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- Other Minds Podcast
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About
Support Us
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Charles Amirkhanian: Ratchet Attach It

Charles Amirkhanian: Ratchet Attach It

Charles Amirkhanian: Ratchet Attach It

By Joseph Bohigian

Posted December 8, 2025

In

Charles Amirkhanian: Ratchet Attach It2025-12-082025-12-18https://www.otherminds.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/om_faux_logo_v1b_with-type_with-r_v2_75px.pngOther Mindshttps://www.otherminds.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/charlesamirkhanian_ratchetattachit.jpg200px200px

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Lou Harrison Centennial

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San Francisco non-profit dedicated to contemporary music through concerts, recordings, broadcasts, audio preservation, & public discussions 🎵

🎹 @maki.namekawa !!! 🎹 We're so excited to be ho

🎹 @maki.namekawa !!! 🎹

We're so excited to be hosting Namekawa and @dennis_russell_davies for A Lotta Sonatas on Thursday, May 14, 2026 at 7:00 pm at Littlefield Concert Hall, Mills College at Northeastern University, Oakland.

Here's a photo from our archives of Namekawa performing Isang Yun’s Interludium A during the 22nd Other Minds Festival. Taken during Concert 1: Pacific Rim Centennials, February 18, 2017 at the Mission Dolores Basilica in San Francisco. OM 22 was a centennial tribute to American composer Lou Harrison—whose 109th birthday we'll be celebrating as part of A Lotta Sonatas.

As always, links in our bio for tickets and more information.

📻 Niblock on Music from Other Minds 📻 Last night

📻 Niblock on Music from Other Minds 📻

Last night on Music from Other Minds—broadcast on the Bay Area's KALW—Ed Herrmann presented music powered by the wind: woodwinds, brass, composed, improvised, traditional, and modern. Anthony Braxton’s Composition 58 reinvents Sousa. Rova Saxophone Quartet spontaneously composes The Web with hand gestures and flags. Roscoe Mitchell plays all four parts in a quartet for saxophones. Beth Custer leads a quintet of clarinets. Phill Niblock (pictured above) stretches flute tones for hours. Ivo Nilsson plays a trombone solo. Plus music by György Ligeti, Douglas Ewart, Andrew Voigt, Thea Musgrave, Elliott Carter, Henry Threadgill, the Murung people of Bangladesh, nadhaswaram masters M.P.N Sethuraman and M.P.N Ponnuswamy, invented instruments, and the Stanford Marching Band. Blow your horn!

Link in our bio to the full program.

Other Minds is besot with excitement for the white

Other Minds is besot with excitement for the white-hot pianists @dennis_russell_davies and @makinamekawa to perform A Lotta Sonatas in their first appearance with Other Minds since we brought them for 2024’s celebration of Davies’ 80th birthday. This time we’ll be celebrating Lou Harrison’s 109th birthday, who worked and taught for many years at Mills—first as a piano accompanist for the Department of Dance at Mills College between 1937 and 1942 and then as the Darius Milhaud Chair of Musical Composition at Mills College between 1980 and 1985.

For their sixth appearance with Other Minds, the duo will perform works by Lou Harrison, William Bolcom, Joe Hisaishi, Philip Glass, Paul Hindemith, and Arvo Pärt. The Hisaishi and Glass sonatas were written especially for Namekawa.

This concert is part of Other Minds’s PastForward series, presented in cooperation with the Center for Contemporary Music, Northeastern University and Mills Performing Arts.

Link to buy tickets in our bio.

📀 Real to Reel by Helen Thorington 📀 “My work tal

📀 Real to Reel by Helen Thorington 📀

“My work talks about the loss of the natural environment, something to which I contribute as a maker of artificial worlds,” she told Ear. “And in the process of doing that, I can use any kind of sound.”

Link to stream and buy in our bio.

📀 emoji by Teodora Stepančić 📀 "On this recordin

📀 emoji by Teodora Stepančić 📀

"On this recording, Stepančić here follows this series of actions. As she indicates with her instruction that “there is no difference between the outside sounds and created sounds,” we are encouraged to hear her entangled with our own world. As such, each listening becomes singular. In one listening, Slovenian bells accompany the song of a robin alighting on a tree outside my window. In another, the radiator gurgles quietly along with Stepančić’s piano chords towards emoji’s conclusion." from Ryan Dohoney's liner notes

Link in our bio to download

🎹 Where were U in '74? 🎹 Digging through the Othe

🎹 Where were U in '74? 🎹

Digging through the Other Minds Archives, we found this flier from our Dorothy Renzi collection: A single page flyer for a concert featuring pianist William Masselos at the Stephenson-Bradford Music and Fine Arts Center on January 26, 1974. Handwritten note by bottom says "narrated by D Renzi" (Dorothy Renzi).

You'll never know what you'll find at archives.otherminds.org. Link, as always, is in our bio.

📀 Return with Ruggles from a long weekend! 📀 Spec

📀 Return with Ruggles from a long weekend! 📀

Specifically, our release of the complete Ruggles! Reissued from the historic 1980 CBS Masterworks LP, our 2CD set includes original liner notes plus a rare critical essay by composer Lou Harrison. Carl Ruggles (1876–1971) was an innovative American composer who used “dissonant counterpoint” to fashion a body of work both finely crafted and wrought with emotional power. This reissue includes world-renowned conductor Michael Tilson Thomas with the Buffalo Philharmonic, the original liner notes plus a rare essay on Ruggles by Lou Harrison and historic photos of the composer.

Link to buy is in our bio!

Link to stream and download here: https://othermindsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-complete-music-of-carl-ruggleshttps://othermindsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-complete-music-of-carl-ruggles

Celebrate David Tudor's 100th birthday (January 20

Celebrate David Tudor's 100th birthday (January 20) with this program and recording of a concert celebrating his 39th, recorded in San Francisco 60 years ago today! We know, we know, it's a picture of Cage, not Tudor, on the program...

Recorded by KPFA Radio, this historic concert thundered through the halls of the sculpture court of the San Francisco Museum of Art before a capacity audience that included the late Darius Milhaud in his wheelchair and other Bay Area arts dignitaries. The volume levels were raucous and the medium of live electronic music never more vibrant. The program included Cage's "Duet for Cymbal" and "Variations IV," with Christian Wolff's "for 1, 2, or 3 people" in between.

Links to view the full program and listen to the concert in our bio!

Drones for Thursday! On the aptly named Drones, @

Drones for Thursday!

On the aptly named Drones, @jenksalden shares three longform pieces of delicate synthesis recorded in the late 60s and early 70s. While the pieces are hardly blissful, they represent somewhat of a link between the avant-garde and New Age music scenes simultaneously percolating in the Bay Area in that time period.

Link to stream and buy in our bio.

Good weather's back in Berkeley! To celebrate, he

Good weather's back in Berkeley!

To celebrate, here's a photo from the Other Minds Archives of Gerhard Stäbler (left) and Charles Amirkhanian in shorts and sandals. Taken during the 1990 Composer-to-Composer Festival, held in Telluride Colorado from July 13-15, 1990.

Remember, it's always sunny and breezy when you're combing through the Other Minds Archives: https://archives.otherminds.org/index.php

It's Tuesday, time to buy a new record. How about

It's Tuesday, time to buy a new record. How about our Scenes from a New Music Séance?

At some point it seemed appropriate that Other Minds honor the deceased progenitors of American experimental music by presenting their music side by side with their spiritual offspring. And thus was born “A New Music Séance.” Other Minds composers are mostly individualists who have forged their own paths that are very personal and that announce their creators as boundary pushers. These individualists flourished because others, equally daring, led the way. The series was subtitled, somewhat tongue in cheek, “Summoning the specters of musical forbears, channeling the spirits of their successors.” The duo of @grebnet and @zofoduet's Eva-Maria Zimmermann bring these “ghost” works to life and allow us to hear these exceedingly rare gems from the violin and piano repertory.

Link in our bio to buy digitally or on cd.

We're still reeling from @acwcomposer 's incredibl

We're still reeling from @acwcomposer 's incredible performance of Morton Feldman's Triadic Memories last Thursday. If you missed it, we'll have video up soon, but you can also read the program notes while listening to a recording of the piece to pretend you were there!

Link in our bio to the full program notes

📽 Blue+Bob Concert Video 📽 Did you miss our Blue+

📽 Blue+Bob Concert Video 📽

Did you miss our Blue+Bob concert in September, featuring Joseph Kubera and @cahill_piano playing "Blue" Gene Tyranny and Robert Ashley compositions? Fret no more! We've uploaded the entire performance for your viewing pleasure.

Link to stream is in our bio.

And, if you love these sorts of concerts, don't forget that this week we celebrate Morton Feldman's 100th birthday with a performance of his Triadic Memories at Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland.

More info and a link to buy tickets in our bio.

Other Minds welcomes pianist Amy Williams @acwcomp

Other Minds welcomes pianist Amy Williams @acwcomposer to perform Morton Feldman’s monumental—and rarely performed—Triadic Memories on Thursday, January 8, 2026, at Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland, in celebration of the composer’s centennial. Morton Feldman’s extraordinary late solo piano work is a study in slowly evolving repetitions over the 80-minute duration. Exact repetitions, subtle variations, shifting patterns and fresh new materials are interwoven. Materials are constantly recontextualized, using different voicing and registers, changing one note of a chord, juxtaposing new harmonies—always changing and always soft. The listener is taken on a journey of deep concentration and reflection.

Pianist/composer Amy Williams has been connected to Feldman’s music since her childhood—her father and Feldman were close colleagues at the University at Buffalo. She has recorded and performed his music for nearly three decades. This concert is part of Other Minds’s PastForward series, presented in cooperation with the Center for Contemporary Music, Northeastern University and Mills Performing Arts.

Ticket link in our bio!

OM 29 videos coming your way! First up is our fes

OM 29 videos coming your way!

First up is our festival opener: @pamelazed's Simultaneous, an intermedia composition composed of speech fragments taken from interviews with friends and collaborators woven together with Z’s own vocalizations and found sounds.

Link to watch in our bio.

@acwcomposer on the Other Minds Podcast Ready for

@acwcomposer on the Other Minds Podcast

Ready for our celebration of Morton Feldman’s 100th Birthday? This January 8, Other Minds welcomes pianist Amy Williams to perform Morton Feldman’s monumental—and rarely performed—Triadic Memories at Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland. Morton Feldman’s extraordinary late solo piano work is a study in slowly evolving repetitions over the 80-minute duration. Pianist/composer Amy Williams has been connected to Feldman’s music since her childhood—her father and Feldman were close colleagues at the University at Buffalo. Listen to her interview with our Associate Director Joseph Bohigian on the Other Minds Podcast.

Links in our bio for tickets and podcast.

Contact sheet for portraits of Anahid and Maro Aje

Contact sheet for portraits of Anahid and Maro Ajemian with Lou Harrison (ca.1950s)

A black and white contact sheet of twelve images that feature head and shoulders portraits of violinist Anahid Ajemian (left), pianist Maro Ajemian, and composer Lou Harrison. The three are seated at a table and in conversation throughout the sequence.

Happy Boxing Day! Enjoy this Other Minds Archive

Happy Boxing Day!

Enjoy this Other Minds Archive Find: 9 minutes of sawtooth experimentation on the "Payne Box" from the late '60s. This is an early example of the types of sounds that can be created electronically. It is uncertain if this modulated sawtooth wave was intended as a piece of electronic music or simply as a demonstration of a certain type of analog synthesizer. The accompanying documentation indicates it was one channel of a “Payne Box,” which may indicate that it was created by either Maggi Payne or John Payne, both composers of electronic music associated with KPFA during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Link in our bio.

Happy Holidays! Want to relive the shopping you d

Happy Holidays!

Want to relive the shopping you did a month ago? Here's a fly on the wall recording of Christmas shoppers, recorded at Hinks Department store in Berkeley, California on November 30, 1970, at 4:30 PM. This ambient field recording picks up the sounds of people as they walk past, use the phone, and open a music box.

Link in our bio to the full recording on our Archives.

📀🎅🎁 Ratchet Attach It for Xmas🎅📀🎁 Need a last min

📀🎅🎁 Ratchet Attach It for Xmas🎅📀🎁

Need a last minute gift idea for your belovéd spouse, over-achieving child, or father who has it all? How about @odetogravity's newly released Ratchet Attach It? Sip cocoa and watch the yule log burn while listening to soon to be Christmas Classics like "The U.S. Army Postal Unit at Blandford, Dorset, 1944" and "Bum of the Flightlebee."

Link in our bio to buy now on CD, LP, and Digital Download.

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Other Minds® is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Our federal tax ID is 94-2728116. Other Minds is a federally registered trademark, number 3668959.
For questions regarding accessibility, please contact Joseph Bohigian at joseph@otherminds.org or (415) 934-8134. © ℗ 2026 Other Minds. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy

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Dennis Russell Davies and Maki Namekawa playing piano

A Lotta Sonatas: Dennis Russell Davies and Maki Namekawa

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