line upon line presents 2026 Austin Winter Music Festival

Hosted by line upon line January 4th, 6th, 8th and 9th

Thanks to: Rea Charitable Trust, Texas Commission on the Arts and You All!

January 9th

Important People (Are) From Important Places (2024) explores the fractal-like spread of a fictitious, quasi-spiritual movement (an imaginary “cult”) across vast geographical landscapes. The work is a sonic embodiment of collective growth and socio-cultural influence, derived from a simulated model tracking recruitment and ideological propagation over the course of decades. Taking NXIVM as its basis, the piece constructs its own virtual cult that spreads from Albany around the globe using what is known about NXIVM alongside exponential and logistical growth processes, carefully tuned to simulate realistic trends of dispersal and social propagation. Crucially, the piece envisions an alternate reality in which NXIVM was never dismantled in 2018, projecting into the post-pandemic era fueled by rapid online recruitment and rising extremism. Beginning in 1998, the piece asks what NXIVM would look like if it continued through 2050.

Inspired by systems theory, Important People (Are) From Important Places maps an emergent behavior of individuals onto sonic parameters. Coordinates of individual recruits are transformed into pitch clusters and organized into timbral spaces defining “sonic centers” of groundswelled activity. Recurring patterns symbolize a tension between the cult’s collective identity and its constituents — each individual unique, yet tethered to a larger, spreading entity. Lulls during global disruptions (e.g., in 2020) punctuate moments of chaotic acceleration. The music unfolds as an evolving map, and invites listeners to perceive patterns, contemplate collective behaviors, and reflect on humanity’s capacity for belief, belonging, propagation, vulnerability, and susceptibility.

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Woven Dust is a piece about memories, how they are formed, recalled, dissolved, and reinvented. Over the course of the piece, different combinations of timbres are presented, revisited, and recorded onto tape loops. The second half of the piece repeats those memories on tape loops, recording over them until nothing is left but their essence.

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Marionette(s) navigates the sound, materiality, and physicality of puppets. It treats puppets as beings whose gestures unsettle the boundaries between the human and more than human realities. The performers’ movements are tethered to digital controllers, gradually transforming their bodies into a site over which flesh and data become entwined.

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Formed in 2009 at The University of Texas at Austin, line upon line exists to champion living composers and pursue the musically unfamiliar.

The Austin-based group has premiered hundreds of new works for percussion and has worked with composers in residencies at Harvard University, Stanford University, Cal Poly, University of California at Santa Cruz, University of Texas at Austin, Kunstuniversität Graz, University College Dublin, University of Huddersfield, University of Liverpool, City University of London and Monash University (Melbourne).

Internationally, the group has performed at New Music Dublin, the Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music (Australia), Open Circuit Festival (Liverpool), Novalis Festival (Osijek), in Basel (Hochschule für Musik), Berlin (Unerhörte Musik), Cologne (Loft Köln), Freiburg (Hochschule für Musik), Graz (Open Music), Koper (Koper Biennale) and London (City, University of London), and has taught at conservatories in Melbourne, Sydney, Cork (MTU School of Music), London (Guildhall School of Music & Drama), Manchester (Royal Northern College of Music) and Tours (Le pôle Aliénor).

Nationally, line upon line has performed and taught in twenty-five different states, at two Percussive Arts Society International Conventions, the Festival of New American Music (Sacramento) and The Myrna Loy Center (Helena, MT).

line upon line consists of Cullen Faulk, Matthew Teodori and emeritus member, Adam Bedell.