In Memoriam, Olly Woodrow Wilson
NEW YORK TIMES, March 23, 2018
Other Minds offers condolences to the friends and family of Olly Wilson, pioneering African-American electronic music and orchestral composer. A long-time professor of composition at U.C. Berkeley, Olly was a guest composer at Other Minds Festival 3 in 1996. His infectious smile and dignified, reassuring demeanor was a reassuring presence at new music concerts in Northern California for over 40 years. On November 24, 1996, Other Minds presented his striking work for tenor and chamber ensemble, “No More,” with texts by five different South African poets addressing apartheid. Wilson wrote, “What attracted me to these particular poems was the range of emotion that they contained, the depth of humanity that they expressed, and the cogency, originality, and vivid quality of the metaphors, images and symbols they evoked.” And that’s an apt description for how we all felt about our dear friend and colleague. He will be sorely missed. —Charles Amirkhanian
