Feel The Pressure at the Other Minds Festival (SF Classical Voice)

By commissioning composer Brian Baumbusch for the evening-long multimedia piece titled The Pressure, Other Minds has opted to present a horror show. But what audiences and performers at the Yerba Buena Center will experience on the opening day of the Other Minds Festival on June 15 will be much more than that.

“The elements all work together miraculously well,” assures Sam Cushman, a member of Baumbusch’s Lightbulb Ensemble, one of several groups and artists involved in the production. “Brian has been able to bring together threads of his musical life, whether it’s the instruments he’s built (based on Balinese music systems) or the singing quartet (which is more like a Greek chorus), or the strings [the Friction Quartet]. He’s doing this in a way that to me feels very organic and genuine, and not like a forced mashup or fusion.”

And there’s more: A narrator (the composer), backed by projected intertitles (familiar from silent movies) and illustrations (by Spanish graphic designer Fede Yankelevich), will tell the tale in 15 scenes of a town beset by the titular barometric extremities, as well as by hail and demons. The audience will also hear a Leslie organ synthesizer, tubular bells, and a Disklavier-cum-player-piano. —Jeff Kaliss

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