When electronic music first emerged in the 1940s and 50s it was generally considered “art” music and was pioneered by forward-thinking composers like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Its reputation began to change in the 1960s  when popular musicans like The Beach Boys and The Beatles began to employ electronic instruments like the theremin and the Mellotron into their music. The prevalence of the Moog synthesizer in 1970s prog rock and the synth-heavy “krautrock” sound of bands like Kraftwerk began to further electronic music’s popularity, leading to what would be known as “synth rock.” New Wave and dance music of the 1980s furthered its popularity, eventually leading to the throbbing beats of techno music and the rave scene of the 1990s. Today, you can find electronic elements in pretty much every form of music from movie soundtracks to pop music and electronic instruments are as common as the guitar or piano.

While electronic music and instruments have risen in popularity, there is still a hardcore community of electronic musicians that are determined to push the boundaries of what electronic music is capable of. These artists and musicians owe more to the work of Cage and Stockhausen than to Depeche Mode. These are serious composers and technological wizards that challenge traditional concepts of musical composition and who employ cutting edge technology as an ever-evolving tool to realize their individual artistic vision. This community that will be celebrated at this weekend’s San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, which celebrates its 14th year this year.

The festival kicks off tomorrow, Thursday, September 12 and runs until Sunday, September 15 and is artist-run; founded by eight Bay Area electro-acoustic music and sound art practitioners. According to their bio, their mission is to “provide a highly visible public forum for the diverse community of composers and sound artists working with electronic-based technologies in the Bay Area. [To] foster a greater sense of community among the diverse group of Bay Area sound artists; to stimulate the creation of new electronic sound works; to increase public awareness of new sound-based technologies and their creative applications; to raise the level of discourse surrounding music and sound-art; and to raise the national and international profile of the Bay Area as a center for electronic music and sound art.”

They held their first festival in 2000 and since then have featured everyone from new and emerging artists to pioneers of electronic music. This year is sure to be no different.

You can pick up tickets for individual days here or full festival passes for all four evenings here.

Here are some highlights from each day of this year’s festival:

TOMORROW! Thursday, September 12 – Donald Swearingen

Donald Swearingen is an Oakland, California-based composer, performer, multimedia artist, and designer of interactive performance systems and installations. Classically trained, but with an ear to the radio, he gravitated to popular music in his teens and early twenties, working for 10 years in the Memphis music industry, both as a traveling performer, and recording artist at such legendary studios as Stax and Hi. Eventually, his work with studio electronics and synthesizers reoriented his focus, and he turned to the academic world where he pursued undergraduate studies in computer music, mathematics, electronics and physics, followed by advanced degrees in mathematics and computer science.

For the past 20 years, his work has revolved around the use of movement and gesture as the source of media control in an expanded, computer-assisted performance environment, leading to the design custom instruments and software for both himself and other artists, including Pamela Z, Miya Masaoka, Guillermo Galindo, Todd Shalom, and Thea Farhadian.

He has performed and lectured widely in the United States and abroad, and his work has been presented locally at Bay Area venues such as Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Lab, ODC, the Other Minds Festival, and the ROOM Series. He is a founder and member of the advisory board of the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, and was a featured performer in its 10th season in 2009.

Friday, September 13 – Éliane Radigue and Laetitia Sonami

Early electronic music pioneer Éliane Radigue (Paris, France) studied electro-acoustic music at the Studio d’essai at the RTF under the direction of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry (1957-58). At NYU in 1970-71, her music, its source an Arp synthesizer and recording tape, attracted considerable attention for its sensitive, dappled purity. She was in residence at the studios of the University of Iowa and CalArts in 1973. Becoming a Tibetan Buddhist in 1975, Radigue went into retreat. When she took up her career again in 1979, she continued to work with the Arp, which has become her signature, performing at galleries and museums all over Europe and the U.S. and receiving numerous commissions. Notoriously slow and painstaking in her work, Radigue has produced in the last decade or so one major work every three years. Recently, in response to the demands of musicians worldwide, she has begun creating works for specific performers and instruments together with electronics, as she continues to study the teachings of the Tibetan lamas.

Laetitia Sonami was born in France and settled in the United States in 1975 to pursue her interest in live electronic music. She studied with Eliane Radigue, Joel Chadabe, Robert Ashley and David Behrman. Sonami’s sound performances, live-°©‐film collaborations and sound installations focus on issues of presence and participation. She has devised new gestural controllers for performance and applies new technologies and appropriated media to achieve an expression of immediacy through sound, place and objects. Best known for her unique instrument, the elbow-°©‐length lady’s glove, which is fitted with an array of sensors tracking the slightest motion of her hand and body, she has performed worldwide and earned substantial international renown. Recent projects include the lady’s web – an uncontrollable controller for live performance, Sound Gates a public sound installation on a 2.5 km pier in Rijeka, Croatia and Sheepwoman, a live film in collaboration with SUE-°©‐C, based on a Murakami novel. Sonami has received numerous awards among which the Herb Alpert Awards in the Arts and the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Awards. She currently is visiting faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute and Bard College.

Saturday, September 14 – Thomas Köner

Born 1965 in Germany, Thomas Köner studied electronic music at the CEM-Studio in Arnhem, where he dedicated himself to intensive research on the phenomenon of sound color. As sound engineer and composer he worked with film artist Jürgen Reble and the live performance Alchemie (1992), created live electronic music to accompany old silent films for the Louvre Museum, and collaborated with installation artist Max Eastley on works for sound, sculpture and performance, including List of Japanese Winds commissioned by the Hayward Gallery, London. The Centre Georges Pompidou commissioned Köner for an installation with filmmaker Yann Beauvais. In 2000 the Montreal International Festival New Cinema New Media awarded him the New Media Prize. More recently, with his duo Porter Ricks he became an acclaimed producer of progressive techno, resulting in remix commissions for Nine Inch Nails and a Claude Debussy remix for Universal Music.

Sunday, September 15 – Richard Pinhas

Ceaselessly innovative in a career spanning more than 30 years, Richard Pinhas is recognized as one of France’s major experimental musicians. A composer, world-class guitarist and electronics innovator, he is a key figure in the international development of electronic rock music. During the 1970s, Pinhas’ stature in France was analogous to Tangerine Dream’s in Germany. His band Heldon fused electronics, “diabolical guitar work” and rock to create a pioneering, aggressive music that was a precursor to the industrial music and techno to come. New electronic and digital artists and DJs are emulating Pinhas’ 70s work and incorporating it into their own. During the 90s, Pinhas began developing a system of electronic processing to use in performing live solo guitar concerts. Experimenting with tape loops and infinite delays, he expanded on, and transformed the “Frippertronics” technique Robert Fripp used in his work with Brian Eno. Pinhas’ work over the past decade, featuring his “Metatronic” system of electronically treated solo guitar compositions, is as radically innovative as anything in his early career.