Music From Other Minds

On this rebroadcast of an earlier Music from Other Minds, Liam Herb explores the many approaches to electronic music. Tune in for collage-based compositions of Gordon Mumma and John Oswald (Plunderphonics), the interactive electronics of David Behrman, analog works by Victoria Shen and John Bischoff, electro-reinforced sound poetry by Enzo Minarelli, improvised electronics with drums by Laurie Spiegel, and the kitchen sink with Pauline Oliveros.

This Music from Other Minds features music in advance of Morton Feldman’s 100th birthday on January 12, 2026. To celebrate, on January 8th, 2026, Other Minds is presenting pianist Amy Williams performing Feldman’s 1981 work, Triadic Memories. Williams’ father, Jan Williams, taught with Feldman for many years at the University of Buffalo. The program also features Amy Williams playing as part of the Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo as well as Jan Williams playing music by Lukas Foss.

This program offers three new works by New York based musicians.

Cellular Songs, a new album by Meredith Monk, has 15 compositions for vocal ensemble, with some using vibraphone, piano, and percussion. Of the collection Monk says, “I wanted to make a piece that can be experienced as an alternative possibility of human behavior, where the values are cooperation, interdependence, and kindness, as an antidote to the values that are being propagated right now.”

Since founding the jazz trio AIR in the 1970s, Henry Threadgill has led many ensembles, and in recent years his compositions explore unusual instrumental combinations. His latest, Listen Ship, is for six acoustic guitars and two pianos.

Composer and multi-instrumentalist Elliot Sharp has a new work for six electric guitars called Mare Crisium. Sharp says it “offers a non-linear, non-rational coded response to the current world situation and hopes to provide positive psychoacoustic chemical change to the players and listeners.”

This week’s program features music by Arcomusical, a berimbau and percussion ensemble based in Illinois. The berimbau is an instrument traditionally played in the Brazilian body-game of capoeira however Arcomusical brings it into new music, following in the footsteps of legends like Naná Vasconcelos and Ramiro Musotto. Arcomuscial is both a musical ensemble and an educational organization run and founded by Gregory Beyer, a music professor at Northern Illinois University. We will be playing selections from two of their albums, Spinning in a Wheel from 2019 and Emigre and Exile from 2022. Both albums tonight featured performances by Alexis C. Lamb, Anthony Cable, Daniel Eastwood, Elena Ross, Ethan H. Martin, Kyle Flens, Raychel Taylor, and Gregory Beyer.

On this Music from Other Minds, Liam Herb plays works performed by Margaret Leng Tan ahead of her appearance at Mills College at Northeastern in Oakland, CA on December 4, 2025 at 7:30pm. Tune in for her performances of works by John Cage, Ge Gan-Ru, Somei Satoh, and more.

The second half of the program is dedicated to the first ever broadcast of Charles Amirkhanian‘s Ode to Gravity, which first aired on March 4, 1970.

A New Music Concatenation! This program features a string of interconnected pieces by Galina Ustvolskaya, Rand Steiger, Butch Rovan, and Matt Sargent, each one relating to the next. How will we get from an octet of flutes and bassoons to a string octet? Listen to find out!

This Music from Other Minds features music and poetry that is somewhat sacred and thereby dwells on the musical material of sacred music and how it might suggest the sacred, even if it might not, necessarily, be explicitly religious. Some of the selections use the instruments of sacred music, some selections have lyrics that are somehow ecstatic or religious in temperament, some selections refer to sacred music, and one selection was simply recorded in a church. This program features music and poems by: Frederic Rzewski, Daniel Strong Godfrey, Isaac Jarnot, Áine O’Dwyer, Alvin Lucier, and Robert Ashley.

Composers often reach outside their own tradition for inspiration. This program explores works that borrow instruments, adapt aesthetics, and transform aspects of non-Western music into new forms. Music by Jin Hi Kim, Peter Sculthorpe, Sarah Peebles, Ningxin Zhang, Toru Takemitsu, Reena Esmail, Bill Brennan, Andy McNeill, Werner Durand, Amelia Cuni, and Uli Hohmann. If there’s time, maybe a folk song setting by Luciano Berio.

On this rebroadcast of an earlier Music from Other Minds, Liam Herb plays an archival recording of Charles Amirkhanian’s Ode to Gravity: The Music of Conlon Nancarrow. Originally broadcast on NPR stations worldwide in April of 1987, this program includes interviews with the composer in his studio in Mexico City conducted by Amirkhanian in 1977, some of the composer’s Studies for Player Piano also recorded on that trip, and a recording of his String Quartet (1942) performed here by the Kronos Quartet.