premiering seven new musical works, and engaging 69 artists and collaborators from diverse cultural backgrounds. Through partnerships with Tonko House, Japan Society of Northern California, and UC Berkeley’s Center for Japanese Studies, Nippon Kobo is establishing itself as a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration and contemporary Japanese music in the Bay Area.

Outsound Presents

Outsound Presents will host Gino Robair’s Radical Divination, a special performance in structured graphic improvisation for two papermakers and a quintet led by Gino Robair, headlining the special matinee program of the 23rd Outsound New Music Summit on July 31, 2026.

Outsound Presents encourages original, new, and experimental music in all forms, including composition, improvisation, sound art, and the invention and use of new musical instruments. Genres include but are not limited to jazz, avant-garde, found sound, noise, art rock, musique concrète, minimalism, and the unnameable. The organization supports the presentation of new, creative, and experimental music and sound while championing local and touring musicians as an alternative to traditional and market-driven music.

Since 2001, Outsound Presents has supported new and exploratory music in all genres and styles, with a focus on local Bay Area artists. Its events have also included film, dance, educational, and intermedia works. Outsound Presents became a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in 2009, and its Board of Directors is drawn from the Bay Area music community.

Outsound runs on the tireless volunteer efforts of its board members, who are involved in all aspects of administration, fundraising, programming, and curatorial presentation of concerts and projects. Until December 2024, Outsound’s core programs were two year-round concert series in San Francisco and an annual festival, totaling 40 live events per year. Outsound continues to present the monthly SIMM Series at the Musician’s Union Hall in San Francisco, co-present the Jazz On Tuesday Series at Little Hill Lounge in El Cerrito, and present the annual Outsound New Music Summit, the organization’s premier event.

Patrick Galvin + Jennifer Hou

Patrick Galvin and Jennifer Hou will present 5–6 performances of Dear Camilla, a violin and piano program interwoven with an original epistolary narrative honoring Galvin’s former teacher and legendary violinist Camilla Wicks. Performances take place across the Bay Area in January and February 2027.

“Patrick Galvin is a San Francisco–based violinist whose performances integrate virtuosic playing with history and personal narrative. By approaching classical music through a fresh lens, he creates spaces in which diverse audience members can relate to music on a more personal level. Rooted in the Bay Area’s musical community, Galvin grew up in San Francisco and has spent his life connected to multiple generations of musicians, teachers, music advocates, funders, and concert-goers.

Galvin loves performing small ensemble music from baroque to contemporary and has commissioned several new chamber works from living composers. His recent duo program and live show, Dear Camilla, with pianist Jennifer Hou, features an original epistolary narrative exploring loss and legacy and following his relationship with his former teacher, the legendary violinist Camilla Wicks, whose violin he now plays. Co-written with Hou and edited by NPR journalist Ninna Gaensler-Debs, the program includes Every Wheel Turns, a three-movement work by composer Jolin Jiang reflecting on learning, mentorship, trust, and loss.

Galvin released his second album, Dear Camilla, on the Navona label in August 2025 after a Bay Area fundraising campaign supporting the recording at Skywalker Sound. In January 2026, he toured Dear Camilla, in Australia with Hou, premiering Jiang’s commissioned work in Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra. His first album, Violin Alone, was accepted into the San Francisco Public Library’s Bay Beats program, where Dear Camilla, was also accepted. Galvin teaches part-time at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he earned his master’s degree in 2022.”

San Francisco Electronic Music Festival

The San Francisco Electronic Music Festival will celebrate its 25th anniversary with the presentation of two special one-night programs at San Francisco Public Library on August 11 and at Gray Area’s Grand Theater August 22, and its customary 3-night festival at The Lab September 24-26, 2026.

The San Francisco Electronic Music Festival is an artist-run organization founded in 1999 by a committee of eight Bay Area electro-acoustic music and sound art practitioners. Its mission is to provide a highly visible public forum for the diverse community of composers and sound artists working with electronic-based technologies in the Bay Area and beyond.

Designed as an annual multi-day event consisting of concerts, installations and discussions, the primary focus is on independent artists whose innovative aesthetics challenge academic and commercial standards. The Committee’s goals are long-term: to establish the festival as an annual presence in the Bay Area; to foster a greater sense of community among the diverse group of Bay Area sound artists; to stimulate the creation of new electronic sound works; to increase public awareness of new sound-based technologies and their creative applications; to raise the level of discourse surrounding music and sound-art; and to raise the national and international profile of the Bay Area as a center for electronic music and sound art.

Since the first festival in 2000, SFEMF has presented works that span the sonic spectra from ambient to rhythmic and atonal to melodic by participants ranging from new and emerging young artists to respected pioneers of the electronic music field. Each festival features artists working in a variety of modes including laptop generated sound, processed live acoustic instruments, amplified found objects, projected video, improvisation, and performance art.

Sarah Wilson Projects

Composer/trumpeter Sarah Wilson will write 5-6 compositions for her new jazz ensemble, Fuse Quintet, featuring herself (trumpet), Kasey Knudsen (alto sax), John Schott (guitar), Tony Scherr (bass) and Kenny Wollesen (drums). The Back Room in Berkeley will premiere the new music followed by a recording in late fall 2026.

Sarah Wilson Projects is devoted to the creation, production, promotion, performance, and recording of musical composition projects by Bay Area composer, trumpeter, and singer Sarah Wilson. Her original work crosses a diverse artistic terrain including jazz, theater, dance, and film. Wilson’s music is primarily instrumental, with composed sections and improvisation, and fits loosely into a jazz paradigm while also engaging interdisciplinary artistic contexts.

Wilson has emerged as “one of the most intriguing and promising composers and trumpeters on the contemporary music scene” (San Francisco Chronicle). While deeply shaped by jazz, her music stylistically owes as much to avant pop, Afro-Latin grooves, and indie rock as the post-bop continuum. She leads her own projects, performs as a trumpeter, and, influenced by the popular singer-songwriter tradition, also composes songs and sings alongside her instrumental music for certain projects.

Wilson has earned wide critical acclaim for recordings on her label Brass Tonic Records, including Incandescence (2025), Kaleidoscope (2021) and Trapeze Project (2010), joined by improvisers including Myra Melford, Matt Wilson, Charles Burnham, Jerome Harris, John Schott, Kasey Knudsen, Ben Goldberg, and Scott Amendola.

Her music is fueled by large-scale community-based arts projects, including Tenderloin Voices, created in collaboration with the Tenderloin Museum and Larkin Street Youth Services. Wilson has received commissions from the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, SF Arts Commission, Fleishhacker Foundation, Zellerbach Foundation, New Music USA, and InterMusic SF, as well as residencies in Austria, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Z Space, and Stags’ Leap Winery in CA.

Som Dela

Som Dela (Irene Sazer, violin; Jane Lenoir, flute; Rebecca Hass, piano; Michaelle Goerlitz, percussion) will complete and release their debut professional studio recording, featuring Brazilian music written by women (historical and living composers) and members of the band, to be presented at a concert in fall 2027.

Som Dela is dedicated to performing multi-genre music by women composers from Brazil, including their original compositions as well as the music of Léa Freire, Luisa Mitre, Carol Panesi, Chiquinha Gonzaga, Anat Cohen, Daniella Spielmann, Lucianna Rabello, and more. The ensemble makes space for women’s voices to be heard, as composers and musicians, and creates opportunities for more new music by living composers to be written and played.

Som Dela is part of a movement to retrieve, uncover, support, and celebrate the historic compositions of women through research, musical arrangements, and active live performances. Its primary focus is bringing women’s voices to the fore, while also seeking new music to commission and perform and collaborating with other artists, both composers and performers.

The ensemble emerged from the friendships of four accomplished women in the Bay Area music scene: Irene Sazer, violinist/composer, founder of Real Vocal String Quartet and an original member of the Turtle Island Quartet; Jane Lenoir, flutist, director of Berkeley Choro and Festival; Rebecca Hass, pianist/composer and founder of Women Composers’ Collective; and Michaelle Goerlitz, percussionist and longtime member of multiple ensembles.

Their passion is fueled by these common experiences and a strong desire to create their own ensemble, with Brazilian music as a common goal while also exploring other styles within the quartet format of flute, violin, piano, and percussion. They are very conscious of past discrimination against women in these musical worlds.

Strobe

Strobe will commission composer Jean Ahn to create a new ragtime-inspired work based on San Francisco landmarks. The piece will be premiered alongside Golden Gate Rag and Bay Bridge Rag as part of a curated program presented across Bay Area venues in the 2026–27 season.

Strobe is a San Francisco Bay Area–based oboe quartet dedicated to expanding and elevating the repertoire for this rare instrumentation—oboe, violin, viola, and cello—while deepening audience engagement with both historical and contemporary works. The ensemble performs music spanning from the 17th century to today, pairing cornerstone works by Mozart and Britten with newly commissioned compositions that treat all four instruments as equal voices.

Formed in 2016 around a single performance of the Mozart and Britten oboe quartets, Strobe identified a significant gap in the repertoire: few works fully integrate the oboe and strings as equal partners. In response, the ensemble made a sustained commitment to building new repertoire. Its first commission, Vincent Russo’s Visions and Visitations (2018), was supported by the Zellerbach Family Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Since then, Strobe has premiered additional works by Alexis Alrich, Neal Desby, Kay Rhie, and Russo, bringing the total to six original compositions.

A central part of Strobe’s mission is to make the creative process visible and accessible. Composers regularly participate in performances, offering audiences insight into their artistic influences and compositional approaches. Strobe also brings renewed attention to overlooked works through Bay Area premieres of underperformed 19th- and 20th-century compositions. Through commissioning, performance, and recording, Strobe has established itself as a consistent contributor to the development of the oboe quartet repertoire.

Sumi Lee & Ramiro Boero

Sumi Lee will create Seoul to Buenos Aires, a new, contemporary tango recording that blends Korean musical influences with Argentine tango. Composed in fall 2026, the project will be recorded in the San Francisco Bay Area in early spring 2027 & premiered in live performances at Bay Area venues and festivals in late spring 2027.

Sumi Lee is a San Francisco–based pianist, presenter, organizer, and educator dedicated to advancing Argentine tango as a vibrant contemporary art formthrough performance, recording, collaboration, and education in the Bay Area. She is committed to creating meaningful cultural experiences that connect diverse communities to the expressive depth of tango, honoring its roots while embracing its many global voices.

Classically trained from an early age, Lee earned a Master’s degree in Piano Performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and later specialized as a tango pianist at the prestigious Orquesta Escuela de Tango Emilio Balcarce in Buenos Aires. During her time in Argentina, she performed with the Balcarce Orchestra and studied under tango maestros including Víctor Lavallén, José Colángelo, and Daniel Binelli, Pablo Estigarribia, all Latin Grammy–recognized artists.

Since returning to the Bay Area, Lee has become an active force in the regional tango community through performance, collaboration, and education. She has performed across Argentina, the United States, Canada, and South Korea, and has appeared at the San Francisco International Arts Festival with the female tango ensemble Las Almas.

Committed to expanding opportunity for artists, Lee founded Golden Gate International Artists to support local and visiting musicians in producing tango concerts and cultural programs throughout the Bay Area. She also founded the SF Tango Academy, offering intensive workshops and SF Tango Orchestra, offering public concerts that unite students, emerging artists, and master musicians in a shared learning environment.

The Sampaguitas

The Sampaguitas will release a new album entitled Heels Upon the Ground, encompassing folk music from the Philippines and original music inspired by the Fil-Am diaspora. The Sampaguitas explore the genre of Filipina folk through three-part vocal harmonies and the collective sharing of our “third culture” stories.

Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, The Sampaguitas sing Filipino folk songs and inspired originals in three-part harmony. Drawing influences from folk, blues, doo-wop girl groups, and the Filipinx-American diaspora, The Sampaguitas (Jenevieve Francisco, Aireene Espiritu, and Cristina Ibarra) share music from their roots and explore what it means to be in a “third culture” between worlds.

The Sampaguitas met in San Francisco and immediately connected over their shared Filipinx ancestry and love of music. Their collaboration evolved organically, each bringing musical strengths into the fold. Using Filipino folk songs as a way to explore their cultural roots, they soon found that singing together unlocked a deep connection, not only to each other, but to audiences as well.

Over the past three years, The Sampaguitas have focused on learning traditional Filipino folk songs and classics. In the past year, they began experimenting with original songwriting and collaborating on lyrics and melodies that tell the story of their “third culture” experiences—carving out new and mixed identities that exist between worlds. Together, they have explored the stories of their families, friends, and communities to reflect their shared experience and the creative richness within the Filipino American diaspora.

In 2025, they were awarded a recording residency with Women’s Audio Mission, allowing them to record, mix, and master a full-length album of new music that reflects the evolution of their sound and incorporates influences from blues, folk, Motown, hiphop, and R&B.

Thea Farhadian

Violinist and composer Thea Farhadian will present Obsidian Lines in December 2027, a meditative, microtonal electroacoustic work of striking harmonic depth that integrates elements of Western classical, Arabic classical, and Armenian folk traditions.

Thea Farhadian is an improviser and composer whose solo pieces for violin and electronics combine classical music, extended techniques, and digital processing. Her compositions and improvisations explore textured, tonal, and microtonal sounds. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she was active as a professional classical violinist for over a decade. Since her studies at Mills College (2005–2007), the improviser-composer model that formed the philosophical backbone of the program has continued to shape her work.

Her influences range across contemporary Western classical music, Arabic classical music, and Armenian folk music. Central to her practice is granular synthesis, a compositional tool that breaks sound into particles. This microscopic approach reinforces her conviction that sound itself takes precedence over any fixed system or notation; the musical world extends far beyond the tempered scale. Digital processing becomes her tool for navigating free tonality and the most nuanced registers of microtonality, ultimately in pursuit of what she calls gesture: a kind of sculpture with sound.

Her musical and cultural influences are deeply intertwined, and listeners and journalists have responded warmly to the complexity of her tonal work. Her music has been presented at venues including the Center for New Music in San Francisco, the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford, Downtown Music Gallery in New York, the Wrinkled Ear Series in Los Angeles, and Galerie Mario Mazzoli in Berlin, with plans to continue bringing her work to audiences across the globe. In addition to several collaborative albums, she released her first solo album, “Tectonic Shifts,” in 2016, and her second solo album, “Tattoos and Other Markings,” in 2025 (Other Minds Records).

Vitamin Em

Vitamin Em will celebrate their 10th-year anniversary by presenting a special recorded concert event this Fall at Berkeley's beautiful Hillside Club, the site of their very first concert 10 years ago. The concert will include new works across many genres celebrating this milestone in a joyful atmosphere open to all ages.

Vitamin Em is all about high-quality fun, engagement, and connection. The ensemble brings mostly original music and a few truly unique arrangements—never transcriptions—to concerts in styles ranging from jazz, Soul, and Funk to Latin, pop, fiddle, and music with Western Classical roots. Most of their music is influenced by, and contains elements from, more than one musical style. The parts are written out except for improv sections, and improvisation is a highlighted feature of their music.

Vitamin Em began 10 years ago, when Emily Onderdonk assembled a exceptional group of (mostly) local musicians to record a selection of her arrangements and originals, each piece in a different musical style. She wrote for string quartet, then added bassoon, accordion and percussion for additional flavors and timbres. The musicians enjoyed working together so much that they became Vitamin Em right there at the recording studio.

Vitamin Em has chosen to be a musical collective, allowing a broad artistic palette and adding members and instruments since 2016. In addition to Onderdonk’s compositions, members Paul Hanson, Evan Price, and Unpil Baek continue to contribute original pieces to the repertoire, from jazz fusion to Brazilian jazz.

Vitamin Em has been presented by Mason Bates and Mercury Soul, Berkeley Chamber Performances, InterMusic SF, Crowden Music Center, Berkeley Symphony and Friends, Calliope East Bay Music and Arts and Throckmorton Theatre. As part of their efforts to build connection with a variety of local communities, they have performed in community-building events at and for Berkeley’s Dorothy Day House homeless shelter and the Stepping Into Wellness integrative health center in Oakland.

ZHENIIA

ZHENIIA, a Persian jazz fusion ensemble led by San Francisco composer and bassist Leela Paymai, will record Darya, a new album in which each composition is built around a different Persian dastgah, drawing on the Iranian diaspora experience of separation, memory, and resilience. Recording takes place in Oakland, fall 2026.

Leela Paymai is an Iranian-American bassist, trombonist, composer, arranger, and bandleader based in San Francisco. She grew up with Persian music as the soundtrack of her childhood. Growing up, she heard many stories about her grandparents and parents surviving the Iranian revolution and still finding time to make music. That spirit of resilience and beauty in difficult circumstances is something she carries into every project she makes, building cultural bridges through music and community.

Paymai leads two original ensembles: ZHENIIA, a Persian jazz fusion project, and Miss Hits, an indie, jazz, and neo-soul octet. Her roots in the Bay Area music community began at San Jose State University, where she studied jazz and arrangement and first became part of the San Jose jazz scene. She also works as a freelance bassist and trombonist across the Bay Area’s jazz, salsa, and big band scenes, with performances at SFJAZZ, the Great American Music Hall, the Fillmore Jazz Festival, and San Jose Jazz Summer Fest.

As a composer, Paymai is drawn to the conversation between Persian classical music and jazz, fusing Iranian heritage with contemporary jazz. Her work is also shaped by the tradition of Iranian poets and musicians who understood that music and poetry can carry social and political truths.