A panoply of composers assembled for the 29th Other Minds Festival in San Francisco, an international annual showcase for composers held at the Brava Theater ThursdayโSunday, October 16โ19, 2025.
The Festival opened with a performance by the composer/performer/media artist Pamela Z. Pamela Z presented Simultaneous, an intermedia composition for voice, electronic processing, chamber ensemble, speech samples, gesture control, and projected video. The piece is partially composed of speech fragments taken from recorded interviews with friends and collaborators and is woven together with Pamela Zโs own vocalizations and found sounds. Opening night also featured American composer Peter Garland‘s Songs of Exile and Wine, performed by vocalist Maria Tegzes and pianist Geoffrey Burleson, a beguiling song cycle with texts by multiple authors written in 2000 while the composer was living in Tlacotalpan, Mexico.
On Night 2, composer Samuel Adams presented a set of solo and chamber pieces performed by Friction Quartet, violinist Helen Kim, percussionist Haruka Fujii, and pianists Conor Hanick and Sarah Cahill. Adams’ piece commissioned by Cahill, which received its world premiere, is a tribute to his mentor Ingram Marshall (1942โ2022), who was also represented on the program with a performance of Dark Waters for English horn by Libby Van Cleve.
Night 3 opened with Norwegian composer Kristine Tjรธgersen‘s Piano Piece, a work for piano, electronics, and live camera using recordings of a spruce forest on the south coast of Norway performed by pianist Ellen Ugelvik and visual artist Evelina Dembacke. Composer/harpist Zeena Parkins and percussionist William Winant followed with Parkins’ Modesty of the Magic Thing, based on Jay DeFeo’s series of drawings Seven Pillars of Wisdom and Lou Harrison’s American Gamelan tuning. We closed with the world premiere of a new choreographed work by Nancy Karp set to composer James Tenney‘s 1975 piece Three Pieces for Drum Quartet.
At the final concert of Other Minds 29, Putu Septa, leader of the ensemble Nata Swara, performed an intercultural set of music for gamelan instruments and piano with fellow Balinese musician I Kadek Janurangga; ZOFO, the Bay Area piano duo of Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi; and Brian Baumbusch, including music by Ni Nyoman Srayamurtikanti,ย Baumbusch, and Colin McPhee.
Click the image to download the full concert program.
Concert Programs
Concert 1
Thursday, October 16
7pm panel discussion ยท 8pm concert
Thursday, October 16
7pm panel discussion ยท 8pm concert
Pamela Zโ Simultaneous, Pamela Z, voice and electronics; Kyle Bruckmann, oboe/English horn; Charlton Lee, viola; Monica Scott, cello; and Divesh Karamchandani, percussion
Peter Garland โ Songs of Exile and Wine, Maria Tegzes, soprano and Geoffrey Burleson, piano
Concert 2
Friday, October 17
7pm panel discussion ยท 8pm concert
Friday, October 17
7pm panel discussion ยท 8pm concert
Samuel Adams โ Sundial, Friction Quartet and Haruka Fujii, percussion; Violin Diptych, Helen Kim, violin and Conor Hanick, piano; รtudes, Conor Hanick, piano; Prelude: Hammer the Sky Bright, Sarah Cahill, piano
Ingram Marshall โ Dark Waters, Libby Van Cleve, English horn
Concert 3
Saturday, October 18
7pm panel discussion ยท 8pm concert
Saturday, October 18
7pm panel discussion ยท 8pm concert
Kristine Tjรธgersen โ Piano Piece, Ellen Ugelvik, piano and Evelina Dembacke, video
Zeena Parkins โ Modesty of the Magic Thing, Zeena Parkins, harp and William Winant, percussion
James Tenney, music; Nancy Karp, choreography โ Three Pieces for Drum Quartet, Other Minds Ensemble: Jimmy Chan, Elizabeth Hall, Divesh Karamchandani, and Mika Nakamura, percussion; Nancy Karp + Dancers: Sonsherรฉe Giles, Katie Kruger, Amy Lewis, and Elizabeth Zepeda, dancers
Concert 4
Sunday, October 19
3pm panel discussion ยท 4pm concert
Sunday, October 19
3pm panel discussion ยท 4pm concert
Brian Baumbusch โ Tombeau, Nata Swara and ZOFO
Transc. Colin McPhee โ Balinese Ceremonial Music, ZOFO
Putu Septa โ KoSo, ZOFO
Ni Nyoman Srayamurtikanti, arr. Brian Baumbusch โ Speech Delay, ZOFO
Nata Swara and Brian Baumbusch โ Kendang Krumpungan
Nata Swara โ Las Anjali
Brian Baumbusch โ Prisms for Gene Davis, Nata Swara, ZOFO, and Brian Baumbusch
Nata Swara (Putu Septa and I Kadek Janurangga, gamelan)
ZOFO (Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi, piano)
Festival Artist Bios
Samuel Adams
Samuel Adams (b. 1985) is an American composer. Gramophone Magazine praised Adams as โamong the most interesting composers of the millennial generation in his negotiation of the tensions that shape and define his musical narratives: between directness and implication, silence and resonance, emotion and its aftermath.โ His work resists the traditional tensions of classical music, blending acoustic and digital sounds in inventive, texturally rich compositions. Adamsโs music has been hailed as โmesmerizingโ by The New York Times and The San Francisco Chronicle, โtranscendentโ by The Chicago Tribune, and โbeguilingโ by The Strad magazine. He has been commissioned by a number of major ensembles, including the San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New World Symphony, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, and Dallas Symphony.
Peter Garland
Born in 1952, Peter Garland grew up on the East Coast, spent the 1970s mostly in California and Mexico, and lived in New Mexico in the 1980s. In the early 1990s, he worked and traveled in 12 countries on 5 continentsโthe so-called Gone Walkabout years. From 1997โ2005, he lived in Mexico, where he did intensive fieldwork and research on regional musical traditions. Since 2005, he has been living on the coast of Maine. In addition to his composing, he has been a prolific essayist and writer, though most of his work remains unpublished, especially his 2-volume Gone Walkabout journals and the 4-volume Mexican fieldwork journals. From 1971 to 1991, he was the editor and publisher of SOUNDINGS Press, and he played a prominent role in the rediscovery and re-evaluation of Americaโs pioneer modernist composers, such as Nancarrow, Revueltas, Bowles, Harrison, Rudhyar, and Partch, among others. He has recordings on the New Albion, Mode, Tzadik, and Cold Blue labels. All the while he has managed to eke out an occasionally precarious survival outside of academia and the mainstream musical-political support system.
I Kadek Janurangga
I Kadek Janurangga is a composer and gamelan musician born in Ubud, Bali. Janurangga has been familiar with the world of gamelan since he was 9 years old and joined the Sanggar Nata Swara Gamelan group in 2011. Janurangga is a graduate of the Indonesian Institute of the Arts, Denpasar, completing his education in 2021. Through this experience, Janurangga has produced many gamelan and non-gamelan works, both in traditional and new contexts. In addition to being a composer, he is active as a musician and member of Sanggar Nata Swara. As his second home, he has had a lot of experience both as a musician and composer in various projects with Sanggar Nata Swara. In addition to working with gamelan media, Janurangga is currently studying music with computer/electronic media.
Nancy Karp
Choreographer Nancy Karp (b. 1951) grew up in Los Angeles where she received her early classical training with maverick dancer/choreographer, Carmelita Maracci. As a student in the first years of CalArts, her principal teachers and mentors were Bella Lewitzky, Donald McKayle, and Mia Slavenska. She founded Nancy Karp + Dancers in 1980 and has since created more than 80 dance works during her continuing career. Her choreography has been acclaimed by Dance Magazine as โwork of the utmost intellectual rigor and refinementโ and โwith resounding focus and visual purityโ by the San Francisco Chronicle. She embraces elaborate structures working with units of pure movement, investigating their potential through combination and variation. From these โstructural investigationsโ emerge patterns and phrases that become her dances. Karp is the recipient of awards, grants, and commissions from the Yerba Buena Choreographers Festival, Kyoto International Contemporary Music Forum, Sprachen der Kรผnste Festival, Cabrillo Music Festival, Rockefeller Foundation, Fulbright Program, and National Endowment for the Arts.
Zeena Parkins
New York-based electroacoustic composer/improviser Zeena Parkins is a pioneer of contemporary harp practices. Using expanded techniques, object preparations, and electronic processing, she has redefined the instrumentโs capacities. Concurrently, Parkins self-designed a series of one-of-a-kind electric instruments. She leans into the harpโs physical limitations pushing its boundaries and impossibilities. In her compositions, Parkins utilizes collections, recombination, historic proximities, geography, tactility, spatial configurations, and movement. Sonic presence and personality is revealed in explorations of subtle frequency shifts, feedback, over and under tones, melodic fragments, timbral and gestural intervals, perception, and residues.
Putu Septa
I Putu Adi Septa Suweca Putra (Putu Septa) (b. 1992) is a composer and musician from the village of Padangtegal, Ubud, Bali. His natural talent as a gamelan musician descends from his grandfather, a great gamelan musician, and his ability with the instrument has been recognized since childhood. Septa has worked with Dafra Kura Band (Africa), Filastine (Barcelona), Bloco (Singapore), Akim Funk Buddha (US), Jonas Stampe (Denmark), Rima (US), and others. In 2022, he first collaborated with composer Brian Baumbush. To contribute to new music on Balinese gamelan, Septa initiated a new gamelan ensembleโNata Swaraโwhich performs with, among others, Gamelan Sada Sancaya, an orchestra of extended range bronze instruments designed by Septa, and Kendang Briuk, an instrument set consisting of a varied collection of Balinese kendang drums.
Kristine Tjรธgersen
Kristine Tjรธgersen’s (b. 1982, Oslo, Norway) compositional practice is characterized by curiosity, imagination, humor, and precision, and through her work she creates unexpected auditory situations through playing with tradition. She has a special interest in the interplay between the visual and the auditory and how they affect each other. Nature in motion and process is often reflected in her works, and collaboration with researchers and biologists is for her a source of new sound and scenic ideas, incorporating organic forms into the music. She holds a MA in composition from Anton Bruckner Universitรคt in Linz, Austria, where she studied with Carola Bauckholt, and a MA in clarinet from the Norwegian Academy of Music where she studied with Hans Christian Brรฆin.
William Winant
Grammy-nominated percussionistย William Winant has collaborated with some of the most innovative and creative musicians of our time, including Joรซlle Lรฉandre, John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, Pierre Boulez, Frank Zappa, Keith Jarrett, Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, Fred Frith, James Tenney, Terry Riley, John Zorn, Cecil Taylor, Gerry Hemingway, Mark Dresser, Barry Guy, Marilyn Crispell, George Lewis, Steve Reich and Musicians, Frederic Rzewski, Ursula Oppens, Joan LaBarbara, Annea Lockwood, Danny Elfman/Oingo Boingo, and the Kronos Quartet. In 2016, Winant was awarded a large, unrestricted grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in recognition for his groundbreaking work as a contemporary percussionist. In 2014, he received a Grammy nomination for his recording of John Cageโs historic solo work 27′ 10.554″ for percussionist on MicroFest Records.
Pamela Z
Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist working primarily with voice, live electronics, sampled sound, and video. A pioneer of live looping, she processes her voice to create complex sonic layers. Her solo works combine experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, digital processing, and wireless MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate sound with physical gestures. She has toured throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. Her work has been presented at venues and exhibitions including Bang on a Can (NY), the Japan Interlink Festival, Other Minds (SF), MoMA (NY), the Venice Biennale, and Dakar Biennale. She has composed scores for dance, film, and chamber ensembles (including Kronos Quartet and Eighth Blackbird). Her awards include the Rome Prize, Berlin Prize, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, MIT McDermott Award, the Guggenheim, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
ZOFO
Since joining forces as a professional piano duo in 2009, Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke NakagoshiโZOFOโhave electrified audiences from Carnegie Hall to Tokyo with their dazzling artistry and outside-the-box thematic programming for one-piano-four-hands. One of only a handful of duos worldwide devoted exclusively to piano duets, this Grammy-nominated, prize-winning Steinway Artist ensemble is blazing a bold new path by focusing on 20th and 21st century repertoire and commissioning new works from noted composers each year. ZOFO, which is shorthand for 20-finger orchestra (ZO=20 and FO=finger orchestra), also performs heart-pumping duet arrangements of famous orchestral pieces such as Stravinskyโs The Rite of Spring, exploring the realms in which many composers first experienced their symphonic visions.
