Music From Other Minds

On this program, we’re walking across Europe from Norway to Romania, listening to the composers whose paths we cross on our cross-continental journey. Included is music by Jan Martin Smørdal, Anders Hillborg, Simon Steen-Andersen, Hanna Hartman, Calliope Tsoupaki, Karel Goeyvaerts, Joëlle Léandre and Lauren Newton, Giacinto Scelsi, Beat Furrer, György Kurtág, and Doina Rotaru.

On this Music from Other Minds, Liam Herb plays new releases by Anqi Liu, Daniel Lentz, Amina Claudine Meyers and Wadada Leo Smith, and Olivia Block. Also on the program, a tribute to the late Larry Polansky (1954-2024).

In this week’s program, electronic artist Philippe Petit offers a new interpretation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Using a Buchla system and other analog synthesizers, prepared piano, sounds from inside the piano, metal percussion, cymbalon, field recordings, and voices, Petit creates a stunning adaptation of the 14th Century classic. Tracing Dante’s trip through Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise, it’s a mind bending journey on a cinematic scale. A few screams will be heard, but don’t abandon hope! The program opens with Diamanda Galás singing John Lee Hooker’s “Burning Hell” and concludes with an excerpt from Éliane Radigue’s electronic portrayal of the bardo, Kyema, Intermediate States.

On this program, we’ll listen to an archival recording of an Ode to Gravity program from 1982. From a recording made on August 2, 1982, pianist Emily Wong performs a live recital of both modern and more classical compositions in the KPFA studios. Charles Amirkhanian hosts the broadcast and provides some background about each of the pieces, which include a rare performance of early works by Conlon Nancarrow, a selection of standards by Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Frédéric Chopin, Claude Debussy, and two works by John Adams. The program finishes with an excerpt of Russ Jennings’ 1987 interview with the late artist Marian Zazeela and composer La Monte Young about their collaborative work, The Well-Tuned Piano.

On this Music from Other Minds, Liam Herb takes us back to the Composer-to-Composer Festival, a proto-Other Minds of sorts, which took place from 1988-1991 in Telluride, CO. Founded by Charles Amirkhanian and John Lifton as an opportunity for composers from across literal and ideological seas to meet and discuss their works, this four year experiment was home to performances by composers like Henry Brant, Pauline Oliveros, John Cage, Conlon Nancarrow, and many more.

On this program, we’ll listen to recently released music by Øyvind Torvund, Soosan Lolavar, Wendy Eisenberg, and Nadah El Shazly, as well as selections from Movses Pogossian’s monumental new 4-disc set of Armenian chamber music by Artur Avanesov, Tigran Mansurian, Vache Sharafyan, and Koharik Gazarossian.

Bay Area native Loren Rush had a long and varied career. Spanning over 50 years, his compositions explored aleatoric procedures, minimalism, serialism, just intonation, and the search for beauty. He was chairman of the Composition Department at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and director of the Stanford Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. As a co-founder of the Good Sound Foundation, he pioneered the digital enhancement of acoustic sounds. This program presents music from the few commercial recordings of Loren Rush’s music, as well as historical recordings from the Other Minds Archives.

2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of composer Benjamin Lees (January 8, 1924–May 31, 2010). To celebrate, we’re broadcasting some archival interviews with Lees from the Other Minds Archives. Lees was born in Harbin, Manchuria to Jewish parents who had fled pogroms in Ukraine. His family moved to the United States the next year, settling in San Francisco. He was a student of George Antheil and came into public attention as a composer in the 1950s, receiving commissions from major American orchestras.

Dennis Russell Davies was born April 16, 1944, in Toledo, Ohio, studied piano and conducting at New York’s Juilliard School, and developed a wide-ranging repertoire from Baroque to modern.

On Friday, March 22, 2024, Other Minds will celebrate Dennis Russell Davies’ 80th birthday in San Francisco with a sold out concert of piano music by Bedřich Smetana, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, and John Cage.

Tune in to this program to hear past performances by Davies, both solo and with Maki Namekawa.

The Polish composer Henryk Górecki (1933–2010) is most well known for his third symphony, composed in 1976, which became a rare commercial success in 1992 via a recording released that year by Nonesuch Records with the London Sinfonietta and soprano Dawn Upshaw. Górecki also wrote three other symphonies, all much less known than the third, and these works form the bulk of this program. Closing out the program is Symphony No. 4 by Alexandre Tansman, the 20th century Polish composer and dedicatee of Górecki’s fourth symphony.