I had a fantastic time attending and performing at the Electro-Music Asheville Festival 2014. Click here to view an album of al the photos I posted to flickr.
Read on for a for notes on the fest with select photos from this photo album.
Thursday May 15th
On Thursday I fly from Boulder to Charlotte then drove up to Asheville (just over two hour drive) to attend Electro-Music Asheville. This is one of my favorite events of the year and is in a wonderful city. The event takes place at the Masonic Temple on the third floor. The stage is surrounded old curtain and backdrop that look like leaves and tress as you can see from the photo above.
When I arrived I found out the local paper the Mountain Xpress had the festival as one of it’s “Smart Bets” for the weekend and they used one of my invader cam promo photos for the description of the fest :^)
Friday May 16
On Friday morning Paul A Vnuk Jr and Geary Yelton grabbed breakfast then head over to the fest.
As you can see from the program there were mostly workshops from 1-6, then the concerts started at 7pm.
One of the workshops I attended was Acoustics Synthesis by Paul Vo where he performed and discussed the VO-96 (http://voinventions.com/). This is such cool technology as it’s synthesis achieved only with the strings on the instrument. If I was a guitarist I’d jump on this for sure.
After Paul’s demo most of the performers for the Friday night show started staging for sound check. For this event we all stage at the same time that way once the show starts we can move from set to set without taking time to setup.
Here is cockpit view of my rig just after I setup. Left-to-right is Tenori-On, Nord Lead 4 with 4 Percussa AudioCubes, Ableton Push, HP Envy 14 laptop running Windows 7 + Ableton Live 9 + Resolume + Percussa MIDI Bridge, Novation NIO soundcard. Here is a photo of the rig from the front with the room lights up.
Once most of the acts were stage we posed for a group photo taken by Hong Waltzer. This is one of my favorite photos from the festival :^) Man that is a lot of gear on stage – lol.
Bill Fox is holding a one of a kind prototype of a Martin “alien guitar”. It has LEDs on the fretboard and a built-in theremin. The festival mascot Zuzu the synth wonder dog is also in the photo :^)’
I went on at 9:55 after hearing some great sets by other artists. In the photo above (by Paul A Vnuk Jr) you can see most of my rig and my visuals based only on live camera input. Here is one of my favorite shots form the set (again taken by Paul) where you can see the camera on my hands as I play the Ableton Push.
Below you can see the entire rig as I play Tenori-On (photo by Hong Waltzer)
The show went till around midnight with lots of other great performances.
Saturday May 17th
On Saturday the festival kicked off with a demo and performance by the Elektron gear heads the Atlanta-based Systems of Memory. It was a great way to start the day
I then attended Sally Spark’s cool workshop on the wonderful Haken Continuum. There is a video of the workshop here.
Another big highlight of the festival for me was being invited to participate at the 5pm Collaboration on Saturday (Photo below by Adam Holquist). From left to right is Mark Mohoney on Elektribe, Bill Fox on Alien Guitar and iPad, and I on Nord Lead 4 and Octatrack (I was sampling Bill’s guitar on-the-fly) and Sally Sparks on Continuum. 
We jammed for an hour (photo below by Anna E Siedzik-Torres).
After this I simply enjoyed the great company at the fest, watched great evening performances and had some nice meals in the wonderful city of Asheville.
A big thanks to Geary Yelton for hosting me, Greg and Hong Waltzer for organizing! Thanks to Edward B Siedzikand Anna E Siedzik-Torres for sound and lights. Also thanks to all the visual artists who supported acts that did not have all their visuals. Of course, thanks to all the artists for offering such inspiring performances, and the people who came to listen.
As always, Electro-Music events are inspiring and I always leave filled with new ideas. This is one of my favorite festivals to play and attend and I hope to return next year.
Mark Mosher
www.MarkMosherMusic.com
Mark Mosher 