This Friday marks the start of D.C.’s Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music, which will run through September 29 at venues around the city. The festival traces its roots back to 1993, when the American Composer’s Forum (ACF) curated a traveling program that was hosted by ACF chapters across the country and offered to any venue interested in presenting music based on electronic technology. The D.C. chapter of ACF first hosted the festival in 2000, and while the national chapter stopped its program in 2004, D.C. has continued to mount the annual event. Last year’s festival featured just four nights worth of performances, but this year the event has grown to seventeen performances over three weeks that feature over seventy artists from around the globe.

“Experimental music is an easy classifier for music which can’t be pigeon holed into popular genres,” said Jeff Surak, Executive Director of the festival. Instead of using the term as a label for the music, he chooses to look at the music from the audience’s point of view. “Some of the sounds are seductive, and some are harsh, but in the end it’s all beautiful music and a celebration of audio extremes.”

Image from the Sonic Circuits website