Music From Other Minds

Liam Herb presents a special Election Edition of Music from Other Minds featuring political works by Quilapayún, Fredric Rzewski, Donald Miller, and Moor Mother, as well as a meditative electroacoustic work by Judith Hamann.

This program tries to provide scary music for scary times. Long electric guitar-based works by Swans and Brent Miller frame a variety of other artists that provide some truly alarming music, like that of Tanya Tagaq. We’ll also hear some improvised music from Fred Frith and Hans Koch that provides unexpected sonic thrills, a track from Elliot Sharp and Carbon that takes rock in some alarming directions. A collaboration between Elliott and Christian Marclay, and cameos from Krautrock band Cluster , experimental provacateurs Psychic TV, and doomed chanteuse Nico fill out the program. And a work for violin and piano by Arvo Pärt lets us end with our sanity intact.

On this Music from Other Minds, Randall Wong Plays what is probably the first science fiction opera, Karl-Birger Blomdahl’s opera, Aniara.

On the next Music from Other Minds, Liam Herb celebrates La Monte Young‘s 85th Birthday by exploring some of his well known and lesser known pieces, interviews with the composer, and much more. Also on the program, works by Terry Jennings, Terry Riley, Jon Gibson, and Julius Eastman.

This program explores new music from the Middle East, Iran and India, including artists from the Arabic diaspora in Europe, Canada and the U.S. The direction of cultural appropriation is reversed as western musical forms have been used by these artists to create something new of their own. We’ll hear from ex-pats Sam Shalabi, 9T Antiope, and Lafawndah. Other artists include Michel Banabila, Sawarthy Korwar, Nadah el Shazly, Tamer Abu Gazaleh, Maryam Saleh, Maurice Louca,  Saba Alizadeh and Siavash Amini. For the coup de grâce, we’ll play a collaborative piece by Lafawndah with respected Japanese percussionist and minimalist composer Midori Takada. Originally broadcast on October 9, 2020.

In this episode of Music From Other Minds, Liam Herb presents a 1984 archived conversation between Charles Amirkhanian and Laurie Anderson prepared for a 1987 nationally broadcasted Ode to Gravity program. Together they discuss the origins of some her most emblematic pieces, her use of technology in her compositions, and the day she saw her doppelgänger.

In this episode of Music from Other Minds, Liam Herb surveys electronic and electroacoustic music from past and present. This program features works by Ingram Marshall, Percy Grainger, Laurie Spiegel, Pierre Schaeffer, Felicity Mangan, Hanna Hartman, and James Tenney.

In this episode of Music from Other Minds, Randall Wong plays possibly the first opera on an explicitly gay subject—Lou Harrison’s Young Caesar. This program features the 2017 LA Philharmonic revival of the work, an interview with the composer on the KPFA gay men’s program Fruit Punch from Christmas night 1974, and an archival recording from the original 1971 performance.

In this episode of Music from Other Minds, we’ll remember the events of September 11, 2001. The centerpiece of this program is William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops 1.1, a one-hour minimalist tour-de-force. We’ll also hear composer Steve Reich’s harrowing take on the disaster, English composer Gavin Bryars’s musical depiction of another disaster, the sinking of the Titanic, as well as work from composers Tunde Jegede, Joan Tower, and the late Leonard Cohen.

This episode looks at music that could be described as “sound art”—music made with found sound, synthesizer drones, video game sounds, ambient recordings, custom-made instruments, scientific instruments, accidental and improvised sounds. Featured work includes a collaboration between Japanese artists Akio Suzuki and Aki Onda. There’s a piece by William Basinski, which uses interferon recordings of a collision between two black holes from 1.3 billion years ago. And we’ll also hear from Ai Yamamoto, Lawrence English, DJ Olive, and the Conet Project.