Music From Other Minds

On this edition of Music from Other Minds, Blaine Todd presents Melville’s Marginalia by Susan Howe and David Grubbs, Roxy Gordon‘s An Open Letter to Illegal Aliens, Terry Allen‘s Dugout, and Philip Glass and Allen Ginsberg’s Hydrogen Jukebox. Each piece is a testament to the power of place, the complexities of identity, and the ways in which borders and margins shape our understanding of history and culture.

This program features the music of Sofia Gubaidulina, who died March 13, 2025 at her home in Appen, Germany. Gubaidulina was born October 24, 1931 in Chistopol, Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Her works, which concern mysticism, spirituality, and religious themes, were disfavoured by the Soviet authorities, and she moved to Appen, Germany in 1992. This program is composed of five pieces by Gubaidulina written between 1965 and 1987: her Sonata for piano, De profundis for accordion, the violin concerto Offertorium, String Quartet No. 2, and Hommage à T. S. Eliot.

This program begins and ends with references to Percy Grainger. Australian composer Cat Hope uses pitch tracking and spectral processing to realize Grainger’s concept of Free Music, an idea inspired by watching waves on a lake. British writer and filmmaker Iain Sinclair, whose work is associated with psychogeography, reads his story “Dark Before Dark,” about a mysterious box that appears on the beach, and should never be opened, while accompanied by the London Experimental Ensemble. The show opens with Hazel Scott’s jazzy improvisation on Grainger’s “Country Gardens.”

This program features mid-20th century American piano works and recordings by pianist Geoffrey Burleson in anticipation of Burleson’s From Antheil to Zappa recital in Oakland on Saturday, April 5, 2025. The program opens with an archival Ode to Gravity program from 1970 in which host Charles Amirkhanian plays keyboard works by Norman Dello Joio, Samuel Barber, Igor Stravinsky, and Harold Shapero. In the second half, we’ll hear Geoffrey Burleson’s recordings of solo piano works by Vincent Persichetti and Roy Harris, along with Nathan Williamson’s recording of Leonard Bernstein’s 1938 Piano Sonata.

On this Music from Other Minds, Liam Herb presents a 1957 in-studio conversation between Pierre Boulez, Robert Erickson, Andrew Imbrie, Arnold Elston and Jack Holloway at KPFA, Berkeley. Also on the program, Boulez’ 1968 re-composition Livre pour Cordes, his 1993 work …explosante-fixe…, and Magnus Lindberg‘s 1995 Arena for orchestra. Tune in for this celebration of Boulez’s 100th birthday.

This Music from Other Minds celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pierre Boulez, ahead of Other Minds’s concert for the French composer’s centenary with pianists Gloria Cheng and Ralph van Raat at Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland on Wednesday, March 26, 2025. The program opens with an excerpt of Charles Amirkhanian’s 1986 interview with Boulez for the San Francisco Exploratorium’s Speaking of Music series. In the second half, you’ll hear recent recordings by Gloria Cheng and Ralph van Raat along with an excerpt of Boulez’ rarely heard two-piano masterpiece Structures.

On this Music from Other Minds, Liam Herb plays longform works by Jürg Frey, Susan Alcorn, and C.C. Hennix as well as new releases by Raven Chacon and the duo of Mary Halvorson and Sylvie Courvoisier.

A tribute to Susan Alcorn, the late pedal steel guitar player. One of few women who took up the instrument, she pushed the boundaries, playing jazz, improvised music, and other styles not usually associated with the pedal steel guitar. This program features selections from three of her albums: arrangements of music by Astor Piazzolla on Soledad, improvisations from Touch This Moment, and a quintet playing Alcorn’s jazz-inspired compositions on Pedernal.

Three years after their country was invaded, Ukrainian composers are defiantly making music. We’ll hear two of them. Alla Zagaykevych is a professor at the National Music Academy and the founder of the Electroacoustic Music Studio in Kyiv. Oleh Shpudeiko composes for games, films, and dance; creates sound installations; and reimagines medieval music with modular synthesizers.

This Music from Other Minds features a sampling of recent and upcoming releases from around the world, including Norwegian composer Cecilie Ore’s H2O Trilogy performed by the Engegård Quartet, a track from Mary Kouyoumdjian’s forthcoming album with the Kronos Quartet Witness, pieces by Taylor Long and Rob Cosgrove from the debut album by percussion/electronics duo low pass, Linda Catlin Smith’s Nightshade performed by Apartment House, and two pieces by Iranian vocalist Mahsa Vahdat with the Norwegian choir SKRUK and harpist Ellen Bødtker.

This program features a variety of music for strings—spoken word with cello pieces from Difficult Grace by Seth Parker Woods, string quartets by John Zorn and Scottish composer Anna Meredith, violinist Jennifer Koh’s duets with Tyshawn Sorey and Qasim Naqvi, as well as selections from Feldman and Hume: Intermissions, which pairs Morton Feldman’s sparse piano music with 17th Century viola da gamba pieces by Tobias Hume, and Thea Farhadian’s new album Tattoos and Other Markings, which deals with memory and her Armenian heritage in pieces using field recordings, samples, and electronics.