Music From Other Minds

On this sleepy edition of Music from Other Minds, the elusive American Dream takes on a humorously literal meaning as host Ian Mahanpour guides listeners through 30 years of American experimental music concerning sleep, dreams, lullabies, bedtime stories, and everything in between. Featured on the program are the nocturnal drones of Charlemagne Palestine’s Holy 1 & Holy 2 (1967), originally composed as a compliment to New York City’s nighttime soundscape; a short excerpt from RIP Hayman’s Dreamsound (1976) event, an all-night concert where the audience was expected to sleep during the performance; selections from Doris Hays’s rare Sleepers (1985) LP, a compendium of experimental lullabies; as well as pieces by Pauline Oliveros, Alison Knowles, La Monte Young, and Tom Johnson.

If you think inviting listeners to offer their music for broadcast would result in a wildly varied, even incoherent, program, you are correct. Ed Herrmann sorted through industrial noise, gamelan, computer modified flutes, toy pianos, field recordings, manic laughter, robots, ancestor rituals, inscrutable electronics, and more (even some almost conventional chamber music) to make this program like no other you’ve heard. Don’t blame him for how it sounds—it’s your music!

In memory of composer-accordionist Guy Klucevsek (February 26, 1947–May 22, 2025), Adrienne Cardwell presents a special batch of archival recordings ca. the 1980s focused on live performances by Klucevsek, and some of collaborators performing his works. Guy Klucevsek championed new music for the accordion and bridged a natural relativity between experimental and traditional musics with the instrument. Like Pauline Oliveros, he has also influenced how the accordion (and accordion player) are perceived and played, making room for new thought and sound. We’ll hear Klucevsek play his own works and others by Henry Cowell, Ramón Sender, William Duckworth, William Obrecht, Jim Hiscott, Arne Nordheim, William Schimmel, and Carl Finch.

In celebration of Riley’s birthday, our KALW 91.7 radio program Music from Other Minds broadcast a special Terry Riley program. Host Liam Herb will give listeners a brief survey of this visionary composer’s 60-plus-year inspiring career in which he has combined his interest in classical rigor, jazz improvisation, and the spirituality of Indian classical music to fashion music that is universally hailed.

This program features the music of Danish composer Per Nørgård, who died on May 28, 2025, at the age of 92. Nørgård was among the most influential 20th century composers in Denmark, known for his infinity series, a serial method of composition using a sequence of integers which he developed in the 1960s. The program features a range of Nørgård’s compositions from the 1950s to the end of the 20th century, including his Trifoglio, Op. 7, Canon for organ, and Symphony No. 6 “At The End Of The Day.” Also included is an excerpt of a 1970 interview with Nørgård on KPFA from the Other Minds Archives.

This program features two extended works composed by Anthony Braxton, who celebrated his 80th birthday on June 4, 2025.

One of many solar centers for the universe of Other Minds, Braxton’s compositional output extends from his pursuit of “trans-idiomatic creativity,” Braxton’s term for the way his work—and the work of his best collaborators—cross genre and media in pursuit of expression. Most often introduced with reference to his membership in Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and the detail that he recorded the first solo saxophone album (1969’s For Alto), these facts bookend only Braxton’s first half-decade of what is now a nearly sixty-year career as a musician and composer. We celebrate Braxton’s 80th with two works recorded in the last 20 years: 1) a live recording of a sextet from a 2005 concert in the basement of Boston’s Institute for Contemporary Art and 2) Act One of Trillium J, one of Braxton’s cycle of twelve operas.

This program offers a brief survey of Artifact Recordings, an artist-run, non-profit organization supporting experimental and electronic music from the Bay Area for 35 years. Music by Chris Brown, John Bischoff, Tim Perkis, Philip Perkins, William Winant, Ron Heglin, Lorin Benedict, Tom Djll, Steve Adams, The HUB, and more.

On this Music from Other Minds, Liam Herb provides a respite from all the chaos with a 1990 conversation between Sound Aritst Bill Fontana and Charles Amirkhanian, where they discuss his work with nature sounds. Also on the program, beautiful new recordings of vocal works by Jürg Frey and Chuck Johnson‘s longform Cyprus Suite for organ, reeds, pedal steel, and voice.

This program features music made by composers associated with the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM)—a French composition and research organization founded in the late 1950s by Pierre Schaeffer. Composers at GRM explore the compositional strategy of musique concrète, a proto-form of sampling wherein the composer, rather than writing notation for musicians to play, records so-called “concrete” sounds onto tape and then edits these sounds. This program features Luc Ferrari’s Presque rien, n° 1, le lever du jour au bord de la mer (1967–1970), Beatriz Ferreyra’s Un fil invisible (2009), Christian Zanési’s Stop! L’horizon (1983), and both parts of Bernard Parmegiani’s De Natura Sonorum (1975).

This program features a diverse sampling of new music, including Raven Chacon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning piece Voiceless Mass and Biyán performed by Present Music, Alvin Curran’s For Cornelius performed by pianist Eve Egoyan, Yi-Ting Lu’s Half Decorations performed by harpist Ben Melsky, Hannah Kendall’s this is but an oration of loss and Erin Gee’s Mouthpiece 36 performed by Ekmeles, and selections from Understories by Julia Úlehla and Dálava. Guitarist and composer Aram Bajakian joins the program to talk about his work with Úlehla on Understories.