Music From Other Minds

It has been noted since ancient times that elephants seem to have an affinity for music. The elephants of the Thai Elephant Orchestra perform on an array of heavy duty giant traditional Thai instruments, drums, harmonicas and mostly in a hocket style. Furthermore, the traditional Thai…

Helen Thorington is the founder of New Radio and Performing Arts, an organization that commissions and archives new and experimental radio art, sound art, net art, and mixed reality works. Thorington’s work has been aired on terrestrial and internet radio internationally.

In 1963, Terry Riley recorded the Chet Baker Quartet in a Paris studio with the intention of using the raw recordings to create an electro-acoustic work. He created a tape looping process called a “time lag accumulator” and used it to create the five movement work, Music for the Gift.

This program features works for women’s vocal ensembles written by women composers. Compositions by the composers Gilda Lyon, Laura Steenberge, Cara Haxo from Quince Ensemble’s 2018 album, Mother Land. Also on the docket, Maverick composer, singer, choreographer, and director: Meredith Monk. And furthermore we need more text here so blah, blah, blah.

Sun Ra, AKA Herman Poole Sonny Blount, was a composer, bandleader, poet, philosopher, lecturer and a self proclaimed extraterrestrial from Saturn. He is considered to be one of the most prolific recording artists of the twentieth century having put out over one hundred full length albums and dozens of singles. He is perhaps best know for his cult classic film, Space is the Place, which was produced by Other Minds co-founder Jim Newman.

Terry Riley is one of the founders the American minimalist movement. His work is often based on improvisatory processes on modal musical figures. He was deeply influenced by Eastern music and Jazz as well as western classical music. In the 1960’s he was involved with the San Francisco Tape Music Center and worked closely with Steve Reich, Pauline Oliveros and Ramon Sender. A Rainbow in Curved Air has inspired

This program presents two highly contrasting works for voice and orchestra. The first work, Frankenstein!, is by the neo-tonal, neo-expressionistic composer H.K. Gruber. The work melds components of cartoon music, jazz, and contemporary classical music into an action packed, and highly absurd, song cycle. Dans Le Sable, from Bay Area composer, Loren Rush, is scored for soprano, four altos, speaker; vibraphone, harp, celesta, and piano;

Here we present traditional works for gamelan along with two Western classical works inspired by the music of Indonesia. We play a recording from the first and only commercially-released recordings of Balinese music made prior to World War Two. This recording was pivotal in the musical development of featured composer, Colin McPhee, who later traveled to Bali to write his book, Music in Bali.

This program presents Tongue of the Invisible, an eight-movement work for baritone, improvising pianist, and chamber orchestra by the Australian composer Liza Lim. Lim was educated in Australia and is based in Melbourne. Her works borrow from many sources including East Asian, Australian Indigenous and Western idioms. Tongue of the Invisible takes its inspiration and libretto from 14th century