Other Minds Festival 21

So many long-term plans came together for this year’s Other Minds Festival that we were filled with even more anticipation than usual. Our list of guest composers and performers brimmed with talent, and it’s our good fortune to have presented them all at once at OM 21. At our collaborating organization, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in Woodside, CA, they spent time introducing their music to one another and enjoying great meals and hikes in the remote, scenic Santa Cruz Mountains. The retreat, a gift to composers from Other Minds, has been a unique part of our festival since its inception. The time for meeting, sharing and reflection afforded these busy creative artists a format that is unique in the field of new music, making an invitation to the Other Minds Festival a coveted opportunity.

Arguably the most important British post-minimalist composer, Gavin Bryars, mixes classical, jazz, and modern influences in his intellectually engaging (yet still emotionally touching) music. Though his style has changed somewhat since his first major piece, 1969’s The Sinking of the Titanic, Bryars has remained a provocative yet accessible composer capable of working in a variety of settings. Born in the Yorkshire village of Goole, England, in 1943, Bryars’ first musical love was jazz. As a student at the University of Sheffield, Bryars played bass in the nonsensically named improvisatory jazz trio, Joseph Holbrooke. He has composed prolifically for the theater and dance as well as for the concert hall, film scores, and four full-length operas. His first major work as a composer was The Sinking of the Titanic (1969) originally released on Brian Eno’s Obscure label (1975) and Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet (1971), both selling over a quarter of a million copies. In Bryar’s words, “Like many Englishmen I had sung madrigals for pleasure – usually late at night with friends, after several glasses of wine. While these madrigals have their charm, I found through embarking on an extended exploration of the madrigal as a creative venture that the richest source lays in the Italian Renaissance.” The Second Book of Madrigals is for six voices, settings of Francesco Petrarch in the original 14th century Italian. In his sonnets, Bryars rediscovered the richness of Petrarch’s invention, and also pays homage to the harmonically audacious madrigals of the Renaissance composer (and infamous murderer), Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa.

Meredith Monk is a composer, singer, director/choreographer and creator of new opera, music-theater works, films, and installations. A pioneer in what is now called “extended vocal technique” and “interdisciplinary performance,” Monk creates works that thrive at the intersection of music and movement, image and object, light and sound, in an effort to discover and weave together new modes of perception. Her groundbreaking exploration of the voice as an instrument, as an eloquent language in and of itself, expands the boundaries of musical composition, creating landscapes of sound that unearth feelings, energies, and memories for which there are no words. Over the last fifty years, she has been hailed as “a magician of the voice” and “one of America’s coolest composers.” Celebrated internationally, Monk’s work has been presented by BAM, Lincoln Center Festival, Houston Grand Opera, London’s Barbican Centre, and at major venues in countries from Brazil to Syria. She was recently named an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the Republic of France, and the 2012 Composer of the Year by Musical America. Monk is also one of NPR’s 50 Great Voices, has received a 2012 Doris Duke Artist Award, 2011 Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Award for the Arts, and received a 2014 National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama, “for her contributions as a composer, singer, and performer.”

Michael Gordon merges subtle rhythmic invention with incredible power in his music, embodying, in the words of The New Yorker’s Alex Ross, “the fury of punk rock, the nervous brilliance of free jazz and the intransigence of classical modernism.” Over the past 25 years Gordon has produced a strikingly diverse body of work, ranging from large-scale pieces for high-energy ensembles and major orchestral commissions to works conceived specifically for the recording studio. Defying categorization, this music represents the collision of mysterious introspection and brutal directness. The Ensemble Modern, the Dublin Guitar Quartet, and the New World Symphony, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, have all presented world premieres of Gordon’s works.

Norwegian artists were well represented at OM 21 with composers Cecilie Ore, Lasse Thoresen, and the vocal ensemble, Nordic Voices. Ore’s Dead Pope on Trial (2015) commissioned by Nordic Voices and Other Minds received its World premiere. Thoresen’s unique blend of folk inflected music and non-equal tempered tunings was presented in his Solbøn (2012) and Himmelske Fader (2012) which garnered him the Nordic Music Prize.

In a true embarrassment of riches, the festival was rounded out by works of US composers Phil Kline, Oliver Lake, and Larry Polansky, and Canadians Nicole Lizée and John Oswald.

Full Concert Audio