American Mavericks Festival: Instrumentals

While Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony continue to proselytize for Charles Ives, John Cage and the rest of the 20th-century maverick crowd, their festival partner, the Kitchen, demonstrates the rebel spirit of a younger generation of composers. The first of this two-concert series, on Fri 23, features Daniel Walden performing Tristan Perich's Dual Synthesis for harpsichord and custom-built microchips, as well as the atmospheric multimedia piece Vivian & Ondine from tape-loop magician William Basinski. On Sat 24, cross-genre guitarist Mary Halvorson and her newly formed septet open the show, followed by Arthur Russell's 1975 Instrumentals. Composer Peter Gordon and an ensemble of some of the experimental scene's brightest performers freshen up Russell's avant-disco opus for the 21st century.