Other Minds News

As he releases a collection of work that has appeared in films, the English musician talked about making functional art, his most ubiquitous composition and why he dislikes wearing headphones on the street. full New York Times article

Alarm Will Sound used multiple videoconferencing tools to master the ambiguities of Tyshawn Sorey’s “Autoschediasms.” Last month, I did something I used to do often before the pandemic: I watched a rehearsal. But this time it wasn’t a matter of sitting in a concert hall and watching a group work onstage. Sixteen instrumentalists from the […]

Jon Gibson, Minimalist Saxophonist and Composer, Dies at 80 Best known for his long association with Philip Glass, Mr. Gibson also worked with Steve Reich, Terry Riley and La Monte Young as well as performing his own music. Jon Gibson, a saxophonist and composer who played a foundational role in Minimalist music, died on Oct. […]

Whispers of an Italian-Jewish Past Fill a Composer’s Music Yotam Haber’s “Estro Poetico-Armonico III” combines live singing with archival recordings of cantors. Since early in his career, Yotam Haber has grappled with what it means to be a contemporary Jewish composer. The tentative answers offered by his music — full of allusions, distortion and whispers […]

Jon Gibson, a composer, multi-instrumentalist, visual artist and collaborative musician who had a profound effect on the creation and dissemination of what would come to be known as “minimalist” music, died Oct. 12 at a hospital in Springfield, Mass. He was 80. full Washington Post article 

Sharing an Intimate Musical Vision Sarah Hennies’s highly personal explorations of “queer and trans identity, love, intimacy and psychoacoustics” are increasingly played by others. “One of the things that I’m drawn to is living with someone for a long time, being in love, and what that’s like after you’ve lived together for 10 years,” the […]

When the pandemic quieted San Francisco, these birds could hear each other sing. As urban bustle ground to a halt this spring, white-crowned sparrow songs improved surprisingly fast, a new study says. Full article from National Geographic

I was a young, African-American Southerner, working in a Republican administration. But I loved Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and that was enough for her. By Eric L. Motley Our improbable friendship began in 2002 at a Georgetown dinner party, and it began with music. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a Jewish urbanite who had just turned 69 […]

Programming works involving improvisation would be one way to encourage ensembles to make classical music more inclusive. Why won’t big American orchestras improvise? The answer might have something to do with a tough night for Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic back in 1964.The great conductor wanted his audience to give serious consideration to […]

Listen to how artists have explored what it means — and could mean — to be American. A cone of silence hangs over the work of Black composers from Africa and its diaspora. It is not that Black men and women have not written music, but too often it has been ignored — and thus […]