ELENA KATS-CHERNIN
Other Minds is proud to introduce Elena Kats-Chernin (b. 1957) of Uzbekistan, who will be making her first trip to San Francisco. Kats-Chernin’s writing for piano in Purple Prelude and Tast-En spins its melodic figures into a virtuosic and mesmeric web of repetition and detailed variation. These challenging works will be performed on opening night by Lisa Moore, co-founder of Bang On A Can All-Stars, who has released a full recording of Kats-Chernin’s music for solo piano. On Saturday, Del Sol String Quartet will perform two works of Elena Kats-Chernin, with the composer at the piano, followed by a special solo performance of Eliza Aria, a short piece that has become enormously popular in Australia thanks to its use in a Barclays Bank commercial and availability through YouTube and MySpace.

KEERIL MAKAN
Saturday’s concert begins with the world premiere of Resonance Alloy, a work for solo percussion by UC Berkeley graduate Keeril Makan, commissioned by Other Minds. Percussionist David Shively will then be joined by Del Sol String Quartet for Makan’s gnarly and noisy Static Rising.

ÅKE PARMERUD
Sweden’s Åke Parmerud (b. 1953) has earned nearly every available prize for electro-acoustic music including 13 awards from the International Festival for Music in Bourges, France. His work combines intricate timbral ideas with a driving, pulsating energy, and will be featured on two concerts of OM 13: Thursday night will include his piece La vie mécanique, and Friday’s program will feature Dreaming in Darkness.

DIETER SCHNEBEL
Other Minds 13 will begin with Michael Bach performing excerpts from Mit diesen Händen (With These Hands), a work written especially for Bach by renowned German composer Dieter Schnebel (b. 1930). Two other works by Dieter Schnebel, performed on Friday’s concert, will expose two more sides of his wide-ranging oeuvre. Quintessenz, for four vocalists with piano, reflects the composer’s multifaceted background: Schnebel studied theology and philosophy as well as music at the University of Tübingen, found inspiration for his open reform theological thinking from Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch and Albert Schweitzer, and even worked as a pastor before becoming a professor of music. Poem für 4 Köpfe reveals Schnebel’s capacity for experimentation and innovation across the borders of music, theater, performance art and sound poetry, condensing vocal sounds and physical gestures into an audiovisual sound poem.

ISHMAEL WADADA LEO SMITH
Opening night concludes with Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith’s sixth string quartet, Taif: Prayer in the Garden of The Hijaz, the first of three world premiere commissions at OM 13. Widely known as a free jazz legend for his work with the Creative Construction Company (Anthony Braxton and Leroy Jenkins), Muhal Richard Abrams, George Lewis and others, Smith has also developed his own composition and notation system for improvisers, called “Ankhrasmation.” He will take the stage for this world premiere performance, joined by Oakland percussionist Anthony Brown and Del Sol String Quartet. Smith’s Moths, Flames And the Giant Sequoia Redwood Trees will also be performed, on Friday night by San Francisco’s Adorno Ensemble.

MORTON SUBOTNICK
For the final concert of OM 13, Other Minds welcomes back to the Bay Area electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick (b. 1933). Drawing on years of trailblazing work with synthesizers and interactive computer music, Subotnick will work in tandem with New York-based pianist Kathleen Supové for his recent composition, The Other Piano.

FRANCES-MARIE UITTI
Revolutionary performer and composer Frances-Marie Uitti will perform in the American Premiere of her own work, Rap’t, on opening night of OM 13. Among the innovations Uitti has pioneered in her music are difference-tone resonators, radical re-tunings, and perhaps most famously, the simultaneous use of two bows.

ADORNO ENSEMBLE
Friday night’s concert features San Francisco’s Adorno Ensemble, dubbed by the San Jose Mercury News as “a crackerjack new music band that plays with conviction and vitality and blows the dust off classical music." The Adorno will perform Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith’s Moths, Flames and the Giant Sequoia Redwood Trees, and present the world premiere of Dan Becker’s Keeping Time. Although formed just three years ago, Adorno impressed critics as the resident ensemble at Santa Clara University, and in 2007 earned ASCAP’s First Prize for Adventurous Programming.

ANTHONY BROWN
Composer, percussionist, and ethnomusicologist Anthony Brown has become a seminal figure in California contemporary creative music directing the Asian American Orchestra. Since 1998, his San Francisco-based Orchestra has received international critical acclaim for blending Asian musical instruments and sensibilities with the sonorities of the jazz orchestra. Brown will join Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith and the Del Sol String Quartet for the world premiere of Smith’s Taif: Prayer In the Garden of The Hijaz.

DEL SOL STRING QUARTET
Recently awarded ASCAP’s 2008 First Prize for Adventurous Programming (an honor they also earned in 2006), San Francisco’s Del Sol String Quartet returns to the Other Minds Festival, performing works by Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, Elena Kats-Chernin, and Keeril Makan. Del Sol has become a leading force for new music, commissioning and introducing new work from both prominent and emerging composers and collaborating with musicians from various cultures and genres.

LISA MOORE
Australian pianist and Bang On A Can All-Stars co-founder Lisa Moore will perform two works by Elena Kats-Chernin on opening night of OM13. Moore has been described by The New York Times as "lustrous at the keyboard, and at once engaging and challenging" and as “legendary" in the American Record Guide. She has premiered hundreds of new commissioned works for piano solo and ensemble, and also recorded numerous CDs including a full-length album of solo piano works by Kats-Chernin.

DAVID SHIVELY
New York-based percussionist David Shively will appear in two works by Keeril Makan on Saturday’s concert, Resonance Alloy and Static Rising. Shively is the co-director of the chamber ensemble Either/Or, and his dedication to American experimental music has led him to recent projects including a range of media, from traditional percussion to micro-tonal instruments, treated guitar, Hungarian cimbalom, and musical saw. Shively worked in clost contact with Makan to develop the solo work Resonance Alloy, which will receive its world premiere at Other Minds 13.

KATHLEEN SUPOVÉ
One of America’s most acclaimed and versatile contemporary music pianists, Kathleen Supové will perform Dan Becker’s stunning work, Revolution, and Morton Subotnick’s intricate The Other Piano  to conclude Saturday’s concert and the Other Minds Festival. After winning top prizes in the Gaudeamus International Competition for Interpretation of Contemporary Music, Supové began her career as a guest artist at the prestigious Darmstadt Festival in Germany. Since then she has championed the music of countless contemporary composers through commissioning projects and routinely spectacular performances.