If you’re walking along Winslow Way Aug. 17, don’t be alarmed if you catch discordant harmonies and “mind-altering” beats. Actually, you may want to check them out — you might meet a neighbor.
“Cacophony,” a live music performance hosted by the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, will gather five local bands for a night of avant-garde music.
Lori Goldston, world-renowned cellist known for her work with Nirvana and others will headline the event, followed by experimental artists Casey Adams and Hannah Rice, Spawn, Style King of the Week and the hometown progressive jazz band Mission Drift.
This will be the first time the museum has hosted an event dedicated to experimental music, but it’s hardly the island’s first journey to the underground. “Cacophony” is rooted in BI’s three generations of experimental musicians, who also will each be participating in the show in some capacity: Kurt Bischoff of Mission Drift, son Korum Bischoff of Wurlipop, and grandson Calder Bischoff of Spawn.
All three Bischoffs have found a niche within the wide-open experimental genre — Mission Drift is a progressive jazz band, Wurlipop is a holiday- and remix-oriented group, and Spawn is a “pure noise” band.
It all began when Kurt Bischoff got hooked on experimental music in college at the University of California, Davis in the 1970s. The music department at Davis was “a hotbed of avant-garde music,” he said, inlcuding role models like American composer John Cage. One of the most influential composers of the 20th century, Cage is known for his piece “4’33,” in which musicians perform no deliberate sounds, often resulting in four minutes and 33 seconds of complete silence.
“For me, experimental music is music that uses non-traditional musical elements, like odd time signatures, dissonant harmonies and chord structures, unusual instrumentation and sound sources and unique approaches to composing and performing,” Bischoff said. “This early exposure to unusual and experimental sounds caused me to gain a strong affinity for progressive music and I’ve applied this interest to my compositions for Mission Drift.”
Later, Bischoff moved to BI and began raising sons Korum and Jherek. The family lived on a 37-foot sailboat in Eagle Harbor, Korum Bischoff recalled, and experimental music was the fabric of their lives.
“We had an intense bond, talking about music all day and all night,” he said. “When I play [experimental] music now, it’s weird, but it’s tapping into a closeness with my family.”
The local scene fostered the two young musicians’ ability to express themselves artistically, Korum Bischoff said. Jherek and Korum went on to careers in the arts—Jherek as a musician and Korum as art director at BIMA and member of Wurlipop. But it wasn’t smooth sailing. Taking on a career as an avant-garde musician is challenging, Korum said.
“Strong experimental music is about commitment. That’s why I do it less — I get a little more bashful,” he said. “It can be hard, because it’s atypical, and it’s weird. It’s easy to know when something’s good when it’s typical, but when you’re playing avant-garde music, you don’t have anything to compare it to except your own intuition.”
The legacy of intuition continues with Spawn, the band Calder Bischoff plays in. The name is an homage to the family’s history: before Calder’s band had a name, it opened for a reunion of Kurt’s band from the ‘70s, Opus Fluke, in which Korum stood in for a member who had died. A family friend joked that Calder and his bandmates were the “spawn” of Opus Fluke and the music scene on Bainbridge. The name stuck.
Wurlipop won’t be performing in Cacophony, but Korum Bischoff hopes that the range of artists will offer something for everyone. “It’s not just a noise show, or a progressive jazz show. It’s a lot of different bands — you may like some, you may not. Some might be playing something you’ve never heard before,” he said.
