Switchboard Turns It On

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After last year's hip, happening Switchboard Music Festival, one of the event's cocreators, Jonathan Russell, moved to Washington D.C and another, Ryan Brown, decamped to Princeton, New Jersey. But fear not, alternative music fans, the one-day marathon festival is back again for a third go-round this year on March 28 at the Dance Mission Theater, featuring another lineup of killer acts with a few surprises thrown in.

Cofounder and composer Brown says, “Switchboard reflects the interconnectedness of the world. No genre is the new genre.” To begin with, Matt Small’s acoustic sextet serves up primal rhythms with a classical mastery that smacks of the Ensemble Modern. Small composes all of the music, and has earned serious cred, performing at Tanglewood and the Monterey Jazz Festival. MiRthkon is a more hard-driving electric rock jam, their website adding the descriptors “quirky prog rock, avant-garde jazz, contemporary classical abstraction, thrash metal, and pop accessibility.” Aaron Novik’s Thorny Brocky is equally driving, with interesting shifting rhythmic patterns and an accordion sound that adds a touch of Romany music.

The Real Vocal String Quartet offers feel-good, American folk with elements of Brazilian jazz. Their new album was recently reviewed by SFCV. Meanwhile Teslim swings with Turkish, Greek ,and Sephardic music on traditional instruments. And if you like ambient music, there's Sabbaticus Rex serving up a meditative, otherworldly experience — gongs and shakuhachis put “sound over music” with gradually shifting structures that will slow your heart rate to a crawl, even post-latte. Then Billygoat presents a stop-motion animation film with their ambient brand of live accompaniment.

Of course, there are plenty of surprising sound experiments in the works. They range from composer Luciano Chessa's hip-hop, futurist soundscapes, to bass clarinet duo Sqwonk, featuring Russell, which powers through a range of music in the minimalist vein with astounding technical virtuosity. If you haven’t heard heavy metal played on the bass clarinet, you need to. S.F.-based, avant-garde cellist Zoe Keating, the one-woman orchestra who creates layers and textures by recording herself and “looping” various tracks together with her live playing, is another hot performer scheduled to perform at Switchboard.

As San Francisco's alternative music scene continues to expand, this is one more place to experience it in all its magical, internet-and-iPod-driven diversity. You can get a wristband and come and go as you please, and admission starts at just $10.