Welcome to MindAlert!
Brought to you by Other Minds
In this February 2010 issue:
1. OM 15 Opening Night Reception
2. OM 15 Artist Preview: Chou Wen-chung
3. OM 15 Artist Preview: Natasha Barrett
4. The Making of Pandæmonium: Interview with Carla Kihlstedt
5. Just added to the OM Webstore: Mental Radio
6. Now available for free listening on radiOM.org
7. Eventwire: Music from 4 Fences
8. Eventwire: Morton Subotnick at Mills College
9. Eventwire: Music of Hyo-Shin Na
10. Eventwire: New work by Dan Becker
1. OM 15 Opening Night Reception
As you make your plans to attend this year's Other Minds Festival on March 4, 5 and 6, don't forget to make time for a party!
OM 15 Opening Night Reception
Thursday, March 4, immediately following the concert
Garibaldi's on Presidio
347 Presidio Avenue, San Francisco
Wine and hors d'oeuvres served, cash bar available
$20 suggested donation
After opening night's revelationary new music, it'll be time for revelry. Join the Gathering of Other Minds following Thursday's concert, at Garibaldi's on Presidio. Get to know the Festival artists, and Other Minds staff and Board members over scrumptious appetizers, and beverages compliments of Barefoot Wine & Bubbly and other generous supporters.
Hope to see you there!
>>Purchase tickets for OM 15
2. OM 15 Artist Preview: Chou Wen-chung
"One must search beyond the procedures of a musical practice, discern its original aesthetic commitments, and trace how its tradition has evolved. If one is blessed with a cross-cultural heritage, one must then regard it as a privilege and obligation to commit oneself to the search in both practices." From Sights and Sounds: Remembrances, 1990.
If we trace the evolution of new music in America, Chou Wen-chung may often emerge as a crucial connecting point, the nexus tying early pioneers to today's most prominent practitioners.
Chou arrived in the US in 1946 with a degree in civil engineering and a scholarship from Yale to study architecture. But instead, he opted to study coomposition, at the New England Conservatory of Music with Nicolas Slonimsky, and in New York with Edgard Varèse and Otto Luening. Chou would go on to succeed Luening as chairman of the Music Division at Columbia, and become the foremost protégé of Varèse (who keeps an eye on Chou from the piano). He found success in both roles, moving beyond his teacher's shadow to essentially create a prototype for music drawing upon deep knowledge of multiple cultural histories, and also build an unmatched teaching career, bringing to the US students including as Chen Yi, Ge Gan-ru (OM 9), Bright Sheng, Tan Dun (OM 2), Chinary Ung (OM 13), and Zhou Long.
We're sorry to report that due to a temporary health setback Chou will be unable to join us for the Other Minds Festival this year. However, we are thrilled that he will be able to participate in the composer retreat at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program via videoconference, and look forward to hearing two of his works, composed 50 years apart, on opening night of OM 15.
Listen to Chou, interviewed in 1966 by Ann McMillan, on radiOM.org:
The Music of Chou Wen-chung (1966)
>>Read more about Wen-chung and listen to his music
>>Purchase tickets for OM 15
3. OM 15 Artist Preview: Natasha Barrett
How does your music taste?
Many composers hope to evoke images with their music, but Natasha Barrett is aiming a bit higher: "I want to disturb their expectations by giving them hyper-realistic or even surrealistic experiences... To make them think, 'Gosh, that's right!' by packing all the listeners' five sense into one auditory perception."
As if this weren't enough, Barrett, born in Norwich, England, but living in Norway for more than a decade, works at a level of complexity with sound that can on its own approach surrealistic. Her international reputation as an electroacoustic composer is just the beginning of her versatile work, which branches into sound art, installations, multimedia and interactive works, computer music improvisation, and collaborations with scientists and designers.
In the realm of Other Minds, Barrett also carries on a legacy stretching back through Henry Brant (OM 4) and Charles Ives: the composition and manipulation of space as a central element of music. On the second night of this year's OM Festival, audience members will be engulfed in a 5.1+ image as Barrett builds her hyper-realistic sound world, in real-time, within the OM 15 concert hall in two recent works: Mobilis in Mobili (2006), and Kernel Expansion (2009).
>>Read more about Natasha
>>Purchase tickets for OM 15
4. The Making of Pandæmonium: Interview with Carla Kihlstedt
Go behind the scenes with Carla Kihlstedt:
ROVA Saxophone Quartet member Jon Raskin sat down recently with Carla Kihlstedt (and baby daughter Tallulah) recently to talk about her new work, Pandæmonium, which will be premiered on the final concert of OM 15.
Check out the videos to hear Carla talk about her correspondence with Alfred Schnittke, what started the idea of this new piece, how she's approaching writing for ROVA, and why her score involves sewing.
Interviews with Carla on ROVA's website
And for more of Carla's thoughts, check her out in this program on radiOM.org:
Improv:21: Carla Kihlstedt = Liberating Limits: An Informance with Kihlstedt and Derk Richardson
On September 14, 2005, Derk Richardson interviewed singer, violinist, and composer, Carla Kihlstedt, at The Thick House in San Francisco. Kihlstedt studied music at Oberlin where her interests expanded from the classical repertoire to more improvisational and avant-garde music. In 1997 she co-founded the group Tin Hat Trio with Rob Burger and Mark Orton, and has also played with 2 Foot Yard and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. In this interview she speaks about her influences and her improvising concepts in a far-reaching discussion which also includes excerpts of rare recordings and audience questions.
Carla Kihlstedt's new work was commissioned by, and is presented by Other Minds in partnership with, Rova:Arts. The commissioning and production of the world premiere is made possible by The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation and The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation Emerging Composers 2007 Initiative.
>>Purchase tickets for OM 15
5. Just added to the OM Webstore: Mental Radio
Mental Radio
Charles Amirkhanian
ON SALE NOW FOR $15
Originally released on LP by CRI in 1985, this CD re-issue from New World Records makes available nine text-sound works by composer, poet, percussionist, and Other Minds Executive & Artistic Director Charles Amirkhanian. Contains such inspirational hits as Church Car, Dot Bunch, Hypothetical Moments (in the Intellectual Life of Southern California, and, for canine lovers, the infamous Dog of Stravinsky, whose bark is better than his bite.
6. Now available for free listening on radiOM.org
In tribute to the late Michael Steinberg (1928-2009):
Morning Concert: New Music: When and Where? A Critique of the San Francisco Symphony (1989)
In 1988 and 1989, a spate of articles and letters to the San Francisco Chronicle raised the question: "Is the San Francisco Symphony too radical in its programming of contemporary music?" In this program, Charles Amirkhanian hosts a panel discussion, complete with musical examples, addressing this question. Participants include Michael Steinberg, Artistic Advisor of the Symphony and writer of the exemplary program notes which are distributed to concert-goers weekly, and Mark Volkert, composer and Assistant Concertmaster, whose public criticism on the brand of new music programmed by the Symphony has enlivened the dialogue, and Robert Commanday, San Francisco Chronicle critic and founding editor of San Francisco Classical Voice. (adapted from KPFA Folio)
People's Music: A Conversation about Popular and Folk Music Traditions (1962)
From a program recorded in 1962, Malvina Reynolds and Will Ogdon in conversation with Lou Gottlieb about the intersection of popular and folk music. Intended as a response to a then recent University conference panel on the same subject, in which the more academically minded panelists proved to be out of touch with the audience about popular music in contemporary culture and the emerging folk music revival. While the academics seemed to conceive of folk music as, strictly traditional music played from memory, and represented by the minstrel shows and English ballads of centuries' past, the audience, and this program's participants, seemed more open to the idea of folk music as a living tradition represented by contemporary popular musicians. Topics discussed include the influence of widely available recordings on the folk music tradition, and the spread of African and other traditional world music, among others. Lou Gottlieb was an educator, entertainer, and musicologist, whose earnest attempt to make some sense of the cross pollination between popular and folk music traditions in the latter half of the 20th century makes for a very enlightening listening experience.
And in celebration of Yoko Ono, whose Plastic Ono Band is appearing tonight at the Fox Theater in Oakland, and who turned 77 last Thursday, February 18:
Flux Art: An Historical Perspective (1977)
An interview with George Maciunas, about the Fluxus art movement, a loose confederation of composers, poets and artists that included such well-known figures as Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Allan Kaprow, Alison Knowles, Dick Higgins, and George Brecht. Initially inspired by John Cage's Experimental Music Composition classes at the New School for Social Research, La Monte Young's influential series of performances in the Chambers Street loft in Manhattan, and the growing interest in conceptual art happenings of the 1960s, the Fluxus movement became famous for its radical avant-garde approach to Art and Music. Like the Dadaists and Situationists, Fluxus artists were largely instilled with a do-it-yourself sensibility and an interest in largely unstructured participatory events or happenings. According to George Brecht: "In Fluxus there has never been any attempt to agree on aims or methods; individuals with something unnamable in common have simply naturally coalesced to publish and perform their work. Perhaps this common something is a feeling that the bounds of art are much wider than they have conventionally seemed, or that art and certain long-established bounds are no longer very useful. At any rate, individuals in Europe, the US, and Japan have discovered each other's work and found it nourishing (or something) and have grown objects and events which are original, and often unclassifiable, in a strange new way."
7. Eventwire: Music from 4 Fences
Music From 4 Fences
Kronos Quartet
Wednesday through Saturday, February 24-27, 8pm
Z Space @ Artaud, San Francisco
Premiered at the Sydney Opera House in June 2009, Music from 4 Fences by Jon Rose features Kronos performing on four specially-built fences to create an eclectic aural environment, accompanied by a visual design by Willie Williams, U2s long time tour designer and director. Since 1983, Jon Rose has been bowing and recording the music of fences worldwide. Rose's special project with Kronos will appear on each of the four concerts, alongside a work by Terry Riley (OM 2), pieces by composers from the Kronos: Under 30 Project and works by Damon Albarn on Feb. 24 (frontman of the Britpop band Blur, Gorillaz), John Zorn on Feb. 25, Clint Mansell on Feb. 26 (well known for his work with Kronos on the Requiem for a Dream soundtrack), and Bryce Dessner on Feb. 27 (guitarist for the indie rock band The National.)
8. Eventwire: Morton Subotnick at Mills College
Mills Performing Group
Featuring the Eclipse Quartet, Morton Subotnick, William Winant, Joan Jeanrenaud, and others
Saturday, February 27, 8pm
Littlefield Concert Hall, Mils College, Oakland
Morton Subotnick (OM 13) will visit Mills College for a performance of his monumental work Fluttering of Wings, with the Mills Performing Group he established, with Luciano Berio and Darius Milhaud, over 40 years ago. The concert also features new and recent works by Zeena Parkins and Steed Cowart, Berio's Folk Songs, and Steve Reich's Marimba Phase. Curious listeners may hear Subotnick discuss his work at a free lecture on Friday, February 26, 12 noon at the Music Building Ensemble Room at Mills College.
9. Eventwire: Music of Hyo-Shin Na
Wooden Fish Ensemble
celebrates the music of Hyo-Shin Na
Sunday, March 7, 4pm
Old First Church, San Francisco
The Wooden Fish Ensemble celebrates the music of Hyo-shin Na (OM 6) with performances of a selection of her works for mixed instruments. After studying piano and composition in her native Korea, Hyo-shin Na came to the US in 1983 to do graduate work at the Manhattan School of Music and the University of Colorado, where she received her doctorate. After moving to San Francisco in 1988, she met Cage, Rzewski, Wolff and Takahashi, and encountered the music of Nancarrow. At the same time, she made return trips to Korea to hear and study traditional Korean music while also taking a broad interest in the music of other regions of Asia.
10. Eventwire: New work by Dan Becker
Ives Quartet
including music by Dan Becker
Sunday, March 14, 7pm
Pre-Concert talk at 6pm
Kohl Mansion, Burlingame
Music at Kohl Mansion presents the Ives Quartet in a program of music new and old. Along with works by Mozart and Brahms, audiences will be treated to Dan Becker's (OM 13) Time Rising, which was commissioned and premiered by the Ives in 2009. Becker, a seemingly tireless composer, producer, and dedicated teacher at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, will be on hand to lend his thoughts in a pre-concert talk.
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