Inaugural Circuits in the Woods Festival Explores Electronic Music's Local Origins

On Saturday, Nov. 15, from 1 p.m. until 12 a.m. Electronic music returns to its roots in Vermont with the inaugural Circuits in the Woods Festival. This all-day electronic music festival features two lectures, two hands-on events and 20-plus musicians playing a variety of music genres in five downtown Brattleboro locations: Turn It Up! at 85 Main St., 118 Elliot at 118 Elliot St., Marigold at 157 Main St., Tavernier Chocolates at 128 Main St. and The Wonky Press, 229 Main St., according to publicity materials. Festival founder Wendy Levy of Bellows Falls moved here in the early 1990s to attend Marlboro College. Levy is a radio disc jockey and reporter for The Commons newspaper. She graced the airwaves at community radio stations WVEW and WOOL and currently hosts "Wreck Your Own Adventure," a weekly program on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio stream. "The idea about Vermont being important to electronic music, started when I wrote two articles for The Commons in 2015, which detailed Vermont's importance to the origins of electronic music. But the idea for the festival itself started in January when in the course of two nights I was at two different music shows that featured electronic music made by people in Vermont, New Hampshire and New England," says Levy in a recent phone call with The Keene Sentinel. "And then I started thinking about Charles Dodge, who's an electronic music pioneer who lives in Putney. And I thought, wouldn't it be cool to have an event where we have some sort of way of connecting this long line of electronic instruments being invented here, people who were important to electronic music settling here, and then people continuing to make this kind of music here today," Levy adds. She is co-producing the festival with Eric Gagne of Nova Arts, Stage 33 Live SynthFest organizer Joseph Conrad and music software developer Chris Randall. "Wendy (Levy) has been a great friend to Nova Arts both as an ambassador and audience member. We are happy to add collaborator to this list. Wendy has a fantastic aesthetic sense, and we are excited about the lineup that has been curated for the inaugural Circuits in the Woods," says co-producer Eric Gagne of Nova Arts. According to publicity materials, Circuits in the Woods honors Vermont's importance to electronic music by following the ley lines that begin at the Estey Organ Company on Birge Street in Brattleboro, track north to the former workshop of New England Digital in White River Junction, bounce down through Putney and finally land back in Brattleboro. In "Switched on Bode," [The Commons, Feb. 11, 2015], Levy tells the story of the invention of the analog synthesizer, which was completed in Brattleboro in the late-1950s by Harald Bode. Bode came to Brattleboro from Germany to work for the Estey Organ Company. "An analog synthesizer is a device that allows a person to manipulate sound and sound waves to change the tone, the pitch, the frequency, to make different sounds. It's dials and a fader, It's levers. Basically, it's a device that plays with electronics to create different kinds of sounds," explains Levy. The second article, "The Synclavier: Born in Vermont," [The Commons, Feb. 11, 2015], takes place 60 miles north, where the Synclavier was developed in 1977 from a collaboration between electronic music pioneer Jon Appleton and White River Junction-based New England Digital. As former New England Digital employee Matt Bucy, said in the article, "Pretty much, for better or for worse, the sound of the 1980s came from White River Junction." All of the musicians in Circuits in the Woods will use electronic instruments, either as the primary source, or as a way to manipulate acoustic instruments, field recordings, audio samples or their voices. Many different music genres will be represented including: ambient, darkwave, power pop, synth pop, yacht-rock-jazz-pop, funky psych, psych improv, noise rock, post-rock, a space opera and good old bloops and bleeps. "Ultimately what I'm really excited about is reminding people that there are as many different ways to make music as there are musicians and also bringing it back to Harald Bode, the inventor of the analog. So, his whole reason for making the analog synthesizer was to welcome people to make music, even if they didn't go to study at Conservatory," explains Levy. "Brattleboro is a great arts and music town. It's a great people town, and having this festival at different locations in Brattleboro is hopefully going to remind those of us who've lived here a long time how lovely of a place it is. It's such a walkable, functioning downtown, which not a lot of places in the United States have," Levy concludes. IF YOU GO: For a complete festival line up visit www.novaarts.org or email circuits@fastmail.com. Festival passes are being sold for $40 on a limited basis at www.novaarts.org. A pass guarantees admission to all events at all five venues. Attendees may purchase a day-pass at any of the venues by donation, cash only, on a sliding-scale basis. No one will be turned away due to lack of funds. At-event admission is standing-room-only. All attendees are encouraged to bring one or more non-perishable food items, which Circuits in the Woods will donate to FoodWorks. Local sponsors include: Guilford Sound, Harold Levy, T.J. Buckley's Uptown Dining, ValhallaDSP, Beverly Behrmann, Newfangled Audio, Tavernier Chocolates and the Brattleboro Food Co-op.