2025 Xenharmonic Music Summer Festival - July 5-14 in Virginia
Sponsored by UnTwelve, the 2025 Xenharmonic Music Summer Festival took place at the beautiful MidMountain Riverside Arts Retreat, a large farmhouse on 5 acres in rural Virginia. 9 microtonalists attended, plus 1 drop-in, bringing 2 lumatones, 2 linnstruments, 6 guitars in various edos, 2 harmonic series requintos, hammer dulcimer, flute, violin, otomatone and fretless bass guitar. The material ranged from improvised to composed, from classical to modern, and from instrumental to singer-songwriter. In addition to much casual music-making, 25 pieces were filmed and performed at a house concert.
Video: youtube playlist
Audio: (link to bandcamp album)
Scores: UnTwelve 2025 songbook
Tunings used:
- just intonation: 7-limit, 11-limit and harmonic series scale 16::32
- edos: 7, 10, 15, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23 and 41
Tracks recorded and performed:
Shorter vocal pieces:- How Long Blues (7-limit JI barbershop tag) (alternate version) (guitar version)
- Sweet Sweet Harmony (7-limit JI barbershop tag) (guitar version)
- Danny My Boy (7-limit JI barbershop tag) (guitar version)
- No More Wine (7-limit JI barbershop tag) (guitar version)
- Whisper Words Of Wisdom (7-limit JI barbershop tag) (alternate version) (guitar version)
- Baby Please Don't Go (7-limit JI barbershop tag) (electric bass version)
- Agnus Dei (JI vocal quartet)
- Found Home (19edo original for guitar and 3 voices)
- Toffee (22edo, voice, guitar, fretless bass, lumatone, linnstrument)
- Linger (excerpt) (15edo cover for solo voice and guitar)
- Take It Back (22edo piece for voice and lumatone)
- Udderbot Feature part 1 (free-pitch udderbot duet)
- Udderbot Feature part 2 (free-pitch udderbot duet)
- Natural Bridge Bop (15edo piece for shakuhachi and guitar)
- Requinto Shredfest (harmonics 16::32 requinto duet)
- Banile (harmonics 16::32 flute, requinto, hammer dulcimer, violin, bongos, percussion)
- Spicy Spikey Pudding (12edo + microtones, piano, violin and fretless bass)
- 17edo Jam parts 1 and 2 (piece for 2 lumatones and 3 players)
- Aquatic Ambience (23edo cover for 2 lumatones and fretless bass)
- Liminal City Escalators (18edo & 17edo, lumatone, fretless bass, onamatone)
- Everybody Wants To Be a Ten (10edo, lumatone and electric guitar)
- Haneru (7edo, Knowsur cover)
- Downminor Nocturne (41edo duet for linnstrument and kite guitar)
- Pink Panther (41edo cover for linnstrument, kite guitar and fretless bass)
- Dance of the Hunters (41edo piece for solo linnstrument)
This event almost didn't happen. We lost our original venue 30 days beforehand, and had to scramble to find a new place. Desperately searching airBnB, we stumbled upon MidMountain. Wow, an actual Arts Retreat, not just someone's vacation rental! Because of the smaller size and shorter time, we changed our goals. Rather than presentations and discussions, we decided to focus on filming and recording as much music as we could. Because playing music together is the one thing we can't do online.
Many of us had not met previously. Luckily we had complementary talents and a good assortment of instruments. Having two lumatones in one room was amazing! There was no schedule, everything just flowed. Every day we got together in small groups and put together the material. Some of it was composed, some was improvised, some were group collaborations.
In 2026 we hope to do something similar. One big difference is that with more lead time, we can have a proper call for scores. Also, our hope is that the people attending will connect online beforehand to share ideas. With these two changes, we can hit the ground running!
Thanks to our donors Douglas Blumeyer and Thomas Scheurich for their financial support!
Join us June 6-14 for the 2026 Microtonal Recording Retreat, also at MidMountain.
