BRATTLEBORO, Vt. – Electronic music returns to its ancestral home on Nov. 15, from 12 p.m. to midnight, when Brattleboro welcomes Circuits in the Woods.
This all-day electronic music festival features two lectures, two hands-on events, and more than 20 musicians playing a variety of genres of music in four downtown venues: Turn It Up!, at 85 Main Street; 118 Elliot, at 118 Elliot Street; Marigold, at 157 Main Street; and Tavernier Chocolates, at 128 Main Street.
Brattleboro Community Television (BCTV) will record most of the festival for later viewing on its website, www.brattleborotv.org.
Circuits in the Woods honors Vermont’s importance to electronic music by following the ley lines that begin at the old Estey Organ Company on Birge Street in Brattleboro, track north to the former workshop of New England Digital in White River Junction, bounce back down through Putney, and finally land back in Brattleboro.
Festival passes are being sold on a limited basis at www.novaarts.org. A pass guarantees admission to all events at all four venues.
Attendees may purchase a day pass at any of the venues by donation, cash only, on a sliding-scale basis. No-one will be turned away due to lack of funds. At-event admission is standing-room-only.
In the spirit of mutual aid, and to acknowledge the increase in our community’s hunger due to decisions made by people we elected to office, Circuits in the Woods is including a food drive at the event. All attendees are strongly encouraged to bring one or more nonperishable food items, which volunteers will collect at all four festival venues and donate to FoodWorks.
The festival’s founder is Wendy M. Levy, longtime radio disc jockey and occasional reporter for The Commons newspaper. Levy formerly graced the airwaves at two Windham County community radio stations, WVEW and WOOL. She currently hosts “Wreck Your Own Adventure,” a weekly program on WFMU’s “Give the Drummer Radio” stream
Levy is coproducing the event with Eric Gagne, of Nova Arts, Stage 33 Live SynthFest organizer Joseph Conrad, and music software developer Chris Randall.
Part of Levy’s inspiration for Circuits in the Woods are two articles she wrote for The Commons in 2015, which detailed Vermont’s importance to the origins of electronic music. In one of these articles, “Switched on Bode,” Levy tells the story of the invention of the analog synthesizer, which was completed in Brattleboro in the late-1950s by Harald Bode. Bode came to Brattleboro from Germany to work for the Estey Organ Company.
The second article, “The Synclavier: Born in Vermont,” takes place some 60 miles north, where the Synclavier was developed in 1977 from a collaboration between electronic music pioneer Jon Appleton and White River Junction-based New England Digital. As former New England Digital employee Matt Bucy said in the article, “Pretty much, for better or for worse, the sound of the 1980s came from White River Junction.”
By featuring electronic musicians from Vermont and northern New England – and by welcoming performers from further afield – Circuits in the Woods’ producers aim to remind audiences that Vermont is not frozen in time. The people in the Green Mountain State are not an anachronism, puttering along behind everyone else.
Circuits in the Woods is an acknowledgment that there are as many ways to make music as there are musicians. The common denominator of the entire festival: All of the musicians will use electronic instruments in some way, either as the primary source, or as a way to manipulate acoustic instruments, field recordings, audio samples, or their voices.
Many genres will be represented at Circuits in the Woods: ambient, darkwave, power pop, synth pop, yacht-rock-jazz-pop, funky psych, psych improv, noise rock, post-rock, a space opera, and good old bloops and bleeps.
Headlining the event are two acts who incorporate synthesizers and effects pedals into their funky, improvised, psychedelic music: Jeffrey Alexander + The Heavy Lidders, hailing from Philadelphia; and Guilford’s own Wet Tuna.
Other musicians performing at Circuits in the Woods include Burial Woods, Countermoon, Doc No, Glasspack, Chris Hinkle, MMMM, Scott Moore, Thomas Nöla, Rolf Parker-Houghton, Christian Puffer, Chris Randall, Trevor Robinson, Jay Sullivan, Verlectric (The Vermen’s synth-pop spin-off), and members of The Vermont Synthesizer Society. Please note, this lineup is subject to change.
Charles Dodge, early composer of electronic and computer music, founder of the Brooklyn College Center for Computer Music, longtime professor at Dartmouth College, and recently retired former co-owner of the Putney Mountain Winery, will present a lecture on his work and play selections from some of his compositions.
Brattleboro-based electronic musician Caldon Glover will present “The Queer Roots of Industrial,” a lecture with audio samples, that will cover the early days of the industrial scene in the 1970s and 1980s, and how it connects to contemporary experimental music scenes.
Badweatherfriend, a southeastern-Vermont duo comprised of Calvin Ray Moen and Wyatt Andrews, will perform portions of their space opera, a work-in-progress called “The Adventures of Space Guy.”
At the record shop Turn It Up!, Bellows Falls musician Trevor Robinson will guide the synth-curious at “The Synth Petting Zoo,” one of the hands-on components of Circuits in the Woods. Interested parties can try out different electronic instruments and create their own music.
And, bringing the entire festival full-circle is an audience-participation performance by Ron Schneiderman, who has released 14 albums to-date of tones he recorded on an Estey Field Organ. At Tavernier Chocolates, Schneiderman will be playing the field organ live, while the audience joins in with his previous recordings streamed from their smartphones.
This community event is being produced to bring people together in a positive way: by sharing music, seeing old friends, making new friends, supporting downtown Brattleboro businesses, and honoring Vermont’s contribution to modern music.
A limited number of festival passes are available at www.citw.online and www.novaarts.org. Passes guarantee entry to all events throughout the day. Attendees can purchase day passes at each venue on the day of the event only. Day passes are cash only, by donation, on a sliding scale, and are standing room-only. No one will be turned away due to lack of funds. For more information, visit www.citw.online or www.novaarts.org, or email circuits@fastmail.com.