Mark Gresham | 9 DEC 2021
Since 2003, Bent Frequency has been at the forefront of Atlanta’s contemporary chamber music scene, bringing avant-garde and experimental music into the public eye and ear. But like everyone else, their live presentations with in-person audiences were brought to a screeching halt by the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.
Their last live public concert took place on January 21, 2020: their Chinese New (Y)Ear concert at Kopleff Recital Hall, with Bent Frequency performing new works by composers of Chinese heritage on a program shared with the Zhou Family Band.
Bent Frequency’s season typically begins in October or November like many other chamber groups. But this year, co-artistic directors Jan Berry Baker and Stuart Gerber decided instead to make it an opening weekend in December with three back-to-back concerts.
- December 10 @ Eyedrum: Bent Frequency Duo with guest artists
- December 11 @ Arches Brewing: Phil Kline’s “Unsilent Night”
- December 12 @ Sautee Nacoochee Cultural Center: Bent Frequency Duo Project
One reason, says Baker, is that “the holidays are a nice time to celebrate music returning and people gathering.” Another is pure logistics: Baker now lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches saxophone at UCLA. Pairing the opening event at Eyedrum with the Sautee gig is a way of minimizing Baker’s travel issues while maximizing the group’s rehearsal time together.

Bent Frequency Duo: saxophonist Jan Berry Baker and percussionist Stuart Gerber (source: bentrfrequency.com)
It seems rather fitting that Eyedrum will be the first location for this post-pandemic re-emergence of Bent Frequency, as it was the place it all started for the group in 2003, with its very first concert. At the time, Eyedrum was on 290 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive SE, just a few blocks west of Oakland Cemetery. Eyedrum has migrated considerably over the years, both before and since then, and this past October moved into new digs at 515 Ralph David Abernathy Blvd. SW, where the Pittsburgh and Mechanicsville neighborhoods meet, close to downtown.
Bent Frequency has given its 2021-22 season the title RENEW. Baker notes how the title applies to Eyedrum as much as to Bent Frequency itself: “As arts and performances begin again since the pandemic began, as new ideas come about and new paths forward, so too is Eyedrum renewing itself in a brand new space.”
At Eyedrum, Bent Frequency Duo will share the stage with a handful of guest artists, with opening sets by Katie Young and Ofir Klemperer and Majid Araim, Ben Shirley, and Matt Nelson.
In addition to two world premieres by Yiheng Yvonne Wu and Nick Demos, Baker and Gerber will perform live for the first time music by Peter Van Zandt Lane with electronics, which they premiered online in October 2020. Gerber will also perform Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra by American avant-gardist Alvin Lucier, who passed away on December 1 at age 90.
Bent Frequency last performed Phil Kline’s “Unsilent Night” in December 2019 at Arches Brewing in Hapeville. It will again take place there this year. It is an audience-performed “public artwork in the form of a holiday caroling party.” Initially, participants brought their boom boxes and played pre-recorded cassette tapes produced by Kline. But that was in 1992, almost 30 years ago. Today, digital music players and cell phones play downloaded digital audio files.
On Sunday, the Duo will then take their show on the road to Northeast Georgia to perform at the Sautee Nacoochee Cultural Center in a late afternoon concert.
“We have greatly missed the human connection in music-making this past year. Recording and airing performances, while not without its own benefits, … had serious drawbacks,” says Baker. “I felt so disconnected from people, both performers and audience members. I hope we will continue to live-stream live performances, where performers are actually in the same room sharing and connecting with an audience. But creating recordings is an entirely separate entity that will never replace or replicate live performance or the energy or excitement created in the concert hall. For us, RENEW is the chance to renew our love of performing, renew connecting with people, and renew our passion for creating and celebrating music by living composers.” ■
External links:

Mark Gresham is publisher and principal writer of EarRelevant. he began writing as a music journalist over 30 years ago, but has been a composer of music much longer than that. He was the winner of an ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for music journalism in 2003.
RECENT POSTS