Kevin Kissinger -- Y2K7 International Live Looping Festival -- Santa Cruz, CA

The 6th annual Live Looping Festival will be held in Santa Cruz, CA. from Friday, Oct 19 thru Sunday, Oct 21. There will also be some pre-festival events prior to the 19th.

Kevin will play a set of his own looped compositions for solo theremin at 4pm, Saturday, Oct. 20th.

The performers are selected by audition and this event attracts people from all over the world. Over sixty performers are featured over the main festival, which lasts two days.

Looping musicians use hardware and software loopers, effects, and everything from traditional instruments to homemade, circuit bent, and found sounds.

Kevin's set will be all real-time theremin music with no pre-recorded tracks. It will include "Three Legged Race" http://kevinkissinger.com/threeleggedrace.shtml and a longer looping composition written specifically for the Live Looping festival.

For information about the festival and the performers, please visit the festival's website:

http://www.y2kloopfest.com/index.html

If you are in the Santa Cruz area, don't miss out on the fun!

Best of luck, Kevin!

Congratulations Kevin, this festival is a great venue for your latest works which expand beyond the typical for both loop-ed music and theremin repertoire. You will be a unique addition to their program both with the EWPro and your live computer driven loop performances, and hopefully do some Theremin outreach and continue to build your audience outside of us aether-heads.

Can't wait to hear how it goes and hopefully some recordings from the event.

Wishing you and your theremin safe and happy travels!

Thanks, guys! I'll let you know how it turns out.

[i]-- Kevin[/i]

The Y2K7 Live Looping festival was a huge success. The event was open to the public (the general public paid a small amount) and generated standing room only crowds for most of the festival.

My theremin set was no exception -- we had a standing-room only crowd of loopfest participants and the general public. My works were very well recieved and am confident that more performance opportunities will occur as a result.

The festival was a true international festival with performers from Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Germany, Singapore, and the USA. Every performer was treated with utmost respect by the organizers, the soundboard operator, and everyone else. This festival was not a competition -- rather it was a celebration of live looping.

And a feast it was. We heard ambient, rock, pop, jazz, neo-classical, experimental, and world music. Instruments were electronic and acoustic blown, plucked, struck, bowed, ebowed, and hand-pumped. There was singing and beat-boxing. Musicians ranged from full-time producers, composers, music journalists, session and touring musicians, and others who perform music on evenings and weekends. Each set was unique and the festival never got tiring.

The looping devices included laptops, Rack mount, and foot controlled devices. There was a notable balance of looping tools -- that is, no one tool tended to dominate.

On Saturday, the mayor of Santa Cruz attended the festival and gave keys to the city to the international performers and, in an emotional surprise, presented the festival's founder and main organizer, Rick Walker, with his own key to the city. She presented a proclamation from the city council declaring the week to be "International Live Looping Week" in Santa Cruz.

I left the festival with many new friends, many ideas for new looped compositions, enhanced knowledge about looping techniques and tools, and much encouragement to keep creating.

The sense of community was outstanding and I already look forward to next year.

[i]-- Kevin[/i]