An unusual music festival is coming up in Brattleboro.
XFest gives performers who have not had a chance to work together, or who may know one another only by reputation, the chance to share a stage. The performances are improvised, with participants in small groups using video, movement, and sound to do as they please.
XFest is unusual since it has no fixed location. The first event was in 2008, in Lowell, Massachusetts, at 119 Gallery. The reasoning behind that first festival was as a reaction to local festivals that never included talent from the local area. Since then, XFest has been held in such venues as Greenfield, Massachusetts’s Block City Arts, and the Firehouse in Worchester, Massachusetts.
Over 50 performers are scheduled to take part thus far. A sampling shows the wide range of specialties involved. Adam Matlock lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut. He creates narratives inspired by music of all kinds including rock, soul, Klezmer, and folk music from the Balkans.
A. Cambell Payne is a Boston-based artist who creates both ambient and dance music. In doing so, he explores concepts like community, time, pattern, and more.
Andrew Neumann works in many media including video and enjoys developing systems that blend text, image, and sound into installations and performances.
The festival this year is scheduled for August 16-18, at 118 Elliott, a community space and art gallery in Brattleboro. Organizers of events like this will often use poster printing to create advertising for them.
