Music From Other Minds

Although a certain rock producer turned murderer is often credited with creating the “Wall of Sound,” those efforts are feeble compared to tonight’s program. This music is not necessarily loud or abrasive, but dense, impenetrable. Works by George Antheil, Brian Baumbusch, Henry Threadgill, Harry Bertoia, Conlon Nancarrow, Pauline Oliveros, Phill Niblock, Julia Wolfe, Tony Conrad, Iannis Xenakis, and the mysterious New Zealand artist sometimes known as WITCYST.

We’re going to try something different for this New Year’s Eve 2023. Usually our focus is on experimental music from a contemporary classical perspective. But tonight we’ll listen to experiments with blues-based music. This means we’ll be playing some jazz—Don Cherry, Jamie Branch. We’ll also hear from experimental guitarists like James Blood Ulmer and Elliott Sharp. And we’ll play some old acoustic blues by Robert Johnson and Blind Willie Johnson.

On this Music from Other Minds, Liam Herb plays experimental songs by John Oswald and Jacqueline Humbert / David Rosenboom, clay instrument improvisations by Sonic Mud, and a live performance from Other Minds Festival 27 by Craig Taborn.

This program features recently released music from Other Minds Records by Thollem/Terry Riley/Nels Cline, Samuel Adams, Tom Bickley, Senso di Voce and Henry Birdsey, and Joseph Bohigian, as well as a sneak preview of what’s in store for the label in 2024 with music by Karen Power, Joëlle Léandre and Lauren Newton, and Thea Farhadian.

This week on Music from Other Minds, three generations of Armenian American composers. The Water Has Found its Crack, a new album by Joseph Bohigian, includes three pieces composed while living in Armenia. Rerooted is for string quartet and voices speaking of tragedy and survival: people whose ancestors fled the 1915 genocide and settled in Syria, now fleeing the civil war there and returning to Armenia. Charles Amirkhanian visited Armenia in 1994 (then newly-independent from the former Soviet Union) with his father. He recorded music, interviews, and soundscapes and used those recordings to make Miatsoom (Reunion), an audio journal and homage to his Armenian heritage. Alan Hovhaness is the best known and most prolific of Armenian American composers, having written over 500 pieces of music, including 67 symphonies. His music combines Asian and Armenian influences with a mystical reverence of nature. We’ll hear samples of his symphonic and piano music.

This program by special guest host Zachary James Watkins features music by living composers who are also performers. From Watkins: “I believe this combination can yield engaged and intimate musical inventions. This is the first volume of what I hope to be a series featuring new music by artists who inspire.” Included are selections from Madison Greenstone’s album Resonance Studies in Ecstatic Consciousness, Lori Goldston and Torben Ulrich’s album Oakland Moments, and Laura Ortman’s album Smoke Rings Shimmers Endless Blur.

Much of Neil Rolnick’s music employs computer with live performance. We’ll hear two examples: Oceans Eat Cities uses data projecting rising sea levels with string quartet; and Lockdown Fantasies for computer and piano, which will be performed at the upcoming Other Minds Festival. Electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick will also perform at the Festival. This program features the early classic A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur and an example of Subotnick’s “ghost electronics” accompanying the Juilliard String Quartet. It’s been 60 years since Don Buchla designed his first electronic music modules for the San Francisco Tape Music Center. A tribute to Buchla’s genius features music by Suzanne Ciani, Todd Barton, Laura Naukkarinen, and Sarah Belle-Reid. The program concludes with a short digestif with the hurdy-gurdy/percussion duo of Matthia Loibner and Lucas Niggli.

On this Music from Other Minds, Joseph Bohigian shares a sampling of his interviews on the Other Minds Podcast with the composers visiting San Francisco for Other Minds Festival 27, November 14-19, 2023 at the Taube Atrium Theater and Gray Area. The program includes excerpts of interviews with Eivind Buene, Linda Bouchard, Neil Rolnick, Artur Avanesov, Carl Stone, Bora Yoon, Joshue Ott, Mary Kouyoumdjian, and Morton Subotnick.

On this program we go back to the years between 1986 and 1997 with two Italian composers, student and teacher: Luca Francesconi and Luciano Berio. Francesconi, born in 1956, studied with both Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luciano Berio in the early 1980s. While working as an assistant to Berio, Francesconi was also interested in jazz and the music of other cultures, which influences much of his music. Luciano Berio, who died in 2002, was one of the leading young composers to emerge after World War II, along with Karlheinz Stockhausen in Germany and Pierre Boulez and Iannis Xenakis in Paris.

On this Music from Other Minds, Liam Herb played works pushing boundaries of minimal music. Featured on the program, Vanishing Points (1985-1988) and A Capella (1990-1997) by John McGuire, selections from Korean composer and multi-instrumentalist Park Jiha’s 2022 release The Gleam, Flips (2022) by Alvin Lucier, and three sculptural compositions from 2019 by Ellen Arkbro. Tune in for works of music exemplifying beautiful singularity, oftentimes derived from highly complex processes and techniques.