Circuit Benders Ball Goes Global on the Web The first virtual version of the anything-goes experimental fest unites local and regional acts with artists from Canada, Eastern Europe and beyond Tweet
OK Housecat
Circuit Benders Ball Nashville s biennial summit for noiseniks, synth obsessives and gear-builders and tinkerers of all stripes took its act online over the weekend. CBB is the brainchild of Tony Youngblood, who founded it in 2010 and curated the first three editions before handing the reins to current organizer (and master of ceremonies)
Tyler Blankenship in 2017. But CBB s overarching aim to break down formalist, academic notions about what is and isn t avant-garde music has stayed consistent through the years, lending a hand in fostering a fertile, eclectic and exponentially growing crop of outside-the-box music-makers across the South.
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JayVe Montgomery at Little Harpeth Brewing for Far Out Fest 333, June 2019Photo: Kaedi Maney
In a year when the global community had to find new ways to live, Nashville musicians got busy integrating jazz and improvised music into a variety of contexts. While our more mainstream jazz scene persevered, there was nothing monolithic about the jazz-adjacent records that Music City players released in 2020, and that’s a tribute to the city’s innovative spirit.
Some Nashville musicians pushed and pulled jazz into new territory. Skin Tension the duo of drummer Josh Byrd and guitarist Edward Longo harked back to Miles Davis’ electric period on their EP