Music From Other Minds

This week, Ed Herrmann presents music powered by the wind: woodwinds, brass, composed, improvised, traditional, and modern. Anthony Braxton’s Composition 58 reinvents Sousa. Rova Saxophone Quartet spontaneously composes The Web with hand gestures and flags. Roscoe Mitchell plays all four parts in a quartet for saxophones. Beth Custer leads a quintet of clarinets. Phill Niblock stretches flute tones for hours. Ivo Nilsson plays a trombone solo. Plus music by György Ligeti, Douglas Ewart, Andrew Voigt, Thea Musgrave, Elliott Carter, Henry Threadgill, the Murung people of Bangladesh, nadhaswaram masters M.P.N Sethuraman and M.P.N Ponnuswamy, invented instruments, and the Stanford Marching Band. Blow your horn!

On this Music from Other Minds, Liam Herb plays Akira Nishimura‘s Astral Concerto for Ondes Martenot and orchestra, Ge Gan-ru‘s Four Studies Of Peking Opera, and Henry Brant‘s masterful orchestration of Charles Ives‘s Concord Sonata, titled, A Concord Symphony.

This program features music using new or unconventional forms of notation, from historical, mid-20th century music to currently-developing forms of notations using new technologies. Included are Variations II by John Cage, December 1952 by Earle Brown, Durations 2 by Morton Feldman, Compositions 223(2)+LM+40F+223(4)+110A by Anthony Braxton, Six Seasons by Lei Liang, Gathering by Linda Bouchard, and Majority of One and Chunk by Cat Hope.

This week’s program features music conveying a sense of place. Louise Campbell’s clarinet solos are personal reflections on aspects of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Senso di Voce and Henry Birdsey record in a small cabin in rural New Hampshire while recreating the acoustic environment of giant grain elevators. Henry Kaiser offers a requiem for colleagues in Antartica. Philip Petit uses electronic instruments to portray Dante dreaming that he is with Virgil bathing in the Acheron River. Rounding out the program are Nicole Mitchell and the Indigo Trio, Roscoe Mitchell playing flute and percussion, and a new performance of Pauline Oliveros’ 1970 composition, To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe on Recognition of Their Desperation.

Joseph Bohigian, in collaboration with Leyya Mona Tawil, plays music from Arab.AMP, a platform for experimental live art, music, and ideas by artists of the SWANA diaspora and region. Featuring music by Mike Khoury, Tony Elieh, Youmna Saba, BINT, Dirar Kalash, Marwan Kamel/The Daily Maqam, John King, and Jad Atoui & Anthony Sayhoun / NP.

Canadian composer Gayle Young works with electronics, graphic scores, microtonality, and invented instruments. According to the Moon is a new album of her vocal music featuring Montreal based singer Sarah Albu.

Violinist Meredith Bates is active as a performer and collaborator in Vancouver. Her new double album Tesseract uses field recordings, electronics, and violin.

Neil Rolnick’s new release on Other Minds Records is a continuation of his work combining piano and interactive computer. Lockdown Fantasies is a suite of pieces composed during the pandemic. Journey’s End symbolically traces his wife Wendy’s spiritual journey while dying of cancer.

Electroacoustic music is music that incorporates electronic sound production and manipulation into compositional practice. We’ll feature two composers from Latin America: Joaquín Orellana and Jacqueline Nova. We’ll also feature an electroacoustic work from Luc Ferrari, and something new from Chicago-based composer Matana Roberts. Also a classic electroacoustic work by Iannis Xenakis, and a couple of turntable mash-ups of pop music by Christian Marclay.

In this program, Joseph Bohigian plays a selection of submissions from composers, producers, and performers around the world. This is Music from Other Minds’s third listener submission program, featuring works in a variety of styles by Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Marjorie Van Halteren, Pierre Jodlowski, Staubitz and Waterhouse, dana jnnfrsn, Sheri Wills, Dan Senn, David A. Jaffe, Jakub Polaczyk, and Fernand Vandenbogaerde.

Sarah Kenchington’s mechanically assisted acoustic instruments are often uncontrollable, making surprising and delirious music. For more than 40 years, Tom Nunn was an essential force in San Francisco music, working at the intersection of invented instruments and free improvisation. He designed and built hundreds of original instruments and performed with dozens of musicians locally and internationally. A survey of Tom’s solo and collaborative music. Folded Landscapes, a new work by Scottish composer Erland Cooper, combines the words of poet Simon Armitage and activist Greta Thunberg with a chamber ensemble recorded in increasingly hot conditions for an immersive meditation on climate change.