"You will hear and see things you've never heard and seen before," promises David Rogers, composer and president of the 11th annual Bonk Festival of New Music, beginning this Tuesday evening at St. Petersburg's Salvador Dali Museum. "It's really kind of a treasure of the Tampa Bay area at this point. … It's unlike any other concert event probably in the country. And it's definitely worth checking out. Even if you may not like everything that's there, there's going to be something there that will make you think, make you stand up, make you interested to know exactly what is going on in music these days. We tend to hear classical music as something kind of old and stale, maybe. So see what's happening out there these days."
There's certainly nothing old and stale about the music at the Bonk Festival. Since 1992, Bonk has been bringing new sights and sounds to adventurous Tampa Bay audiences who have come to expect not only modernist abstraction and post-modern self-referential comedy, but also aspects of performance art. For example, it wasn't long ago that a Bonk composer appeared naked and sang along with one of his recordings, or that the same composer arranged for people in bunny suits to hump each other along with another piece. Seven years ago, Rogers' composition "Three Centuries of Love" called for a man on a tricycle to drink four beers as he conducted players of harpsichord, violin and snare drum. And at one performance a drummer fished a kielbasa out of his pants, to be used as a drumstick.
And why not a kielbasa? After all, says Rogers, Bonk makes a point of looking far and wide for people "who are doing things a little more on the fringes … challenging the limits of music expression and artistic expression."
The world is full of forums for mainstream contemporary music, he says, so Bonk specializes in composers who would ordinarily be excluded from such concerts, "people who are doing things that are harder to classify, so they don't get the same kind of attention."
The festival began as an opportunity for USF composer/professor Paul Reller to display his work and that of Dartmouth composer Eric Lyon. What began as a single concert became two concerts by the second year and then expanded to a full week of events. And the audience expanded along with it: from 60 or so people, most of them associated with USF, to a couple hundred at the Dali Museum, and about a hundred apiece at Tampa's Friday Morning Musicale and USF's Theater 1.
And other things have changed too, according to pianist and long-time Bonkster Corey Jane Holt: "In the very beginning it was a lot of fun but really crazy. We would be printing the programs up literally the night before, stapling things together 'cause we really didn't know what was going to happen till the bitter end. And everybody got down here, and it was pretty hastily thrown together, but at the same time had a lot of spontaneous energy, you know."
Now Bonk has strict deadlines. For example, there's an international call for scores with a deadline of Sept. 30, "so we start," Holt says, "choosing the music at least six months ahead of time." The pieces to be performed are usually chosen by Holt, Rogers and Bonk vice president Robert Constable; and though Holt finds it difficult to specify what gets chosen, she knows very well what the panel doesn't want: "We don't want improvisation, we don't want jazz, we don't want neo-classical new music. We're trying to look for something that's hard to put into words but kind of fits in with, I guess, what has come before it."
Is the Tampa Bay area the right place for something like Bonk? Rogers, whose compositions have been included in eight past Bonk concerts, thinks that this area is not only appropriate, it's ideal. "There's kind of a clean slate here to do whatever you want to do," he says. "And really to me, when I first came here as a guest artist, I was amazed at how receptive audiences in general were, people who weren't necessarily new-music audiences. Like you find in New York — you find the same 30 people coming to all these little concerts. It was a much more broad audience that seemed much more open-minded to me in general, and to me that's a really exciting thing. … I can't imagine how it could happen in a place like New York."
And now to this year's lineup:
The Bonk Festival begins with an Opening Night Bash, Tuesday at 8 p.m. at the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg. Featured will be electronic works by Swedish composer Jens Hedman and Cuban-born composer/performer Sergio Barroso, as well as work by longtime Bonksters Eric Lyon and Christopher Penrose. Look for USF brass faculty members Jay Coble and Tom Brantley playing a work by Lyon, and for solo acoustic works performed by flutist Margaret Lancaster and violinist Conrad Harris.
The festival continues on Wednesday at 8 p.m. with "Bonk Unplugged" at Hyde Park's Friday Morning Musicale. The concert here features large chamber works by Lyon and by Russolo prize-winner Hideko Kawamoto, along with smaller works for flute, violin and piano.
Thursday night is "Percussion Ensemble Night" at USF's Theater 1. Starting at 8 p.m., the USF Percussion Ensemble will perform a battery of works by Krause, Lyon, Davidovsky and two emerging Korean composers, Eun-Hye Park and Na-Mi Hong.
"Electronic Drama" is the theme for Friday night's 8 p.m. concert at the Musicale. Margaret Lancaster will display dual talents as flutist and actor in works by Zack Browning and James Hegarty. Violist Laura Wilcox will play music by Barroso, and Tampa pianist Holt will perform works by Kawamoto and Robert Helps. Holt will also join USF voice professor Jerald Reynolds for an electro-acoustic work by Jean-Claude Risset.
The festival wraps up at 8 p.m. on Saturday, March 9, at the Harbor Club in Tampa's Sulphur Springs. Here New York's Freefall Dance Group will perform to music by Elliott Sharp and Lyon. Local bands Handshake Squad, which includes Bonksters David Rogers and Rob Constable, Unrequited Loves and Crash Mitchell help bring things to a fun finale.
Sound interesting? Then book it to Bonk.
And expect some ear- and eye-openers.
BODIES IN COMMOTION: New York's Freefall Dance Group
This article appears in Feb 27 – Mar 5, 2002.