Laurie Anderson. Photo: Lucie Jansch.

From street corners to late-night stages, TBA has filled Portland with avant garde composers and experimental musicians year after year. We’ve hosted improvisational marathons in a gallery window, comic beatboxers, pop cellists, a guitar “orchestra,” and a dance and music suite in public fountains. This year, we’ve invited a few legendary musicians, as well as a few young composers, spanning generations to show the range of contemporary sound art and music.

Perhaps the “grand dame” of contemporary music, Laurie Anderson returns to Portland to complete her trilogy of solo story works, which she presented with PICA in 2002 and 2006. Dirtday! finds Anderson back with her violin and her wry observations on modern life, reflecting on this past decade since 9/11. “Politicians are essentially story tellers,” says Anderson, “they describe the world as it is and also as they think it should be. As a fellow story teller, it seems like a really good time to think about how words can literally create the world.” Luckily for us, she tells these stories with considerable grace and stirring sounds.

Musician and curator Aki Onda returns to Portland with a line-up of legendary experimental sound artists from Japan in Voices & Echoes. With poet Gozo Yoshimasu, guitarist and turntablist Otomo Yoshihide, and sound artist Akio Suzuki, the night will span from improv to conceptual art to literature to performance. These three artists are legendary and seminal figures in the Japanese sound and music scenes, but few audiences in the States have ever had the chance to witness their work: Akio Suzuki has not performed in North American since a NYC performance in 1983, and Gozo Yoshimasu has never given a public performance in the United States, outside of small readings in universities and galleries. This rare concert is not-to-be-missed!

No, we haven’t resurrected John Cage for TBA (though maybe someday we’ll pull off a hologram concert á la Tupac), but his legacy is apparent in so many of the musicians we support. This being the Cage centennial, it’s fitting that we have a trio of projects by local musician Claudia Meza, all inspired by Cage-ian music theories. On the visual program, Meza presents Water at the White Box, an interactive tape collage/installation instrument wherein the viewer can play a series of water-based sound loops on hanging cassette players.

Out in the world, Meza continues her explorations of overlooked quotidian sounds through her Sonic City PDX project. She called upon a diverse mix of local musicians and composers to select their favorite “sonic sites” in town, crafting a digital walking map and audio tour with QR codes. While audiences are invited to wander and discover the sounds all week long, the project will culminate in special concert on September 15 of original compositions (by Meza, Daniel Menche, Luke Wyland of AU, Matt Carlson of Golden Retriever, Mary Sutton, Eric Mast of E*Rock, and more) inspired by the various locations. So grab your smartphone and head out!

Our late-night stages usually see the greatest concentration of musicians—party DJs, afropop, art rockers, and more—but avant-classical compositions are a relative rarity. Thanks to the Parenthetical Girls‘ knack for expansive and ambitious chamber pop, we’ll have some experimental sounds filling the WHS auditorium at THE WORKS. This evening of performances will draw their wide web of collaborators into the spotlight, featuring music by Golden Retriever, compositions by Jherek Bischoff performed by Classical Revolution PDX, and dance by choreographer Allie Hankins. It’s sure to be an idiosyncratic, lushly-textured performance.

With TBA:12, we’re especially proud of our global lineup—this year, PICA will welcome artists from a dozen different countries across Asia, Africa, North America and Europe. Think of it as an international tour of contemporary artistic practice. It’s a chance to find commonalities across borders and experience the regional differences of vernacular styles. By bringing this diversity of artists, TBA creates a unique dialogue between artists and a ground for future collaborations and installations to take root.

Of all of the work we’re bringing, we happen to have a strong cluster of projects from Africa. In presenting a few artists, we hope to avoid the “flattening” impulse of labeling an individual as a distinctly “African” artist, as though any one artist could speak for an entire continent. Africa is a broad continent, with myriad distinctions and cultures and practices, but so often there is a tendency to exoticize international projects and hold them up as capturing the spirit of a region. These artists we’re bringing are making vital, powerful projects that are based in their everyday experiences, but make an impact across cultures.

Zimbabwe-born and US-based choreographer Nora Chipaumire will present Miriam, her first foray into a more character-driven dance, along with the incredible dancer Okwui Okpokwasili.

Renowned dancer Faustin Linyekula returns to TBA after many years to present his first-ever solo performance, Le Cargo, Linyekula delves into his early memories of dance and music, continuing his powerful investigations of the Congo’s tumultuous and violent history.

The African projects continue onto the late-night stage of THE WORKS, with a unique inter-continental collaboration between Portland band BRAINSTORM, and a host of African musicians, both in the Sahel region of West Africa and here in Portland. Skype performances, YouTube covers, and more bring global pop music together online and IRL.

One such international collaboration actually connects our African projects with a large contingent of projects by renowned Japanese performers working across music, dance, and theater. It’s an interesting moment to consider the Japanese art scene—what does it mean to be making working post-Fukushima? How are artists reflecting on the concerns and experiences of their country? In (glowing), TBA alum Kota Yamazaki works through some of the seminal ideas of Japanese aesthetics by way of a long-running collaboration with artists from Senegal and Ethiopia.

Voices & Echoes sees the return of sound artist Aki Onda, who has curated a trio of influential experimental musicians from Japan. Akio Suzuki, Gozo Yoshimaso, and Otomi Yoshihide blend traditional and invented instruments with sound art, poetry, and striking performance.

Working in a similarly experimental vein, director Toshiki Okada has made a definitive mark on Japanese theater with his company chelfitsch. In Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech, his uniquely choreographed style of performance will be in full display—it’s theater that will appeal to dance lovers, and a wry take on contemporary Japanese office life.

Crossing the Pacific to North America, we’ll also be presenting an amazing young Mexican theater company, Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol, with two politically-minded “documentary” plays. Their works excavate Mexican social and political history through a blend of video and live performance, shedding light on this contemporary moment in the process.

But the international artists don’t just work on stage. Curated by Zvonimir Dobrovic of Queer New York International, Perforations presents a trio of Serbian and Croatian site-specific performance projects by Petra Kovacic, Biljana Kosmogina, and East Rodeo. Through the rooms and hallways of Washington High School, these three artists will present a satirical political campaign, a musical installation, and an abstract performance.

Within End Things, the visual art program at TBA, Italian artist Alex Cecchetti will lead a daily “relay” performance, Summer is not the prize of winter; French artist Isabelle Cornaro will create large-scale painted murals in the PICA offices derived from her films; and Dutch duo Van Brummelen & De Haan will present a filmic recreation of the famed Pergamon frieze, stolen from Turkey and residing in Berlin.

So many of these artists cross datelines, work with peers and collaborators from multiple countries, and reflect an increasingly global culture, while remaining indebted to their cultural differences. It’ll be a big TBA for anyone looking to discover new international ideas. I feel like I took a trip just writing about all of these projects!