Electric Eyes: New Music and Media Festival

By commissioning five pieces of original music, each of which is to be accompanied by some form of electronic media, the Southern Theater is hitting upon a big trend in the contemporary composition business. As of late, composers of all stripes have sought collaborations with video and performance artists, thus adding an element of spectacle that blurs the lines between concert, play, and even film. On the docket for the first-ever Electric Eyes festival: Acoustic playing by New York composer and violinist Todd Reynolds is filtered through a multi-channel manipulative device. The reverberating sounds of the improvisational Minneapolis band Electropolis get video and aerialist accompaniment. VJ Never was, a well-known Electropolis collaborator, combines his handpicked video clips with live, electronically mixed music. And an emerging composer named J. Anthony Allen combines his own electronic sound installations with metronomic images. Southern Theater, 612-340-1725.