The Buzz Award

The Robert “Buzz” Armstrong Memorial Creative Impact Award in Sound

The Buzz Award was established in 2015 by Soundwave to award promising Bay Area artists making a creative impact with their sound-related work. The late Robert T. “Buzz” Armstrong, the father of Louis Armstrong, one of Soundwave’s founding board members, was an avid music lover and a proud supporter of young artists.

Of live performances, he would say: “Look how much energy they have. They are trying new things, exploring the sound…”

This award recognizes a Bay Area artist making an impact in their particular sound/music field and have demonstrable great potential and commitment to performance and immersive art.

 Recipients are selected based on these criteria:

  • Living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area.

  • Demonstrate a strong critical and creative body of work based in sound, music or multidisciplinary arts with a basis in sound.

  • Showcasing work that exemplifies the mission of Soundwave and demonstrates a strong impact to community consciousness.

  • Unique exploratory actions/collaborations and the constant pushing of creative and critical boundaries in their own practice.

Have a direct impact to the most promising artists working in sound in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Buzz Awardees

  • Joel St. Julien is a Haitian-American composer, sound and video artist based in San Francisco. Joel has written music for documentaries, short / feature films, podcasts, and dance. He is a firm believer in experimentation/fusion with acoustic and electronic elements in sound oscillating through escapism and the mysticism of the present tense: music both being art and spiritual practice.

    Joel has shared music at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Stanford University’s CCRMA, Gray Area, CounterPulse Festival, Land and Sea Gallery, Re:Sound, The Lab, and Kadist Gallery.

    His music has also been featured and reviewed in Resident Advisor, The Wire, Disquiet, KQED, Foxy Digitalis, a closer listen, Dublab, and many more.

    Joel has released music independently and on Land and Sea, Dragon's Eye Recordings, Beached Records, and CST Imprint.

    Web || http://www.joelstjulien.com

    Social || http://instagram.com/joelstjulien

    Music || http://joelstjulien.bandcamp.com

  • Marshall Trammell is a multi-instrumental percussionist, composer, conductor, experimental archivist and self-styled Music Research Strategies. As a percussionist, Trammell delights in investigating the virtues of Improvisation applied to a linear drumming technique for a minimal drum set using 64th note single-handed rolls and footwork acquired from decades of performing Hardcore Music while emulating the likes of Blackwell, Roach, Williams and Bay Area’s own Donald Robinson into an unique Creative Music expression. Music Research Strategies, LLC, is a place for street-level, popular and political education practices and organizational sense-making through participatory research and constructivist composition & conduction methods. Trammell is a Prelinger Library research fellow, a Pro Arts Commons’ Common Knowledge Platform Fellow and the 2022 Artist-in-Residence at Borealis Festival (Norway) this March. He was a 2020 recipient of the Music/Sound Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (NYC) and Rauschenberg Residency (Captiva Island) and enjoys continued support from NAKA Dance Theatre at East Side Arts Alliance, SIGE Records, Weird Cry Records and many fine comrades, allies and accomplices.

  • IDHAZ is a producer/vocalist transporting through dark portals to sounds of undiscovered emotion, past, future, and fractured light. He began performing poetry in 2010, and since has become a magnetic, multi-disciplinary performance artist in the Bay Area. Combining elements of gameboy, beat machines, synth, and genre fluid vocals, IDHAZ creates visceral soundscapes to immerse into. IDHAZ is in bands pieces indigo and tugboyz. He teaches local youth various mediums of expression, and has led a variety of writing workshops for local artists.

  • Wizard Apprentice (pronouns: she and/or they) is a music producer, live performer, and video artist. As a highly sensitive introvert, her multimedia projects are strategies for managing an overwhelming world. She’s not a gear-head, rather, a digital folk artist who vividly and simplistically expresses her inner world using resourcefulness and honesty. Her video work incorporates green screen graphics, digital puppetry, and compositing to produce imagery that’s cerebral, campy, and hypnotic.

  • Alexandrea Archuleta weaves together sound works inspired by patterns in nature, subliminal perception, and memory activation. Her electronic lullabies and broken ambient reflections function as a holistic approach to electronics and healing on biological and emotional levels. An inverted study of music thanatology in the form of a time capsule of sounds for living and grieving. The Universal Element of Sound is one of the many keys to wellness, both on the personal and collective planes, thus an essential piece of the puzzle contributing to global health and Universal consciousness.

  • Takiaya Reed plays electro-acoustic soprano saxophone and guitar for sludge metal band Divide and Dissolve, whose music addresses decolonization, indigenous sovereignty and Black liberation.

  • Alexa Burrell is a Bay Area multimedia artist who composes intricate sonic and video works consisting primarily of sampled and found media. Burrell’s works emphasize the textural and visceral qualities of body, voice and identity.

    Check out her work www.alexaburrell.com

  • Andrew Blanton is a percussionist, media artist, and educator. His work is fundamentally trans-disciplinary, combining classical percussion, new media art, and creative coding to create real time sonic and visual instruments. He is currently Assistant Professor of Digital Media Art at San José State University in the CADRE media lab. He has performed and presented his work around the world. His work has been shown in the Google Cultural Lab in Paris, The University of Brasilia, PUC-Rio, OT301 Amsterdam, and McGill University Montreal as a part of the Transplanted Roots Percussion Symposium.

    www.andrewblanton.com