WYSO's Evan Miller talks about experimental music, upcoming The Outside Presents concert

WYSO's Assistant Music Director, Evan Miller is host of the experimental music program The Outside.

Miller talked with WYSO's Jerry Kenney about the nature of experimental music, describing it as an approach rather than a defined aesthetic.

In this interview, he highlighted upcoming performers in The Outside Presents concert series, including the instrumental group Hour and singer-songwriter Kate Wakefield.

Miller also talked about the launch of WYSO's 24-hour music service, Novaphonic.FM, and its role in the station's upcoming Spring Membership Drive.

Kenney: It's always great to have one of my colleagues in the studio and this week we've got Evan Miller, host of the Midday Music program, and The Outside. If you haven't heard of that, it's a late-night Sunday program on WYSO that features some different, experimental music. Evan, welcome.

Miller: Hi, Jerry. How are you doing?

Kenney: Good. Well, yeah, thanks for joining us, and so we've got a couple of things to talk about, but I already mentioned the Sunday night program. For people who aren't aware of The Outside which follows Alpha Rhythms, tell us a little bit about it.

Miller: Yes. I'm on right after your hour of Alpha Rhythms. Actually, it's an experimental music program Sunday nights from 11 to 1 a.m. Also available on demand for the non-night owl listeners out there. It explores all kinds of different experimental music. You can't see my air quotes, but whatever that means, music that pushes envelopes, that pushes boundaries, that explores all sorts of fascinating and far-flung sounds from all around the world and right here at home, even.

Kenney: Yeah, and you're not just talking the talk with experimental music, you're walking the walk [because]you also play.

Miller: I do, I've played my own kinds of that music by myself and with other folks for a long time, and that love for playing and presenting that music led me to start a concert series attached to The Outside called The Outside Presents. It's a free quarterly series based here in Yellow Springs at the Foundry Theater on Antioch's campus, that presents this music in an open, accessible way to the public folks from around the country and always featuring somebody from our little corner of the world as well.

Kenney: How did you get into music?

Miller: I started playing music in middle school band.

Kenney: The recorder?

Miller: Playing drums, actually, playing percussion. I picked my instrument early and I stuck with it. My family's always liked music. I have some folks in certain quarters of my family who dabble maybe, but don't really, like, play music. So they're always kind of been rather curious how I went as far down that road as I have.

But I started playing in middle school band and I've loved it ever since. And I've just had a voracious appetite for as much music as I can get my hands on for a long, long time.

Kenney: That's great. Let's talk about the concert series because the next one is coming up very soon. It's Monday night, in fact.

Miller: This is the third entry in this second season of shows, and this is the most normal music sounding version of this. There's an instrumental group from mostly Philadelphia, but folks from up and down the East Coast, it's a collective ensemble of sorts called Hour - sort of splitting, splitting zones between Americana and chamber music. Okay. They're really fascinating and a really, really nice group of folks. One of the members of that group is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from New York City named Adelyn Strei, and the rest of the Hour band will be her backing band for some of her songs and making up the local component of the bill. Cincinnati's Kate Wakefield is completing the evening. Listeners might know her from her fantastic duo band Lung down in Cincinnati, where she is the cellist and vocalist. Kate is a classically trained musician on both of those fronts. That's actually where I met her first doing that and then was familiar with her other work later. So folks that might only know her for her rock band and get to see a separate side of her on this Monday evening. Still as captivating and electrifying as her band, but just more subdued.

Kenney: Okay, I can imagine because she's amazing in her collaborative efforts.

Miller: Yes, and her solo songs are gorgeous. It's a lot of her playing cello with loops and all sorts of effects and things. And the collection of performers I have for this show are illustrating a greater point that I believe in that "experimental music" doesn't mean anything. It's not a defined esthetic or a sound. It's an approach. It's a way of thinking about music, you know? It's just how you go at it, and that can extend into making songs too. You can just have a different, you know, idea of what a song is. So I've gotten into titling all of the the shows for this season, which kind of just gives folks a really top line view of what to expect. So this one's called We've Got Songs to (Sing). The word "sing" actually is in parentheses because it's an instrumental group headlining the bill, but they are songs that they're playing. So just a more, a more traditional sounding approach to experimental music is what's in store for this Monday night.

Kenney: And so anyone listening not on a Sunday morning we're talking about Monday night, Monday evening, March 3rd, 2025. Do you ever get to work this music into the Midday Music program, or do you to kind of keep that barrier, that separation?

Miller: I do, because Kate shows up on our daytime programs quite often because of her, her work in Lung. But also, she put out a new solo record back in December. She's played a few shows down at home in Cincinnati since that album's come out. She just played on kaleidoscope this past Wednesday, talking about that record, and I imagine this show too. So Kate gets a lot of play during the daytime as well. And the folks on this particular show, I think, could slot just as easily into, like the Midday Music show as they would The Outside show. It's, you know, esthetically accessible to folks that listen to all kinds of music and might not view themselves as experimental music people. But when you dig into the nuts and bolts of it, there's a lot of complexity happening, and I encourage folks that come to talk to the performers and ask them about the music they make.

Kenney: Finally, I know you said experimental music is really undefined, [or] undefinable, so are there any kind of pillars of music, icons within the undefined genre of experimental that you would recommend people check out as just a a way to head in that direction?

Miller: Yeah, actually, there was a performance that I spearheaded just two days ago, Friday evening right here in Yellow Springs, a collection of music. But the main item of the evening was a piece by a minimalist composer from New York City who turned 90 years old this year, named Terry Riley. We played his 1964 piece called In C. It's like an early American minimalist masterpiece - that corner of classical music is really important to my experience in experimental music. Another local example, I think, go back to the 90s here in Dayton and go check out Brainiac. They were a really pioneering rock band. Making noise rock is what you would call it, really pushing the envelope of what rock bands could sound like back in the day. They're still playing now. I think those are two very esthetically different, but as far as the ideas at play, I think they're both looking towards something similar.

Kenney: Excellent. Evan, good luck with the show on Monday night and thanks so much for speaking with us. One final question. How are things? You are also, I should have mentioned, Assistant Music Director here at WYSO and like the music department is just really moving forward in a lot of different ways.

Miller: Yes. In case you didn't know, we have a 24-hour music service that we launched back in November. It's called Novaphonic FM. You may have heard me, or Juliet Fromholt talk about it repeatedly.

Kenney: Yeah, we did talk to Juliet when it was first ramping up. But yeah, how's it been going? The response?

Miller: Yeah, it features all of our current WYSO music programing that's simulcast over on HD2 and the Novaphonic FM app, as well as a curated mix of music from the WYSO music department in all other hours of the day. It's getting a great response from listeners that, you know, want some more music in their day, but want to stay in the WYSO ecosystem. They trust us to send music their way and just want a little bit more, and they're very appreciative of the things that they can discover over there.

Kenney: That's a great way to build on what WYSO has been providing listeners for decades.

Miller: Exactly. And its Spring Membership Drive time starting in just a couple of days. And the first time we've had Novaphonic under our belt during one of these. So hopefully with that new service alongside us, we can get some new folks into the fold this upcoming week.

Kenney: Great. Evan Miller, thanks so much.

Miller: Thanks, Jerry.