NEW YORK — When Suicide first played their pioneering blend of punk rock and synth pop 20 years ago, they had a hard time finding a place to play — let alone a festival.

"We used to go to gigs, and they'd actually have us up against the wall," the duo's Alan Vega recalled recently.

What a difference 20 years make.

Tuesday (Jan. 18) was the first of six nights of the New York Festival of Electronic Composers and Improvisers at the Knitting Factory, the local nightclub dedicated to avant-garde music. The series is co-produced by the club and the Whitney Museum.

Suicide anchor the Friday and Saturday night lineup. According to Vega, the appearances at the Knitting Factory will be a step up from the group's early performances.

Suicide's penchant for inciting the crowd both verbally and sonically, with their mixture of punk rock and synth pop, endeared them to neither faction. "We had a really bad reputation," Vega said.

But as if to demonstrate how taste has caught up to them in the past 20 years, Suicide's first two albums, reissued Tuesday as two-CD sets, with bonus tracks, would play as well in the chill-out tent as they would in the dance tent at a summer rave.

Other artists on the six-night bill managed to avoid the anger of club owners and casual listeners by remaining on the fringes their whole careers, until electronic music was designated as the "next big thing," and they were anointed as its founders. Tuesday's program features three of the genre's icons, composers Tony Conrad, Pauline Oliveros and Morton Subotnick.

Joining the three on Tuesday's bill were David Grubbs — a more recent phenomenon who has been compared to both Jonathan Richman and Beck — and Stephen Vitiello, the curator of a sound show that's part of the Whitney Museum's current exhibition "The American Century: Art and Culture 1950–2000." Vitiello said he sees the Knitting Factory's program as a live counterpoint to what he was able to assemble for the museum show.

Wednesday night is a tribute to improvisers, including Elliott Sharp and his group Tectonics, and a trio comprising Zeena Parkins, Charles K. Noyes and Jim O'Rourke. Sampler extraordinaire Alvin Curran plans to present a new work, "Weft Warped and Purl," which festival organizers said is packed with snippets of live recordings of other artists who have played at the Knitting Factory. Datach'i, also known as Joseph Fraioli, will perform works from his 1999 sonic assault, 10110101(Rec & Play).

The more soothing sounds of Astralwerks performing artists Carl Craig and Spacetime Continuum, also known as Jonah Sharp, take the stage Thursday night. Then punk provocateurs Suicide and Pan Sonic have the weekend, and the Silver Apples (who named themselves for Subotnick's 1967 piece "Silver Apples of the Moon"), DJ Food and Liminal take the closing night, Sunday.