Other Minds Festival 25: Concert 1

Other Minds marks its milestone 25th festival with 4 nights honoring the art of improvisation, presenting an astonishing convergence of the world’s leading contributors to the history of creative music.

Running from April 2 through April 5 at the Taube Atrium Theater in San Francisco, Moment’s Notice will feature such lauded icons of spontaneous composition as Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, William Parker and Wadada Leo Smith alongside trailblazing artists including Myra Melford, Darius Jones, Elliott Sharp, Mary Halvorson, and Jen Shyu.

Myra Melford, piano
Mark Dresser, bass
Oguri, dance
Improv Set

William Winant, percussion
Zeena Parkins, harp
Ikue Mori, vocals and electronics
Improv Set

William Parker, bass flutes and brass;
Hamid Drake, percussion and voice;
Patricia Nicolson, dance and voice
The Sky is Trembling

Myra Melford‘s skillful, impassioned musicianship weaves subtle silken thread through histories, cultures, and idioms as numerous as they are diverse. World-renowned as a pianist, educator, composer and curator, Melford’s ambition is to integrate pedigree with nascence in music-making environments which rely on trust and spontaneity. She’s received honors from the Guggenheim and Doris Duke organizations and has ranked in multiple DownBeat polls. In addition to teaching as Professor of Composition and Improvisational Practices at UC Berkeley, Myra regularly performs with Snowy Egret (her quintet featuring Ron Miles, Liberty Ellman, Stomu Takeishi and Tyshawn Sorey) as well as in ensembles with Nicole Mitchell, Joelle Leandre, Ben Goldberg, Miya Masaoka, and Zeena Parkins.

Mark Dresser‘s self-proclaimed “obsession” is, happily enough, also his instrument of choice: he does not merely “play” the double-bass so much as speak it, expressing its every discernible nuance through use of extended technique and inventive amplification. His impressive oeuvre as an instrumentalist and bandleader boasts over one hundred forty recordings, highlights of which include projects with Anthony Braxton, Marilyn Crispell, Gerry Hemmingway, John Zorn, Tim Berne, Myra Melford, Matt Wilson, Nicole Mitchell, Bob Ostertag, and Joe Lovano. In addition to being a board member of the International Society of Bassists and the International Society of Improvised Music, Dresser is also amongst the foremost scholars of the contrabass, having been selected by the Fulbright Fellowship to study the instrument in Italy, and since holding numerous teaching positions at universities in the U.S., including his current appointment at the the University of California, San Diego.

Our bodies, the organic rhythm of daily life, and the inexorable momentum of the natural world are integrated into an ever-emergent symbiotic ecosystem in the works and life of the utterly singular dancer, Oguri. A co-founder of the Body Weather Laboratory (alongside Roxanne Steinberg), Oguri has worked to involve his Butoh-inspired somatic vocabulary in cross-disciplinary pursuits which suggest an artistic vision untroubled by matters of scale (to any extreme). He is artist-in-residence at the Electric Lodge in Venice, has served on the faculty at Bennington College, and has been awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, The Getty Center, the Japan Foundation, and the Doris Duke Fellowship.

William Winant‘s incomparable virtuosity as a percussionist has emboldened composers as esteemed as Steve Reich, John Zorn, and Roscoe Mitchell to entrust him with the task of realizing some of history’s most demanding scores – a task he regularly executes with astonishing aplomb. Such efforts were awarded with a Grammy nomination for his recording of John Cage’s 27’ 10.554″ for solo percussion in 2016. His precision and expertise serve as a deep foundation bolstering a profoundly compositional improvisatory dialect, which he has contributed to music featuring fellow legends including Frank Zappa, Keith Jarrett, Anthony Braxton, Marilyn Crispell, George Lewis, Annea Lockwood, Sonic Youth, Yo-Yo Ma, and the Kronos String Quartet.

The work of Zeena Parkins is driven by a spirit of immaculate rigor and boundless creativity, making her one of the most sought-after artists in a stunning variety of disciplines: artistic and academic alike. Her innovative harp-technique is rivaled only by her inventive harp-design, as she employs both idiom-agnostic strategies for extending the sonic possibilities of the acoustic harp and electric instruments of her own making. Her 30+ year career has been decorated by honors as prestigious as the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Doris Duke Award; multiple international residencies and museum features; and of course, innumerable collaborations with visual artists, filmmakers, dancers, and fellow musicians calculating Ikue Mori, Bjork, Butch Morris, John Zorn, Fred Frith, Pauline Oliveros, Kaffe Matthews, and Mandy MacIntosh. She currently holds the Darius Milhaud Chair in Composition at Mills College.

Composer, performer, and media artist Ikue Mori first came to prominence behind the drum kit for the pioneering no wave band DNA, flanked by Arto Lindsay and Tim Wright. She has since crafted one of the most distinct and acutely sensitive voices in the world of experimental improvisation through use of self-programmed drum machines and laptop. Her inimitable, scintillating electronics have proven to be an essential element to the works of John Zorn and she has collaborated with countless artists world-wide, including Dave Douglas, Susie Ibarra, Zeena Parkins, Sylvie Courvoisier, Fred Frith, the Rova Saxophone Quartet, and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth fame.

Hailed by the Village Voice as “the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time,” William Parker‘s accomplishments as an instrumentalist, composer-improviser, educator, and author have garnered him a reputation as not only one of the most skilled practitioners of the art of improvisation, but also one of its most investigative minds. The sheer depth of his knowledge with regards to the field is staggering, and the music he makes with projects like the In Order to Survive Quartet and the Little Huey Creative Orchestra evinces a fathomless wisdom. A seminal icon of both the New York improvisation scene and the European avant-garde, Parker’s bass playing can be heard in his work with cross-continental icons like Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Peter Brotzmann, Milford Graves, Peter Kowald, and David S. Ware.

Easily one of the most sought-after percussionists in the world of jazz and improvised music, Hamid Drake incorporates an extensive battery of Afro-Cuban, Indian, and African instruments into his setup, affording him a creative flexibility which enlivens any and all musical environments to which he is a contributor. Drake’s career as a creative percussionist finds its roots in his relationship with Fred Anderson, whose workshops provided a venue to explore the intricacies of improvisation as an art and share ideas with AACM members like George Lewis. He has since charted out a remarkable journey, playing and recording with Peter Brotzmann, Ken Vandermark, Mahmoud Gania, and William Parker amongst countless others.

Patricia Nicholson‘s medium is dance, but her tireless dedication to art at-large merits terms more akin to “visionary” when attempting to describe her creative work. As a performer, she channels the energy and gestalt of free jazz in naturally-flowing movement patterns which take inspiration from traditional schools of dance while deliberately running obliquely to them. She primarily works with live musicians, the likes of which have included William Parker, Yoshiko Chuma, Don Cherry, Matthew Shipp, and KJ Holmes, but has also recently begun moving in harmony with multi-media art, spoken word, and theater. She’s also served as a curatorial bedrock, organizing important events like New York’s Vision Festival and leading as founder and director of Arts for Art since 1995.