Experimental music and avant-garde art finds a home at Indexical

Idling at a stoplight on Capitola Road at 7th Avenue in Live Oak, you might see it. It’s a utility box near the sidewalk, on which is painted a bearded man who looks like a cross between Santa Claus and Rutherford B. Hayes. 

It’s a portrait of Lou Harrison, a composer and artist of international renown, who pushed the leading edge of exploration of music around the world, an avatar of American avant-garde music, and among the most adventurous artists to emerge from the 20th century.

So, what’s this guy doing on a sidewalk mini-mural in the middle of Santa Cruz? 

Harrison, who died in 2003, spent the last half of his long life in Aptos, was a co-founder of what is now the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. He methodically and intentionally created a rich subculture and community in Santa Cruz County devoted to groundbreaking, unorthodox, often rule-breaking experimental music.

One of Harrison’s greatest achievements is that that subculture did not die with him, that it continues to this day, most notably in the nonprofit Indexical.

Artistically, Indexical is not necessarily linked to the work or theoretical ideas of Lou Harrison. (The organization is perhaps more deeply indebted to former UC Santa Cruz musician and theorist Larry Polansky, a student and colleague of Harrison.) 

In fact, Indexical is the latest and one of the most prominent manifestations of Santa Cruz’s unlikely status as a rich seedbed for experimentation and boundary-pushing in music. You might expect an organization like this in New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco. But in a modest, shaggy-dog college town like Santa Cruz? 

Indexical has reached its 10th anniversary, which proves that it has a degree of staying power. From its tiny home and performance space at the Tannery Arts Center, Indexical hosts about 60 events a year, mostly performances and workshops, almost all of them existing well outside the mainstream expectations of what constitutes live entertainment. 

To take only the most pertinent example, Indexical’s next concert features accomplished percussionist and artist Jon Mueller, whose work is “an awe-inspiring display of elegant athleticism, preternatural focus, brute restraint, and ecstatic, monastic reverie,” according to his media materials. Also performing is the duo Voicehandler, which improvises with “bizarre glossolalia, witch-like chattering, deliriously stuttering as an obsessed medium, as a distorted mouthpiece of Latina experiences.”

Obviously, we’re pretty far afield from your familiar Friday night Fleetwood Mac tribute band. This is not music as comfort food, and certainly it’s not to everyone’s taste. But isn’t that what avant-garde art is supposed to be?  

Composer/musician Michael Flora is Indexical’s executive director, principal curator and sole paid staff member. “I’d say maybe 75 to 80% of what we do is music, or you could even call it ‘sound-based.’ But we’ve become increasingly interdisciplinary,” he said. “So, we’ve expanded into visual arts. We have exhibitions in our space occasionally now. And we do film screenings too.”

The audiences that come to Indexical performances aren’t large, but they are loyal, said Flora, and committed to the cause of artistic exploration. “I would definitely say that the people who come here are some of the most interesting people in the world,” he said. 

Musician/percussionist Rick Walker, known as a pioneer of “looping” at the dawn of the electronic music age and for his work in such notably edge-pushing bands as Tao Chemical and Worlds Collide in the 1980s and ’90s, is a local artist who has performed at Indexical. “They’re really focused on anything that is new and interesting,” Walker said of Indexical. “It’s a bright, bright light in Santa Cruz right now, and I’m really happy to be associated with them.”

Indexical’s performance space is a small windowless room that fits about 60 people standing, 40 seated. The room is no bigger than a typical boutique shop, but it features a tiny bar to serve drinks, a sound booth and a curtained back space for storage. 

Artists and performers from across the country and, in some cases, around the world visit Santa Cruz to perform in this space. “We have built a reputation in the circuit,” said Flora, “where both national and international artists know about us. If they’re touring their work, they’ll reach out to us.”

At the same time, he said, a lot of Indexical’s roster of performers is also their audience, local people who are artists or aspiring artists in their own right. The community is small enough that it functions as a nexus for networking. 

“It creates this dynamic where people interact with each other, and oftentimes, people are hanging out after shows, telling me about their projects,” he said. “And relationships develop, and sometimes we’ll develop a project together here at Indexical.”

Flora, 44, took over the top job at Indexical in 2023 from Andrew Smith, who founded the organization and left to become executive director at The Lab, a similar if larger experimental-arts organization in San Francisco. 

“He’s just the sweetest guy in the world,” said Rick Walker of Flora. “He’s positive and supportive about everyone’s artistry, and he’s militant about paying artists well too.”

Treating artists with respect is as important to Flora as giving them exposure and new audiences.

“Indexical was founded by artists,” said Flora, “it’s run by artists, and a big part of our commitment is supporting artists. So all the artists who work with us, they’re always paid fairly to guarantee that support. We meet certain minimums for artists’ pay, often exceeding that relative to the size of our organization. In addition, we also provide housing for touring artists and even pick them up from the airport.”

Flora runs the organization with the help of a board of directors and a core group of about 15 volunteers, many with strong ties to UCSC. Indexical’s events are open to the public; tickets for performances are usually under $20, and workshops are charged on a sliding scale. But, like the much larger and more established Kuumbwa Jazz Center, Indexical also works on a membership program.

“We do benefit from a very dedicated audience, and it’s not uncommon to see many of the same folks week after week. Sometimes Indexical can feel like a bit of a clubhouse.”

Still, Indexical is part of a long history of experimental and avant-garde music in Santa Cruz County, dating back at least to Lou Harrison’s early days in town running the Sticky Wicket concert series that eventually evolved into the Cabrillo Festival. From music programs at UCSC and Cabrillo College, to Harrison-inspired organizations like New Music Works run by the accomplished local composer Philip Collins, Santa Cruz has served as a haven for musicians on the far frontiers of what’s possible in musical expression. And Indexical is a vital step forward in that cultural evolution.

Without these kinds of organizations, artists and audiences, music as an art form will too often collapse into nostalgia and inertia, forgetting what makes it a thrilling art form, the ability to evolve and move forward.

“It does happen quite often,” said Flora, “where a certain movement of artists will be exploring new ways of making art. And then it slowly becomes adopted by more established artists, and becomes not so weird or strange any more, but more accessible. Just like, when you were a kid, and your parents are always like, ‘What is that racket?’”

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