The Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, together with San Diego New Music, presents the soundON Festival of Modern Music, annually in January. The soundON Festival of Modern Music brings together an international roster of composers and performers to present a three-day exploration of contemporary chamber music. Featuring performances by NOISE and Affiliated Artists, the multi-day festival format allows us to present unconventional works in an informal and enjoyable setting. We also reach out to young artists and audiences through an interactive workshop to build a new generation of new music supporters and artists. Now in its thirteenth year, the soundON Festival has become a fixture in the musical landscape of San Diego.

In the Confessions, St. Augustine wrote about the distentio animi, the distension of the mind that refers to its stretching out in relation to past and future, a three-fold present known in memory, attention, and expectation. This is an analogue to what musicians would call "performative time," or perhaps, what Gabriel Motzkin calls "abnormal time," a transcendent state that can be experienced only at those rare moments when the normal, everyday world loses its meaning, thus making this kind of time more authentic. The 13th edition of the SoundON Festival of Modern Music explores these rarified states, these journeys to thresholds of space, time, memory and perception.

The soundON Festival of Modern Music is underwritten by a generous donation from Garna Muller and is supported by a grant from the Ellen Browning Scripps Foundation.

Housing for artists is generously provided by Ann Craig and Garna Muller.

Thank you to our Friends of soundON Julia S. Falk, Ph.D., Drs. Sally and Einar Gall, Christian Hertzog and Susan Dorin, Garna Muller, Catherine and Robert Palmer, Erika and Fred Torri, Eric Starr and Sarah Skuster, and to the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library for their continued support, to Ann Craig and Garna Muller, to San Diego State University for providing rehearsal space and instruments, and to the University of San Diego for providing audio equipment.