Every year, Other Minds holds a Festival of new music, curated by Artistic Director Charles Amirkhanian, around an idea, theme, or group of composers. Known for featuring stellar guest performers, a significant number of world premieres, commissions, and productions that incorporate new technologies and multidisciplinary collaborations, the Other Minds Festival brings together composers representing all points of the musical spectrum and pushing the creative boundaries of their respective genres.
A bevy of composers convened for the 28th Other Minds Festival, an international annual showcase for composers held at San Francisco’s Brava Theater September 25–28, 2024. The Festival opened with two world premiere performances of The Cello Quartet by the visionary Seattle-based media artist Trimpin, featuring three autonomous cellos, human cellist Lori Goldston, and a trio of circus artists, choreographed by Margaret Fisher. Piano/percussion quartet Yarn/Wire, trumpeter Nate Wooley, and pianist Sarah Cahill performed the music of New Zealand-born American composer Annea Lockwood and Norwegian composer Jan Martin Smørdal. Closing out the festival, two percussionists, Marshall Trammell and Nava Dunkelman, returned to the Bay Area to be reunited with their local counterparts. Trammell performed an improvised set expressing the connections of poetry and music with saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh, while Dunkelman performed with Amma Ateria as the electro-percussion duo IMA.
Composers from five countries convened for the 27th Other Minds Festival for six nights of new music at San Francisco’s Taube Atrium Theater and Gray Area. Highlights included electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick’s performance of As I Live & Breathe with video artist Lillevan, an improvised set by pianist and composer Craig Taborn, the first live performance of Mary Kouyoumdjian’s They Will Take My Island, a string octet about the life of Armenian-American abstract expressionist painter Arshile Gorky with film by Atom Egoyan, the world premiere of an OM-commissioned work for Friction Quartet by Norwegian composer and polymath Eivind Buene, Bora Yoon’s multimedia set for live electronics, voice, and violin with visual collaborator Joshue Ott, and the world premiere of Carl Stone’s Re:gendo with Japanese singer Akaihirume.
Other Minds Festival 26 brought together a cast of composers from locations both near and far for three nights of new music at San Francisco’s historic Great Star Theater in Chinatown. Highlights included Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Raven Chacon taking the stage with legendary Bay Area experimentalist Guillermo Galindo, an electroacoustic violin performance by Japanese-American violinist and composer Mari Kimura, the improvisatory duo of bassist Joëlle Léandre and vocalist Lauren Newton, a newly commissioned work for the duo of Kate Stenberg and Sarah Cahill by Norwegian composer Lars Petter Hagen, and the US premiere of UK composer Dominic Murcott’s masterwork The Harmonic Canon, performed on a half-ton bell designed specifically for the work.
Single-minded and visionary composers are so often the ones most easily ignored by the changing currents of music taste. Ivan Wyschnegradsky (1893-1979) led a life characterized by exile and cultural exclusion; he was never part of any school, and the individuality of his work reflects his personal and lifelong determination to honor his deeply idiosyncratic muse. He was a founding father of microtonal composition and theory, yet he was at heart an expressionist, a spiritual descendant of Scriabin. Throughout his long life he sought audiences for his music but never compromised his artistic principles to gain the public ear. A mystical belief in the value of his work sustained him through these decades of neglect, affording his music surety and conviction. Other Minds 24 marked the first ever United States retrospective of the work of Ivan Wyschnegradsky and the world premiere of Brian Baumbusch’s The Pressure.
The major event of our 2018 season was Other Minds Festival 23 (performances April 9-14, 2018), devoted to text-sound compositional work utilizing “speech” as a musical medium–text, isolated phonemes, and other vocal utterances as sound material and structural elements. Much of this repertoire also involved aspects of electronic manipulation in live performance. Works by Amy X Neuburg, Pamela Z, Clark Coolidge, Alvin Curran, Anne Waldman, Sheila Davies Sumner, Susan Stone, and Mark Applebaum will receive their OM debuts. We presented historical work, including Austrian-born American composer Ernst Toch’s complete Gesprochene Musik (including its two rediscovered “lost” movements which accompany the better known “Geographical Fugue”), Kurt Schwitters’ notorious Ursonate (“Primeval Sonata”), and Virgil Thomson/Gertrude Stein’s delightful Capital Capitals.
Lou Silver Harrison (1917-2003) was a pioneering environmentalist, early advocate of gay rights, but most of all, one of America’s most original and maverick composers. He has been an inspiration to a generation of younger composers and world musicians, and his works have been celebrated worldwide in honor of his one hundredth birthday. Other Minds Festival 22 explored the vast range of his work, from intimate and exquisite chamber music to intricate, shimmering gamelans, and thunderous orchestral and percussion masterpieces. Also celebrated was the centennial of Isang Yun (1915-1995), a colleague and friend of Harrison whose work married Korean traditional to modernist European composition. Now revered as one of North and South Korea’s national treasures, Yun was also a kidnapped political prisoner and international cause célebre–a lightning rod and polarizing figure of the Cold War conflicts.
OM 21’s large roster of composers came from an eclectic range of musical backgrounds and styles, in works ranging from Gavin Bryar’s post-Renaissance inspired and labyrinthine harmonies of his Second Book of Madrigals to the eloquent and emotionally direct works of Meredith Monk. The recipient of numerous international awards and honors, she was presented a 2014 National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. Also on the bill was Michael Gordon, who, in the words of the New Yorker merges “subtle rhythmic invention with incredible power in his music, embodying the fury of punk rock, the nervous brilliance of free jazz and the intransigence of classical modernism.” Making their OM debut was the ensemble, Nordic Voices, modern music specialists who, in addition to virtuosic displays of vocalism, incorporate speech, non-sung sounds, and overtone singing in their repertoire.
In the words of Other Minds Executive and Artistic Director Charles Amirkhanian, “As we look back at the nearly 200 composers we’ve brought to San Francisco for these gatherings, it seemed a good time to tip our hat to some of our most surprising discoveries who have gone on to make signal contributions to international concert life.” Tribute was paid to the late Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe, and the legendary Lou Harrison, whose final work, Scenes from Nek Chand, was composed for our 2002 festival. Among the many highlights were the U.S. premiere of Michael Nyman’s Symphony No. 2. The diverse roster of performers included the Del Sol String Quartet, National Steel just intonation guitar soloist David Tanenbaum, Miya Masaoka on koto, and Steven Kent on the infrequently encountered Australian didjeridu.
In celebration of the Bay Area’s heritage as a pioneering stronghold of arts and culture, for the first time the OM 19 Festival presented an entirely Northern California cast of composers, including Mark Applebaum, John Bischoff, Joseph Byrd, Charles Céleste Hutchins, Myra Melford, Roscoe Mitchell, Wendy Reid, and John Schott. The disparate experimental worlds of jazz, laptops, DJs, and improvisation were gathered together in one place. Donald Buchla, pioneering electronic composer and inventor or the seminal Buchla synthesizer was featured. In the works of Charles Céleste Hutchinson, the intersection of visual and musical elements was explored. Their work is eclectic and not categorized by one musical canon. Perhaps this very eclecticism is what defines the “Bay Area Tradition.” Arguably, OM 19’s most unique performer was African Grey Parrot, Lulu Reid.
World music offerings took center stage at OM 18 including a remarkable array of woodwinds, from the soprano recorder of the world’s most widely-hailed Baroque recorder player, Michala Petri, to Anna Petrini’s rare Paetzold contrabass recorder. The ultra-long Indian bansuri, producing a remarkably tender low register sound was presented by the great Indian classical music master, G.S. Sachdev, accompanied by Swapan Chaudhuri on tabla. The genre-busting Scandinavian folk music trio of violin, recorder and violin, Gáman (which is old Norse for “joy”) enlivened the festival with music from the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Denmark, and Sweden. Korean multidisciplinary artist, Dohee Lee, gave a world premiere of Ara (2013) accompanying herself on a newly designed instrument, the eye harp. Other featured performers were the noted new music specialists, vocalists Amy X. Neuburg and Pamela Z, and the William Winant Percussion Group.
In Scandinavia, a distinctive music has developed–a rich vein of experimentalism that has a personality all its own. Other Minds Festival 17 opened with the first American visit of a Norwegian sextet (soprano voice, clarinet, percussion, piano, guitar, and cello) palindromically-named asamisimasa. They opened the festival with music of their countryman Øyvind Torvund and Danish composer Simon Steen-Andersen. Newly invented instruments, aerosol cans and bullhorns, alongside conventional orchestral instruments, mirror the diversity of musical influences and quotations, ranging from Scandinavian folk music to Henry Purcell or Black Flag. American musical tradition was represented by several established composers including Harold Budd, Gloria Coates, John Kennedy, Ken Ueno, and by representatives of the next generation of composers, D. Edward Davis, John P. Hastings, Peter V. Svendsen, and Jen Wang.
Other Minds Festival 16 brought together a distinguished international group of composers and performers. Arguably, the best known of this OM 16’s composers was esteemed Dutch composer, Louis Andriessen. His work explores such disparate creative issues as the relation between music and politics, and the nature of time, velocity, and mortality. From the opposite end of the planet, a Balinese electric guitar trio led by I Wayan Balawan made its OM debut. Kyle Gann, composer and award winning music critic and author, has developed a unique rhythmic language, based on differing successive and simultaneous tempos which was developed from his study of Hopi, Zuni, and Pueblo Indian musics. Other prominent guest artists included composer Janice Giteck, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Seattle Chamber Ensemble, and the return of OM favorite, the Del Sol String Quartet.
In 2010, to celebrate its crystal anniversary, the Other Minds Festival invited composer/performers from across the musical spectrum for its fifteenth year of the annual series. In retrospect, one might think OM has all along been employing a crystal ball to find our composer participants because so many have gone from scant name recognition to increasing prominence in the music scene. OM 15 presented a number of genre defying performers. From the world of new jazz, Edward “Kidd” Jordan, to the acclaimed Chinese-American composer Chou Wen Chung, “triple threat” violinist/vocalist/composer Carla Kihlstedt, Lisa Bielawa, winner of the 2010 Rome Prize, to the radically spare post-minimalism of Tom Johnson, and the American premiere of Dutch filmmaker Frank Scheffer’s documentary on Edgard Varèse, OM 15 had it all (and then some).
When Other Minds held its first festival in 1993 it was with the intention of making the experience special not only for the audience but also the visiting composers. What would happen if we gave our guests four days of time together before our concerts without any agenda other than to bond with each other in a peaceful environment? To that end, we have been blessed to have the cooperation each year of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, which hosts creative individuals throughout the year and is one of the nation’s leading sites for the making of new literature, dance, music and visual art. Each of our visiting composers has been in residence from February 28 to March 4 on the spectacular 700-acre ranch in Woodside, California, getting to know one another’s music in an isolated setting with wonderful hiking, site specific sculpture, excellent meals and “The Gift of Time” to make connections that will last a lifetime.
During his visit to San Francisco last month, composer and and reed player Don Byron recalled that his experience at Other Minds 2 in 1995 changed his life. “I was on the cusp, still investing my time mostly as a player. But talking with Terry Riley, Lou Harrison, Tan Dun, Alvin Singleton, Muhal Richard Abrams and others at the ranch and listening to their work while sharing mine, I made a commitment to become more active as a composer. It was the big turning point for me-one of the most important experiences I’ve had as an artist.” Hearing this 13 years later brings me to the subject of Other Minds 13. Throughout these years we’ve continued to bring San Francisco the most original thinkers in new music, most of whom wouldn’t have appeared here otherwise. And the results of our festival continue to resound elsewhere.
A gathering of so many composers and performers at an Other Minds Festival is a special occasion. It brings together the collective experience of such composers as Per Nørgård and Peter Sculthorpe, representing over 100 years of composing, and, when we add up that of the other guest composers and performers, literally thousands of years of new music mindfulness that animates this community for a special weekend in San Francisco. This past week, our guest composers have met in private conference at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in Woodside, to share their work and their life journeys in a way composers rarely are able to do. Invariably, our composers have told us that they truly appreciate this short but intense period of the time together and often make lifelong friendships that become a lasting reminder of their visit to the Bay Area.
At OM 11 we were honored to have in our midst the distinguished English composer Michael Nyman whose 60th year we celebrated on opening night. That same year we had the violinist-composers Daniel Bernard Roumain and Billy Bang, as well as the New Haven based So Percussion, who performed the icy music of John Luther Adams and the Del Sol String Quartet, who gave a pair of jaw dropping performances for the festival. We were also graced by a new work by Fred Frith, Evan Ziporyn’s gamelan inspired Melody Competition, Phill Niblock’s multi-channel drone work for guitar and e-bow, Maria de Alvear’s work for cello and two voices, and last, but certainly not least, a reworking of Other Minds own Charles Amirkhanian’s Son of Metropolis San Francisco.
A tenth anniversary for Other Minds, one of American’s premiere avant-garde music festivals, called for an extra celebration. We moved back to the site of our first production in 1993, the beautiful Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater and Forum for our most ambitious festival yet. With composers and performers from Germany, Holland, China, Korea, Japan, Poland, and the Republic of Armenia, in addition to our usual American contingent, we also experienced the remarkable music of an Italian Dhrupad singer, a German classical accordionist, a Burmese pat waing player and a French composer from Montréal who performs with 12 loudspeakers. Other Minds is here to celebrate musical innovation in all its forms and to remind us that new music truly is a joyful noise.
At Other Minds Festival 9 we honored the life and work of Ned Rorem, a composer who in the heyday of post-war serialism dared to compose in favor of a style that valued beauty and emotionality. We also welcomed virtuoso solo percussionist Evelyn Glennie who has worked tirelessly at carving a new place for percussion in the realm of classical music, Stephan Micus and Jack Body, who’s interest in the music of non-Western cultures leads to a powerful cultural synthesis in their own music, and Chinese born composer Ge Gan-ru, a survivor of persecution during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Oakland’s virtuoso singer-composer Amy X Neuburg performing her powerhouse work Six Little Stains, William Parker, who for many years was the most trusted bassist of such distinguished soloists as Cecil Taylor, performed as bandleader for his work Spirit Catcher, Daniel Lentz gave the San Francisco premiere of his Café Desire, and Stephen Scott rounded out the backend of the festival with a performance with his Bowed Piano Ensemble.
Each year we host composers whose pioneering spirits are perhaps their most notable shared feature. All have gone their own way instinctively, rather than following rote patterns of career-building. In 2002 we honored and celebrated the 85th birthday of Lou Harrison, the 75th of Randy Weston, and the 70th of Pauline Oliveros. We were happy to welcome the remarkable Ricardo Tacuchian from Brazil and on Ondes Martenot, Takashi Harada from Japan. We musically wined and dined with Annea Lockwood and Richard Teitelbaum, whose work deals so profoundly with electronics. We were thrilled to have composer, pianist and conductor, originally from Cuba, Tania León. And we saw jaws drop in the presence of composer-inventor-artist Ellen Fullman and her Long String Instrument. Thanks to the Kronos Quartet, baritone Thomas Buckner, guitarist David Tanenbaum, New York’s Continuum, shakuhachi master Masayuki Koga, keyboardist Linda Burman-Hall, and the many other excellent performers who graced our stage this year.
Other Minds has a philosophy that involves looking forward while paying homage where we came from. An obsession with the “new” but in regard to how it is framed by the old. Nobody makes it newer than Jim Tenney, Andrew Hill, Chris Brown, Gavin Bryars, or Alvin Curran, each in their individual voices. They are masters of experimental genres, if such an appellation doesn’t beg credibility. Hi Kyung Kim, Aleksandra Vrebalov, and Glen Velez, along with William Winant, often allude to music of non-Western cultures in their work. They bring us new looks at modern music through more traditional filters. We also gave a glance back at OM 7 to the life and work of the then recently departed Alan Hovhaness and the individualist poet and composer, Ezra Pound.
Other Minds Festival 6 was an unusual festival in that Other Minds Executive and Artistic Director Charles Amirkhanian had to bow out of his usual role for an exciting opportunity in Italy. In his place Carl Stone, a long-time friend and colleague, programed an exciting and uniquely “other” program. He called on some old friends from Darmstadt, Leroy Jenkins and Christian Wolff, and his old Cal Arts cohort, Peter Garland, as well as some other composers he was admittedly slightly less knowledgeable of at the time, such as Annie Gosfield, David Lang, DJ Spooky, and Hyo-shin Na. Also on the docket was the “telephone terrorist” Robin Rimbaud AKA “scanner,” the brilliant Nubian oudist Hamza el Din, and (at the urging of Amirkhanian) the Dutch born Jacob Ter Veldhuis (Jacob TV).
1998-99 marked the first year Other Minds as an organization held “a season” of events, not just a single annual festival. In October 1998 we hosted the Bang on a Can All-Stars in their first Bay Area appearance. They gave the U.S. premiere of Brian Eno’s “Music for Airports” over two evenings, October 21 and 22, alongside music of Pamela Z, Dan Plonsey, Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe and Evan Ziporyn. On November 7th we co-presented with the Common Sense Composers Collective a new music marathon. Both events took place at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Among those presented at the latter event were Harold Budd, Henry Brant and Ingram Marshall.
Participants: Paul Dresher, Mamoru Fujieda, Carl Stone, Hafez Modirzadeh, Henry Brant, Visual Brains (Sei Kazama & Hatsune Ohtsu), Laetitia Sonami, Donald Swearingen, Pamela Z
Participants: Henry Kaiser, Lukas Ligeti, Frederic Rzewski, David Raksin, Laurie Anderson, George Lewis, Marian Zazeela, La Monte Young, Miya Masaoka, Charles Shere, Kui Dong, Olly Wilson, Ionel Petroï
Participants: Ashot Zograbyan, Frances White, Calliope Tsoupaki, Tan Dun, Alvin Singelton, Terry Riley, Ingram Marshall, Rex Lawson, Mari Kimura, Lou Harrison, Don Byron, Muhal Richard Abrams
Participants: Meredith Monk, Conlon Nancarrow, Philip Glass, Jai Uttal, Charles Amirkhanian, Julia Wolfe, Trimpin, Foday Musa Suso, Barbara Monk Feldman, Thomas Buckner, Robert Ashley, Jon Jang
