Music From Other Minds

This Music from Other Minds features two “A” students: 1) أحمد [Ahmed]—a jazz quartet featuring Pat Thomas, Seymour Wright, Joel Grip, and Antonin Gerbal that works to “re-arrange and re-imagine in real time the music of composer, bassist and oud player Ahmed Abdul-Malik (1927-1993)” and 2) selections from Philip Glass’ 1983 opera Akhnaten.

Yoko Ono, born February 18, 1933, is a pioneer in performance art, film, and conceptual art, and is known for her activism for peace and social justice. The first hour of this Music from Other Minds surveys Ono’s life and art, drawing from “Music of the Mind,” a retrospective of her work organized by the Tate Modern in London. The second hour features electronic and instrumental music by Toshi Ichiyanagi (February 4, 1933 – October 7, 2022). He and Ono were married 1956–1963. Together they arranged John Cage and Merce Cunningham’s first visit to Japan. Ichiyanagi was a preeminent Japanese composer, writing chamber and orchestral music, multimedia pieces, operas, electronic music, and music using traditional Japanese instruments.

On this Music from Other Minds, Rachel Schonfeld featured the Dagbe Cultural Troupe. The Troupe is part of the Dagbe Cultural Institute and Arts Centre, a Ghanian organization promoting Ewe (eh-weh) culture, the language, culture, and ethnic group that originated in the Volta region in Ghana. Traditional Ewe music is typically performed in various kinds of social gatherings with a hierarchical drum ensemble and dancers. Schonfeld was lucky to spend a study trip at the Centre in 2024 to learn about West African drumming and dancing practice. The program also featured master-drummer Godwin Agbeli, highlife and jazz from Ghanian guitarist Ebo Taylor, ventured briefly to Nigeria for some afrobeat from Fela Kuti, and ended with Ghanian pop musicians Stonebwoy and Seyram Music, who reinterpret and incorporate Ewe rhythms with a multitude of other global influences.

On this Music from Other Minds, Devin King plays a wide-ranging interview from December 7, 1989 of the English avant-garde guitar player Derek Bailey by the Northern Californian avant-garde guitar player Henry Kaiser.

A true original, Morton Feldman (1926–1987) abandoned systematic approaches to composition in favor of his intuition, working from one sound to the next, usually quiet, and often for very long durations. He was a pioneer in graphic scores, but later in his career returned to conventional notation. This program includes early works such as Intermissions and Durations, as well as selections from his late masterpieces, Clarinet and String Quartet, Crippled Symmetry, Rothko Chapel, and the sublime Piano and String Quartet. We’ll also hear Feldman’s voice in Charles Amirkhanian’s Loudspeakers.

On this rebroadcast of an earlier Music from Other Minds, Liam Herb explores the many approaches to electronic music. Tune in for collage-based compositions of Gordon Mumma and John Oswald (Plunderphonics), the interactive electronics of David Behrman, analog works by Victoria Shen and John Bischoff, electro-reinforced sound poetry by Enzo Minarelli, improvised electronics with drums by Laurie Spiegel, and the kitchen sink with Pauline Oliveros.

This Music from Other Minds features music in advance of Morton Feldman’s 100th birthday on January 12, 2026. To celebrate, on January 8th, 2026, Other Minds is presenting pianist Amy Williams performing Feldman’s 1981 work, Triadic Memories. Williams’ father, Jan Williams, taught with Feldman for many years at the University of Buffalo. The program also features Amy Williams playing as part of the Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo as well as Jan Williams playing music by Lukas Foss.

This program offers three new works by New York based musicians.

Cellular Songs, a new album by Meredith Monk, has 15 compositions for vocal ensemble, with some using vibraphone, piano, and percussion. Of the collection Monk says, “I wanted to make a piece that can be experienced as an alternative possibility of human behavior, where the values are cooperation, interdependence, and kindness, as an antidote to the values that are being propagated right now.”

Since founding the jazz trio AIR in the 1970s, Henry Threadgill has led many ensembles, and in recent years his compositions explore unusual instrumental combinations. His latest, Listen Ship, is for six acoustic guitars and two pianos.

Composer and multi-instrumentalist Elliot Sharp has a new work for six electric guitars called Mare Crisium. Sharp says it “offers a non-linear, non-rational coded response to the current world situation and hopes to provide positive psychoacoustic chemical change to the players and listeners.”

This week’s program features music by Arcomusical, a berimbau and percussion ensemble based in Illinois. The berimbau is an instrument traditionally played in the Brazilian body-game of capoeira however Arcomusical brings it into new music, following in the footsteps of legends like Naná Vasconcelos and Ramiro Musotto. Arcomuscial is both a musical ensemble and an educational organization run and founded by Gregory Beyer, a music professor at Northern Illinois University. We will be playing selections from two of their albums, Spinning in a Wheel from 2019 and Emigre and Exile from 2022. Both albums tonight featured performances by Alexis C. Lamb, Anthony Cable, Daniel Eastwood, Elena Ross, Ethan H. Martin, Kyle Flens, Raychel Taylor, and Gregory Beyer.