The Lester Bowie Tribute Concert
Friday, October 9, 7:30pm
Herbst Theatre, War Memorial Performing Arts Center
401 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco
Tickets $30-$50, available through City Box Office online or by phone (415) 392-4400
"The wiliest jazz provocateur of his generation."
-The Village Voice
Lester Bowie (1941-1999) was best known as co-founder and leader of the Art Ensemble of Chicago from 1968 until his passing a decade ago. On Friday, October 9, Other Minds will present The Lester Bowie Tribute Concert at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. This benefit event for Jazz in Flight will honor the late jazz trumpeter Bowie with performances by Roscoe Mitchell and Famoudou Don Moye of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, James Carter Quartet, and Fred Ho in a rare solo appearance.
Bowie's work with the Art Ensemble, and in other projects including his brass nonet, Brass Fantasy, and the New Directions Quartet led by Jack DeJohnette, became highly influential for his recasting of the jazz trumpet as a vehicle for humor, virtuosity, and lyricism. His showmanship and sense of adventure were evidenced in the diversity of his resume, which included participation in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), arranging of pop tunes by Puccini, Cole Porter and the Spice Girls, and recording the theme song for The Cosby Show.
The Lester Bowie Tribute Concert will be produced by Bowie's daughter Sukari Ivester, who also served as Road Manager for Brass Fantasy and the Art Ensemble of Chicago from 1992 until 1999. Ivester, who helped guide her father's ensembles through tours in Japan, Russia, and throughout Europe, earned a Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Chicago, and is currently a Research Fellow at the University of California Berkeley.
>>Buy your tickets now
2. Henry Cowell: The Whole World of Music (November 12-13)
Other Minds Presents
Henry Cowell: The Whole World of Music
Two distinct concerts of music by Henry Cowell
Thursday, November 12
7pm Reception, 8pm Concert
Valley Presbyterian Church, Portola Valley
Friday, November 13
7pm Panel Discussion, 8pm Concert
Presidio Chapel, San Francisco
Reception to follow
Tickets
November 12: $20 general, $15 students/seniors
November 13: $25 general, $20 students/seniors
Two-concert Pass: $40 / $30 students & seniors
In addition to two concerts of music, Henry Cowell: The Whole World of Music will include a special exhibition of historical photographs, correspondence, and recordings illuminating Cowell's role as an impresario of new music in America.
In the 1920s, he was not only hammering tone clusters out of pianos around the Bay Area: he was also developing the New Music Society of California, whose first concert program in 1925 (at right) featured the music of Dane Rudhyar, Edgar Varese, Carl Ruggles, Leo Ornstein and Arnold Schoenberg. The New Music Society would continue to play a critical role in the development of an experimental tradition in the US, bringing to light important composers such as Charles Ives, Henry Brant (OM 4), Chou Wen-chung (OM 15), Conlon Nancarrow (OM 1), Lou Harrison (OM 2 & 8), and William Russell through its publications and recordings.
Purchase your tickets to either (or both) concerts, presented by Other Minds, to view the Cowell exhibition and hear performances of Cowell's chamber and piano music, featuring Sarah Cahill, the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio, the Colorado String Quartet, Sandra Soderlund (organ), and Wendy Hillhouse (mezzo-soprano).
Henry Cowell: The Whole World of Music has been made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts as part of American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius.
>>Buy your tickets now
3. OM at Chamber Music Day San Francisco
CHAMBER MUSIC DAY
Saturday, September 26, 12:30-8pm
Old First Church, San Francisco
Join frequent Other Minds performers and New Music Séance musicians Sarah Cahill, Kate Stenberg, and Eva-Maria Zimmermann at Chamber Music Day, presented by San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music. This free day-long event offers showcases for many of the Bay Area's best ensembles, including the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Laurel Ensemble, new piano four-hands group ZOFO, Earplay, Del Sol String Quartet, and others. Click here for the complete schedule; the OM Séance folks begin at 5pm.
4. Now available for free listening at radiOM.org
Portrait of Composer Colin McPhee (1980)Charles Amirkhanian introduces the life and music of Colin McPhee (1901-1964), with commentary by Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison. A classically trained pianist and composer, McPhee became prominent in the 1930s modern music movement in New York. His life and music changed direction when he discovered Balinese music in 1931. He moved to Bali and thoroughly studied the indigenous music. McPhee composed music incorporating Balinese themes. His book Music in Bali, is the definitive text on the subject. Listen to McPhee and Benjamin Britten performing Tabuh Teluh, Balinese melodies transcribed for piano four-hands, and excerpts from the 1936 orchestral suite Tabuh Tabuhan, and Concerto for Piano and Wind Octet.
San Francisco Chamber Music Society: Subotnick and Friends: A Concert from January 12, 1981
The fourth concert of the 1980-81 season of the San Francisco Chamber Music Society featured Morton Subotnick and friends, commemorating this composer-clarinetist's appearance at the first Society concert held on November 21, 1961. In this return engagement, Subotnick performs Beethoven's Trio in B-Flat, Op. 11 as well as his own Two Life Histories: A Melodrama. The concert then concludes with Béla Bartók's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. In his Two Life Histories, scored for voice, clarinet and ghost electronics, Subotnick has dramatized the life cycle and metaphorical history of a butterfly, utilizing a mixture of stories from the Old Testament and Greek mythology. According to the program guide: "The electronic score consists of a small package of electronics and an audio tape. The tape acts as a controlling device for the electronics, causing the modules to process the instrumental sound according to the plan of the composition. The ghost series is a unique method of blending electronics with live performance so that the effect of the tape is not audible unless the performer is making a sound." Bartók's Sonata was, according to the program guide: "written for four performers, all of whom are treated equally as virtuosi. The first movement ranges in mood from the foreboding introduction, to the barbaric first theme, to the quiet second theme in Bulgarian rhythm. A galloping fugue develops out of a horn call...The second movement consists of a much simpler three part form with a coda, an impressionistic painting of 'night music.' Bell-like sonorities provide a background for a nervous five note figure reminiscent of the sound of a woodpecker. The tensions created by the first movement and continued in the second are resolved in the final movement, a straightforward dance." This concert was recorded live at the Fireman's Fund Forum in San Francisco on January 12, 1981 by Steve Wolfe.
Ode To Gravity: Charlie Morrow and New Wilderness Audiographics (1978)
From an interview recorded in December of 1977 and broadcast on June 26, 1978, Charles Amirkhanian talks with New York composer and producer, Charlie Morrow, at his home on West End Avenue in Manhattan. Morrow was, at the time of this recording, director of the New Wilderness Foundation, which issued a remarkable series of cassette tapes featuring experimental music, text-sound compositions, and field recordings, created by a variety of avant-garde composers and poets. The program begins with several excerpts from Morrow's own works inspired by Native American chanting and the anthropological text-sound compositions of Jerome Rothenberg, with whom he co-founded the New Wilderness Foundation. Morrow then goes on to present a sampling of other works issued by the Foundation and talks about his affinity with many of the experimental composers and sound artists featured, including Tui St. George Tucker, Annea Lockwood, Pauline Oliveros, Phillip Corner, and others. Many of these tapes foreshadow the increased popularity of New Age music and environmental recordings during the late 1970s and 80s, as the involved composers seek to explore the relationship between music, healing, and meditation. However, unlike many of the New Age recording that were produced at that time, these New Wilderness Audiographics compositions retain their experimental edge, and fail to fall into the treacly morass that was the hallmark of their more commercially oriented cousins.
Radiofest - New American Music: The Pioneers of Electronic Music in America (1982)
This is a program, produced by the American Society of University Composers in conjunction with Radiofest: New American Music, in which the work of two early American pioneers in electronic music is explored. During the early 1950s Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky collaborated on a number of electro-acoustic recordings that utilized the newly available tape recorder, and employed such seemingly basic techniques as feed back and changing tape speeds to transform pitch with considerable effect and remarkable musicality. In 1958 the two men founded the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Both men are interviewed in this program and a number of their earliest electronic pieces are heard.
In honor of San Francisco's week-long literary festival Litquake (October 9-17):
Ode To Gravity: The Dial-A-Poem Poets (1973)
An In-Studio Reading by Charles Reznikoff, March 1975
5. Special Ticket Offer: 50% off A House in Bali
A House in Bali
An Opera by Evan Ziporyn
Libretto by Paul Schick (after Colin McPhee)
Directed by Jay Scheib
Staging & Choreography by Anne Harley & Dewi Kadek Aryani
With Bang on a Can All-Stars & Gamelan Salukat
Saturday, September 26, 8pm
Sunday, September 27, 7pm
Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley Campus
SPECIAL OFFER: 50% off, exclusive to MindAlert readers (code: AHIBOM50)
Cal Performances is pleased to offer MindAlert readers a 50% discount on tickets to the American premiere of A House in Bali, the magnificent new opera by acclaimed composer Evan Ziporyn (OM 11). Combining Western opera and contemporary music with the sounds of a gamelan orchestra and Balinese dance, this American premiere traces the West's century-long infatuation with Bali. Based on the true stories of three Westerners - composer Colin McPhee, anthropologist Margaret Mead, and artist Walter Spies - the work tells the story of their 1930s sojourn to Bali and how their found paradise is soon shattered by politics, war, and difficulties with the Balinese boy who becomes McPhee's protégé. This stunning multimedia spectacle brings together artists of East and West, including New York's acclaimed Bang on a Can All-Stars, Gamelan Salukat from Bali and an international cast of vocalists and dancers.
Discounted tickets are available to MindAlert readers for both performances: Saturday, September 26 at 8pm and Sunday, September 27 at 7pm in Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. Discounted tickets start at $16. To purchase your tickets, please contact the Ticket Office at 510-642-9988 and ask for your "Other Minds MindAlert" discount. Or, order online using promotion code AHIBOM50. (Note that registration will be required prior to login for first time Cal Performances ticket buyers. After registration, or if you are an existing Cal Performances web patron, enter the above code at login to access the discounted ticket price.) Please note that there is a limit of four (4) discounted tickets per person and the discount is not applicable to prior purchases. For additional information about A House in Bali and Cal Performances, please visit the Cal Performances website.
6. Eventwire: India & Africa, A Birthday Tribute to John Coltrane
India & Africa: A Birthday Tribute to John ColtraneAsian American Orchestra
Wednesday, September 23, 8pm and 10pm
Yoshi's, San Francisco
Anthony Brown's Asian American Orchestra (a project of Fifth Stream Music) will present its San Francisco Home Season event, "India & Africa: A Birthday Tribute to John Coltrane," at Yoshi's SF this Wednesday. The twin themes of "India & Africa" reference two seminal extended works composed and recorded by John Coltrane (born September 23, 1926), and reflect his most profound musical cultural influences. Brown will arrange these major works and others for the Asian American Orchestra, augmented with local guest musicians and former collaborators from South India and West Africa for this important occasion.
AAO's musical tribute to Coltrane has been specially arranged to coincide with the publication of John Coltrane and Black America's Quest for Freedom: Spirituality and the Music (Oxford University Press, 2010). The panel will include four local contributors to this book (including Dr. Brown), who will discuss Coltrane's spirit of universality and inclusivity in his compositions, and his timeless contributions to American musical culture. The other panelists will be Dr. Herman Gray, Professor of Sociology, UC Santa Cruz; Dr. Olly Wilson (OM 3), Professor Emeritus of Music, UC Berkeley; Dr. Tommy Lott, Professor of Philosophy and African American Studies, San Jose State University. This pre-concert symposium will be presented at the new Learning & Presentation Center at the Fillmore Jazz Heritage Center, next door to Yoshi's.
7. Eventwire: Del Sol String Quartet in New York City
Del Sol String QuartetMusic by Tania León, Pawel Mykietyn, Pawel Szymanski, Gabriela Ortiz Torres
Thursday, October 1, 7:30pm
Symphony Space, Leonard Nimoy Thalia, New York City
This first New York City appearance by San Francisco's Del Sol String Quartet will feature the world premiere of Esencia by Tania León (OM 8), and U.S. premieres by Polish composers Pawel Mykietyn (OM 15) and Pawel Szymanski. León and Mykietyn will be in attendance for a pre-concert reception and discussion.
8. Eventwire: TRIMPIN: the sound of invention
TRIMPIN: the sound of invention
a film by Peter Esmonde
Wednesday, October 14, 6:30pm
Sequoia Theatre, Mill Valley
Panel with Trimpin, Peter Esmonde, Charles Amirkhanian, and David Harrington
TRIMPIN: the sound of invention is a documentary feature profiling the life and work of the highly creative artist, inventor, engineer and composer Trimpin (OM 1, pictured here with Charles Amirkhanian at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; photo by John Fago). Filmed over the course of two years, Peter Esmonde's film shows Trimpin collaborating with the Kronos Quartet; mounting a multi-museum, 25-year retrospective of his work; building a 60-foot tower of automatic electric guitars; working in a glass foundry on a perpetual motion sculpture; and otherwise investigating and experimenting with various kinetic and acoustic works in a wild variety of settings. The film also takes viewers back to Trimpin's childhood home in southwestern Germany near the Black Forest, with revealing interviews of his family members and tours through personal photo albums.
>>Purchase tickets for Wednesday, October 14
Other screenings:
Friday, October 16, 9pm, Smith Rafael Film Center, San Rafael
Saturday, October 24 and Thursday, October 29, Roxie Theater, San Francisco
9. Eventwire: Music for 16 Futurist Noise Intoners
Music for 16 Futurist Noise Intoners
Original scores by Luigi Russolo and Paolo Buzzi
New compositions by an all-star cast of experimental composers
Ensemble players from Magik*Magik Orchestra
Friday, October 16, 8pm
Novellus Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco
In 1913, the Italian Futurist painter and composer Luigi Russolo constructed a family of special hand-cranked and electric instruments to realize an expanded field of orchestral sound. Called intonarumori (noise-intoners), and built out of wooden boxes housing intricate mechanical moving parts with large horns attached to the sides, these spectacular machines could produce and modulate all sort of complex noises-including explosions, howls, buzzes, and hisses-that celebrated the new urban, industrial sounds the Futurists so much adored. As the first instruments capable of systematically creating and manipulating noise through entirely mechanical processes, the intonarumori can be considered the ancestors of the synthesizers.
Although all the original intonarumori have been destroyed under the bombing of WWII, their noises and features have been widely discussed and speculated upon by members of the experimental music community. This project offers the first-ever replica of the set of 16 original intonarumori (8 noise families of 1-3 instruments each, in various registers), overseen by Luciano Chessa, a Bay Area-based composer and Russolo scholar.
The concert program includes compositions by Mike Patton, Text of Light, Blixa Bargeld, Carla Kihlstedt (OM 15) and Matthias Bossi, Ulrich Krieger, Ellen Fullman (OM 8), James Fei, Theresa Wong, John Butcher and Gino Robair, plus a piece by Elliott Sharp for intonarumori and Korean p'ansori singer, Luciano Chessa's L'acoustique ivresse on a sound poem by Luigi Russolo's friend Paolo Buzzi, a collective composition by the sfSound Group, and Pablo Ortiz's Tango Futurista, inspired by Marinetti's passion for the primordial energy of the Argentinian tango. The program is completed by the first modern live performances of the legendary fragment of Russolo's Risveglio di una città (1913) and the 1916 Futurist piece for intonarumori Words in Freedom by Buzzi, both presented in a special diplomatic edition by Chessa.
Part of "Metal + Machine + Manifesto = Futurism's First 100 Years"
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