Who's playing this year's Columbia Experimental Music Festival? Meet the initial lineup

An expansive realm, live music leaves room for more than one type of fan community.

There's the sort of fans drawn together by common knowledge — the Phishheads who tally exactly how many times the band has played a specific song, who recite the last date and city it was played like it's their own phone number. Or the Springsteen disciples whose bodies sense, down to a fraction of a second, when the instrumental section of "Thunder Road" will kick in.

A different sort of fanbase is drawn to the unknown or, at least, the lesser-known. Concertgoers might not recognize each other by type, but congregate around the hope that "special things can happen in unlikely places."

Matthew Crook uses that phrase to describe the Columbia Experimental Music Festival, an outgrowth of his creative enterprise Dismal Niche. A musician, curator and student of sound, he knows the power of that hope, of people converging not to celebrate a genre but to behold — in real time — the union of an artist's creative instincts and track record.

This year's festival, scheduled for Nov. 2-5, isn't beholden to a certain musical lane or definition. But it does have an anchor point. An initial wave of artists revolves around the legendary Sun Ra Arkestra, a band used to setting the table and tone.

"While we like to keep things very intentionally broad and open, we are definitely inviting a lot of artists whose work is reflective of the spirit" of that band, Crook said in an email interview. "Some of these acts are more obviously indebted to the legacy of the Arkestra than others and someone might look at the full lineup and see a lot of aesthetic or genre contradictions — but we’re comfortable with contradictions and we definitely see all these acts as more or less neighboring galaxies in the overall musical universe."

As Crook and Co. gaze out at music's galaxies, they enfold acts with open-handedness and a certain flexibility. This flexibility ultimately fosters another kind of community — no better than, but surely different from, the sort forged by specific expectation.

"We don’t want to draw hard and fast boundaries around what is and isn’t 'experimental,' but rather we like to think of the festival itself as something of a social experiment," Crook said.

Gathering various musical traditions and fractions of the population, Crook hopes to "facilitate conversations between communities of people that might not often find themselves in the same place at the same time."

After a festival concert ends, this new and broader coalition shares the height and depth of that singular moment in time.

"We want this to be something 'that you had to be there' for rather than an easily replicated product that will be the same on any given night," Crook said.

With that in mind, and with the fest's lineup rolling out progressively in recent weeks, here's a look at who's on approach with some sonic guidance from Crook.

Sun Ra Arkestra

Technically, the marquee name at this year's fest first convened about 70 years ago; spiritually, they might just have been riding the cosmos for eons. Founded by forever-in-the-space-age icon Sun Ra, this collective sprawls across jazz's present and future tenses to expand horizons.

"The Sun Ra Arkestra is all about freedom and liberation through deep understanding and imagination," Crook said. "At the same time, they also represent discipline and a serious commitment to maintaining that freedom — reminding us to enjoy life to the fullest but also to remember and to take very seriously the fact that freedom and joy for many often takes place within the context of a struggle against forces that seek to limit and control that freedom and joy."

James Brandon Lewis Trio

Lewis immediately mesmerizes listeners with his saxophone and songcraft. His "Eye of I" made the Tribune's list of best first-half albums of 2023; the record is a jazz galaxy unto itself, manifold and multi-faceted. Catching Lewis and his band in New York last summer, Crook felt the magnetic pull.

"He has an immaculate tone and his compositions have lovely, clear melodies to them while also being veryfree and adventurous," he said. "There’s a deep reverence and respect for the tradition and the lineage of players that have come before him while also a fierce independence and spirit of individuality that I think makes his music really special."

Sumac

Branching off the significant Canadian and Pacific Northwestern metal and hardcore family tree, Sumac joins superlative players willing to establish heaviness, then tear down and refashion what they've built, one brick at a time, over the course of a sprawling track. The band's work "is seemingly wild and free but then all stop on a dime at the same time in a way I’ve never really heard" in metal, Crook noted.

Crook appreciates how the band conveys its collectivism — not in spite of, but through, heavy tones.

"SUMAC communicates an urgent need to address large oppressive structures to expand our thinking about what supportive communities can look like," he added. "They are a metal band, and so the tone and themes are often dark and foreboding, but in that stark recognition of the more undeniably bleak aspects of our modern existence they are communicating the importance of solidarity and creative communities in the face of it all."

Kalia Vandever

On this spring's "We Fell in Turn," Vandever — whose work includes stints with Harry Styles and future Treeline Music Fest headliner Japanese Breakfast — paints from "a stark palate of solo trombone, voice, effects, and little more," according to her Bandcamp page.

Those colors come together in something that's like classical music, like jazz, like ambient without choosing sides, worthy of scoring a Paul Thomas Anderson film yet to be written.

"It is a pink cloud of beautiful, unhurried improvisations and melancholic melodies that I find myself listening to weekly," Crook said. "It’s a reminder to slow down, rest, be kind and gentle with yourself and others and let things come and let things go."

Claire Rousay

The Los Angeles-based Rousay expresses, with uncommon ardor, the appeal of the everyday. She takes "voicemails, haptics, environmental recordings, stopwatches, whispers and conversations" and more, then explodes "their significance," her website notes.

This all-encompassing interest manifests in recordings that bubble, swell, scratch, murmur and, again, stretch toward fulfillment in each moment.

"Claire is an artist that does whatever she wants," Crook said. "She’s not so precious about following the rules about what is and isn’t 'experimental' and I appreciate that."

Jairus Sharif

"Water and Tools," the 2022 record from Calgary composer and plays-just-about-everything artist Jairus Sharif produces a visceral response, one that can be expressed in three little words.

"This is it!" Crook recalls thinking upon hearing the record.

"His music vastly incorporates so much of what we bring to the festival — it’s heavy and cathartic but also gorgeous, gentle and restorative all at the same time," he said by way of elaboration.

Learn more about this year's festival, and watch the lineup expand at https://www.dismalniche.com/events/cemf-2023.

Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731. He's on Twitter @aarikdanielsen.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Meet the dynamic artists heading to Columbia Experimental Music Festival