Other Minds Festival 19

In celebration of the Bay Area’s heritage as a pioneering stronghold of arts and culture, for the first time the OM 19 Festival presented an entirely Northern California cast of composers, including Mark Applebaum, John Bischoff, Donald Buchla, Joseph Byrd, Charles Céleste Hutchins, Myra Melford, Roscoe Mitchell, Wendy Reid, and John Schott. Their work is eclectic and not categorizeable into one canon. Perhaps this very eclecticism defines the “Bay Area Tradition.” Arguably, perhaps the most unique performer on this festival was Lulu Reid, an African Grey Parrot.

Mark Applebaum is Associate Professor of Composition at Stanford University and was recently named the Hazy Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education and Leland & Edith Smith Faculty Scholar.

He received his Ph.D. in composition from the University of California at San Diego where he studied principally with Brian Ferneyhough. His solo, chamber, choral, orchestral, operatic, and electroacoustic work has been performed throughout the United States, Europe, Africa, South America, Australia, and Asia with notable performances at the Darmstadt Sessions. Many of his pieces are characterized by challenges to the conventional boundaries of musical ontology: works for three conductors and no players, a concerto for florist and orchestra, pieces for instruments made of junk, notational specifications that appear on the faces of custom wristwatches, works for an invented sign language choreographed to sound, amplified Dadaist rituals, and a 72-foot long graphic score displayed in a museum and accompanied by no instructions for its interpretation. He has received commissions from Betty Freeman, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the Fromm Foundation, the Vienna Modern Festival, the Paul Dresher Ensemble, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, the Meridian Arts Ensemble, and numerous others.

Educated in physics, physiology, music, and astronomy, Don Buchla’s multi-faceted creativity continues to be applied to fields as diverse as space biophysics research, musical instrument design, and multi-media composition. Much of his work has been centered on the refinement of communication channels between man and machine, notably the invention of mobility aids for the visually handicapped, the development of instrumentation for bio-feedback and physiological telemetry, the design of interactive electronic musical instruments, and performance-oriented music languages. Don founded the alternative band, Fried Suck, was a founding member of the 15 piece Arch Ensemble, and co-founded the Electric Weasel Ensemble, the Muse and the Fuse, and the Artist’s Research Collective. He served as technical director of the California Institute of the Arts, the San Francisco Tape Music Center, the Electric Circus, and the Electric Symphony.

Pianist, composer, and Guggenheim fellow Myra Melford draws inspiration from a vast spectrum of cultural and spiritual traditions and artistic disciplines. In 2013, she released her first solo recording and premiered Language of Dreams, her most ambitious project to date, combining narration, dance, and video with music for her quintet, Snowy Egret. Melford also performs in the collective Trio M with bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Matt Wilson, and the duo ::Dialogue:: with clarinetist Ben Goldberg. Melford was named a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow and received both the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award and a Doris Duke Residency to Build Demand for the Arts at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She won the 2012 Alpert Award in the Arts for Music and has been honored numerous times in DownBeat’s Critics Poll.

In 2013, Melford was named a Guggenheim Fellow and received both the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s Performing Artist Award and a Doris Duke Residency to Build Demand for the Arts at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She was also the winner of the 2012 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for Music and has been honored numerous times in DownBeat’s Critics Poll since 1991.

Charles Céleste Hutchins was born in San Jose, California, in 1976 and lives in London, England. He attended Mills College in Oakland, California, where he studied with Maggi Payne and acquired a love for the sound of analog electronics. In 1998 he graduated with a dual B.A. in music and computer science. In 2005, Charles graduated from the M.A. program at Wesleyan University in Middletown and received his Ph.D. at the University of Birmingham in England.

Hutchins uses his computer to do things that his analogue synthesizer cannot do, including just intonation and granular synthesis. His most recent work has concentrated on live laptop performance, especially in an ensemble setting. In Cloud Drawings, Hutchins explored the interaction of visual media as a determinant of sound, allowing the audience to experience the piece on both a sonic and a visual level.

Also appearing on OM 19 were new music pioneers John Bischoff (b. 1949) and Joseph Byrd (b. 1937), woodwind innovator/composer Roscoe Mitchell, and proponent of interspecies music, Wendy Reid (accompanied by Lulu Reid, African Grey Parrot).

Full Concert Audio