Music From Other Minds

On this program, we’ll hear some highlights of Charles Amirkhanian on the radio from the Other Minds Archives in honor of his 80th birthday on January 19, 2025. Before co-founding Other Minds, Amirkhanian served as the Music Director for KPFA Radio in Berkeley, California from 1969 to 1992. This program includes Amirkhanian’s radio piece Gold and Spirit created for the 1984 Olympics Arts Festival, Radio Event: No. 14: Armenia Gardenia, an excerpt of the World Ear Project broadcast on KPFA, and his 1981 Radiovisions program on minimalism, The New Consonance.

This program honors three Bay Area musical luminaries. Michael Tilson Thomas served as Music Director for the San Francisco Symphony from 1995–2020, bringing innovative programming, inspired interpretations, and imaginative outreach and educational programs. MTT turned 80 in December. Charles Amirkhanian, whose career as a composer and presenter includes serving as Executive and Artistic Director of Other Minds, founder of the Speaking of Music series and Composer-to-Composer Festival, and Music Director at KPFA, turns 80 on January 19. Tabla master Zakir Hussain, who did as much as anyone to fuse North Indian classical music with jazz, western classical, and other musical traditions, recently died in San Francisco at the age of 73.

On this Music from Other Minds, Liam Herb plays an archival program produced by Other Minds Artistic and Executive Director Charles Amirkhanian honoring Peggy Glanville-Hicks‘s (December 29, 1912–June 25, 1990) 100th birthday, originally aired on December 28, 2012. In doing so, MfOM celebrates the composer’s 112th birthday with the broadcast.

The second hour of the program is dedicated to a program produced by Herb honoring the life and music of Henry Brant (September 15, 1915–April 25, 2008) which aired September 14, 2018.

A survey of recent releases from Rural Situationism, a series devoted to works based on field recordings. Cheryl Leonard uses sounds from Point Reyes, Marin Headlands, and MacKerricher State Park to make Littoral. Norman Long’s Re-Membering/Re-Presencing was recorded at various locations around Chicago. Angus Carlyle, a professor at the University of the Arts in London, made Powerlines with recordings from northern Norway. From Scotland, Clare Archibald, Mike Bullock, and Anthony Cowie combine field recordings with instruments in Smooring the Fire. Kate Carr recorded on cabbages, salt, bacteria, and transformations in her London kitchen. In Sage, Suddenly, Andrew Weathers combines the dry soundscape of western Colorado with gentle instruments.

On this Music from Other Minds, Liam Herb plays the entirety of Laurie Anderson’s 2024 masterwork Amelia, which chronicles the last flight of Amelia Earhart in 1937.

Tune in for that and works by Linda Catlin Smith, Charlemagne Palestine, Ken Ueno, and Tyshawn Sorey.

This program features two protest pieces with different religious contexts. Plague Mass, by American singer Diamanda Galás, was recorded live in October 1990 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. Known for her AIDS activism, Galás performed the piece in protest of the treatment of people with AIDS, which from 1981 through 1990 had killed more than 100,000 people in the United States. The Polish composer Henryk Górecki wrote Miserere, meaning “have mercy” in Latin, for a cappella mixed choir in 1981 in response to the Polish government’s violent crackdown against activists from the trade union Solidarity earlier that year in Bydgoszcz. The piece was not allowed to be performed until 1987.

After Erland Cooper’s Carve the Runes Then Be Content With Silence was recorded, the master tape was buried in the soil near his childhood home in Orkney, Scotland. Two years later, it was made into a CD, distortions and all. Emelie Cecilia Lebel uses an EBow to make piano strings drone in Pale Forms in Uncommon Light. She says the idea for the piece comes from seeing light patterns filter through a forest. Bart Hopkin’s new release, Audiorium showcases dozens of his invented string, wind, and percussive instruments. The program also features music by other Bay Area instrument makers, including Tom Nunn, Cheryl Leonard, and Brian Day.

On this Music from Other Minds, Liam Herb plays John Luther Adams‘ study of geological time An Atlas of Deep Time, Flora Yin Wong’s musical exploration of Taoist Geomancy Trigram for Earth, and Wadada Leo Smith’s experimentation based on the Sufi philosophy, Masnavi: A Sonic Meditation and Reflections on Light.

Also on the program, Takuma Itoh’s A Melody for an Unknown Place performed by Patrick Yim and Microtub’s Thin Peaks for just intonation tuba trio.

This program features the music of the Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya and like-minded maverick piano composers, Leo Ornstein and George Antheil. The program concludes with an interview with American composer Brian Baumbusch about his recent release with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players on Other Minds Records, Polytempo Music.

It’s not the instruments that are uncommon, it’s their creative use in new music that’s unusual. British improvisor Rhodri Davies takes the Celtic harp on new adventures. Multi-instrumentalist Douglas Ewart breathes new life into the ancient didgeridoo. Composer Catherine Lamb adds the arciorgano, a 16th century microtonal organ, to a dreamy chamber work. Cindy Webster plays the musical saw with a group of waterphones. Guitarist Elliott Sharp plays solos on the mandocello, an instrument more often used in folk music. Jin Hi Kim brings a new approach to the Korean komungo. And Julia Wolfe calls for mountain dulcimer and clogging in her Appalachian flavored oratorio, Steel Hammer.