Experimental music isn’t typically thought of as a Midwestern phenomenon, but New Music Circle (NMC), a St. Louis–based nonprofit group, has been proving that the genre has a home here since 1959. NMC’s annual concert season, during which several experimental musicians are brought to the city to perform, plays a crucial role in keeping the avant-garde alive in the Midwest. The organization will enter its 65th season this fall.
“We’re one of the few presenters in the Midwest for experimental music,” NMC secretary Alex Cunningham says. “If you’re a fan of experimental music and you’re in Missouri or the Midwest, we’re bringing in people who wouldn’t come through otherwise.”
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Cunningham attributes the group’s longevity to the reputation it’s built within the music world, and to its willingness to evolve. The group’s earliest programs were largely centered around academic composers, but since 2009, NMC has endeavored to look beyond academia and diversify their programming, while still remaining firmly on the cutting-edge.
It sounds like a daunting task, but the “experimental music” label encompasses more than one might expect, including free jazz freakouts, distorted walls of guitar feedback, and anything else that challenges the conventions of its respective genre—or the very notion of “music” itself.
One of the best examples from this year’s lineup is Damon Smith, an improvisational bassist who will perform with Weasel Walter, Roscoe Mitchell, and Sandy Ewen at Xavier Hall on October 14. Smith’s signature instrument is the double bass, a fitting visual parallel to his hulking frame. Still, his playing is impossibly nimble, synchronizing deft fingerwork and bowing while constantly swapping various objects to weave between the instrument’s strings.
Improvised music is often described as “conversational,” but Smith prefers to think of it as “construction.” For him, improvisation is a constant give-and-take, a process of negotiation in which the musicians must create something of their own within an established structure, while trying not to steamroll over each other’s contributions—much like electricians, plumbers, and carpenters on a construction site.
Smith relocated to St. Louis in 2019 after previously living in Boston. NMC first brought him here for a performance in 2004. His impression of the group, and of St. Louis’ experimental music scene, was positive then, and remains positive now. One of the NMC’s greatest strengths, he says, is their curatorial approach.
“[NMC] is able to bring people here and show us a wider breadth of this music beyond what’s happening locally, or the tours that happen to come through,” Smith says. “For all the concerts they do, someone on the board thinks it’s a very special thing that St. Louis needs to hear…and I think that’s really great.”
New York–based producer Nicky Mao will perform at Off Broadway on November 10 under the alias Hiro Kone. As with all the artists on this year’s lineup, Mao’s music is impossible to pigeonhole. She doesn’t make “songs” so much as constantly shifting, three-dimensional sonic sculptures—shimmering and ethereal at one moment, cold and nocturnal the next. She says groups like NMC are some of her favorite people to work with, not only for the impact they can have on artists, but on communities in general.
“We live in a country where there’s not a lot of funding for the arts,” she says. “For an organization, small or large, to host people who aren’t super well known and take a chance…those groups are so important, especially now.”
At her live shows, Mao strives to do more than deliver a good time—although that’s certainly in the cards too. Aside from that, she hopes to alter the audience’s perceptions, so they don’t leave the venue in quite the same state of mind with which they entered.
“The most I can hope for is that someone experiences something unexpected,” she says. “Something that gives us a perspective that there are other possibilities, even in our own personal lives.”
Just Announced
Mark your calendars for New Music Circle’s 65th season.
September 22: 75 Dollar Bill at Joe’s Cafe
October 14: Roscoe Mitchell / Damon Smith / Weasel Walter / Sandy Ewen at Xavier Hall
November 10: Hiro Kone (solo) / Nadir Smith (opening solo) at Off Broadway
December 9: Victoria Shen (solo) / Aaron Dilloway (solo) at Off Broadway
January 13: Lester St. Louis (solo) / Chris Willaims (solo) at The Luminary
February 16: Ka Baird (solo) / Brain Transplant (opening duo) at Schlafly Tap Room Upstairs
March 22: Elliott Sharp (solo) at 560 Music Center
April 6: William Parker / Gerald Cleaver / Ava Mendoza (trio) at Xavier Hall
May 9: Blank Thomas + Zlatko Cosic (sound/video collab) / STL String Collective + William Morris (sound video collab) / JoAnn McNeil + Jose Garza (sound video collab) at Downtown Central Library STL at 6:30 p.m.
For tickets, visit newmusiccircle.org. Doors at 7 p.m., show at 8 p.m. for each performance, excluding May 9.
