Music From Other Minds

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.

This program features the work of American composer Pauline Oliveros (1932–2016) to coincide with the publication of A Year of Deep Listening: 365 Text Scores for Pauline Oliveros, containing 365 scores gathered by the Center for Deep Listening in celebration of Oliveros’ profound legacy. The program also includes an interview with Stephanie Loveless, Director of the Center for Deep Listening, which is housed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Also featured are performances of pieces by Seth Cluett and Grace Harper from A Year of Deep Listening by Extradition, music from Oliveros’ 1989 album with Stuart Dempster and Panaiotis Deep Listening, and performances by Oliveros at the Other Minds Festival.

On this Music from Other Minds, Liam Herb plays music and interviews with Charles Amirkhanian in honor of his 80th birthday (b. January 19, 1945). Tune in to hear rarities such as Amirkhanian’s Symphony I (1965), Audible Autopsy (for Anthony J. Gnazzo) (2021), Ratchet Attach It (studio version, 2022), and more!

On this program, we’ll hear some highlights of Charles Amirkhanian on the radio from the Other Minds Archives in honor of his 80th birthday on January 19, 2025. Before co-founding Other Minds, Amirkhanian served as the Music Director for KPFA Radio in Berkeley, California from 1969 to 1992. This program includes Amirkhanian’s radio piece Gold and Spirit created for the 1984 Olympics Arts Festival, Radio Event: No. 14: Armenia Gardenia, an excerpt of the World Ear Project broadcast on KPFA, and his 1981 Radiovisions program on minimalism, The New Consonance.

This program honors three Bay Area musical luminaries. Michael Tilson Thomas served as Music Director for the San Francisco Symphony from 1995–2020, bringing innovative programming, inspired interpretations, and imaginative outreach and educational programs. MTT turned 80 in December. Charles Amirkhanian, whose career as a composer and presenter includes serving as Executive and Artistic Director of Other Minds, founder of the Speaking of Music series and Composer-to-Composer Festival, and Music Director at KPFA, turns 80 on January 19. Tabla master Zakir Hussain, who did as much as anyone to fuse North Indian classical music with jazz, western classical, and other musical traditions, recently died in San Francisco at the age of 73.

On this Music from Other Minds, Liam Herb plays an archival program produced by Other Minds Artistic and Executive Director Charles Amirkhanian honoring Peggy Glanville-Hicks‘s (December 29, 1912–June 25, 1990) 100th birthday, originally aired on December 28, 2012. In doing so, MfOM celebrates the composer’s 112th birthday with the broadcast.

The second hour of the program is dedicated to a program produced by Herb honoring the life and music of Henry Brant (September 15, 1915–April 25, 2008) which aired September 14, 2018.