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Other Minds is a global New Music community where composers, students, and listeners discover and learn about fine innovative music by composers from all over the world Other Minds is a global New Music community where composers, students, and listeners discover and learn about fine innovative music by composers from all over the world
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othermindssf

San Francisco non-profit dedicated to contemporary music through concerts, recordings, broadcasts, audio preservation, & public discussions 🎵
🎂 Happy Birthday George Oppen 🎂 "‘Whether, as the 🎂 Happy Birthday George Oppen 🎂 "‘Whether, as the intensity of seeing increases, one’s distance from Them, the people, does not also increase’ I know, of course I know, I can enter no other place Yet I am one of those who from nothing but man’s way of thought and one of his dialects and what has happened to me Have made poetry To dream of that beach For the sake of an instant in the eyes, The absolute singular The unearthly bonds Of the singular Which is the bright light of shipwreck" Born in 1908 to a wealthy family in New Rochelle, New York., George Oppen was best known for being a main member of the Objectivist poets writing in the 1930s. He met his wife Mary while they were both attending college, and on their first date they stayed out all night, an infraction that led to Mary being expelled and George being suspended. They subsequently got married and set out to travel the country. After a number of years during which Oppen published several books of his own and other’s poetry, he increasingly became involved with leftist politics and joined the Communist Party in the United States during the Great Depression. Despite later volunteering and serving with distinction in the Army during World War II, Oppen feared a run-in with Joe McCarthy's Senate committee, so he and his wife moved to Mexico where he supported himself as a carpenter until finally returning to the U. S. in 1958. He returned to writing poetry in the 1960s and continued up until he fell victim to Alzheimer's disease and his eventual death in 1984. George Oppen, May 16, 1967, after doing a reading at the Arena Theater, Fresno State College (now California State University, Fresno). Photo by Charles Amirkhanian.
What is Glass listening to? We don't know, but we What is Glass listening to? We don't know, but we know where you can listen to Glass: Dennis Russell Davies and Maki Namekawa's May 14th concert: A Lotta Sonatas! For their sixth appearance with Other Minds, the duo will perform works by Lou Harrison, William Bolcom, Joe Hisaishi, Philip Glass, Paul Hindemith, and Arvo Pärt. The Hisaishi and Glass sonatas were written especially for Namekawa. Thursday, May 14, 2026 at 7:00 pm Littlefield Concert Hall, Mills College at Northeastern University, Oakland Click the link in our bio to buy tickets!
👔 Generational Fits 👔 American composer and music 👔 Generational Fits 👔 American composer and music critic Virgil Thomson (center) seated with Ronald Erickson (left) and Charles Amirkhanian (right), all looking off to the left. This photograph was taken inside Amirkhanian's studio in Berkeley. Undated but likely in 1973, when Amirkhanian interviewed Thomson about George Antheil and other composers. Photo by Carol Law.
🐴 LOST HORSE WASH DRONE 🐴 Lost Horse Wash Drone, 🐴 LOST HORSE WASH DRONE 🐴 Lost Horse Wash Drone, by composer and guitarist Giacomo Fiore, features Fiore’s playing on a variety of justly-tuned guitars alongside field recordings from Joshua Tree National Park. The concept for this album grew out of Giacomo Fiore’s week-long residency at the Lou Harrison House in Joshua Tree, California in March 2023. Immersed in the surroundings of the desert, Fiore delved into an exploration of Lou Harrison's musical legacy, drawing inspiration from Harrison's creative practice and his commitment to environmental conservation. Armed with a fretless electric guitar, a resophonic guitar (a copy of the instrument Harrison designed for his last composition, Scenes from Nek Chand), and his recording equipment, Fiore ventured into the heart of Joshua Tree National Park to capture the aural essence of the desert landscape. Despite encountering challenges with human-caused noise pollution, Fiore persevered, employing inventive techniques such as placing microphones inside his guitar to blend the sounds of the environment with the acoustics of his instrument. Link to stream and buy in our bio.
Last night's program of Music from Other Minds fea Last night's program of Music from Other Minds featured recent releases of music by American, German, Norwegian, and Italian composers. Included on the program are “Adagione” from Ars et vita by Magne Hegdal, performed by pianists Ellen Ugelvik, Håkon Austbø, and Sanae Yoshida; Carola Bauckholt’s Pacific Time performed by @ensembledalniente; selections from Radis by Andrea Giordano @aandrew_andre_, Kalle Moberg, and Jo David Meyer Lysne; Amy Williams’ Child’s Play performed by @bentfrequency; selections from All-American Futurity Trials by @shutterspeed_duo; and John Luther Adams’ True Horizon performed by the @australianchamberorchestra. Link to listen and stream is in our bio.
A Lotta Sonatas! Other Minds is besot with excite A Lotta Sonatas! Other Minds is besot with excitement for the white-hot pianists Dennis Russell Davies and Maki Namekawa to perform A Lotta Sonatas in their first appearance with Other Minds since we brought them for 2024’s celebration of Davies’ 80th birthday. This time we’ll be celebrating Lou Harrison’s 109th birthday, who worked and taught for many years at Mills—first as a piano accompanist for the Department of Dance at Mills College between 1937 and 1942 and then as the Darius Milhaud Chair of Musical Composition at Mills College between 1980 and 1985. For their sixth appearance with Other Minds, the duo will perform works by Lou Harrison, William Bolcom, Joe Hisaishi, Philip Glass, Paul Hindemith, and Arvo Pärt. The Hisaishi and Glass sonatas were written especially for Namekawa. Link to purchase tickets in our bio.
🐛 Tonight! April 16th: David Rothenberg at The Nat 🐛 Tonight! April 16th: David Rothenberg at The Nature of Music! 🐛 How does one play music with animals in a way that respects their nature and agency? Other Minds welcomes musician and philosopher David Rothenberg to answer this question in the West Coast premiere of his work Eleven Paths to Animal Music (2025) at the Goldman Theater, David Brower Center. Based on one section of his 2019 book Nightingales in Berlin, David Rothenberg’s Eleven Paths to Animal Music, is a composition that contains vignettes of natural environments recorded on his travels—from frogs in the Amazon, nightingales and wind in the Camargue, leafcutter ants in Costa Rica, and a lake in Brandenburg, among others. This piece encourages performers to listen closely to whole natural environments and find a way to play together and within them. In addition to the inspiration he takes from the natural world, Rothenberg also cites Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, George Crumb’s Vox Balaenae and Tierra Whack’s Whack World. The remainder of the event will contain shorter pieces where Rothenberg plays with whales and insects, along with a discussion of how and why he embarked on this more-than-human musical quest. See link in our bio for tickets.
🐛 Tomorrow! April 16th: David Rothenberg at The Na 🐛 Tomorrow! April 16th: David Rothenberg at The Nature of Music! 🐛 How does one play music with animals in a way that respects their nature and agency? Other Minds welcomes musician and philosopher David Rothenberg to answer this question in the West Coast premiere of his work Eleven Paths to Animal Music (2025) at the Goldman Theater, David Brower Center. Based on one section of his 2019 book Nightingales in Berlin, David Rothenberg’s Eleven Paths to Animal Music, is a composition that contains vignettes of natural environments recorded on his travels—from frogs in the Amazon, nightingales and wind in the Camargue, leafcutter ants in Costa Rica, and a lake in Brandenburg, among others. This piece encourages performers to listen closely to whole natural environments and find a way to play together and within them. In addition to the inspiration he takes from the natural world, Rothenberg also cites Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, George Crumb’s Vox Balaenae and Tierra Whack’s Whack World. The remainder of the event will contain shorter pieces where Rothenberg plays with whales and insects, along with a discussion of how and why he embarked on this more-than-human musical quest. Link to tickets in our bio.
📻 Richard Felciano In Memoriam on MFOM 📻 On last 📻 Richard Felciano In Memoriam on MFOM 📻 On last night's Music from Other Minds, we celebrated the work of American composer Richard Felciano, who died on February 21, 2026, at the age of 95 in San Francisco. We moved back and forth between an archival interview from 1976, in which Charles Amirkhanian interviews Felciano on KPFA about his work and musical background while playing work from his 1976 LP Instrumental Music, and other, more recent recordings available to stream on the composers website: In Celebration of Golden Rain, Constellations, Responsory, and Prelude for Piano. We closed the program with a recording of Felciano’s work for multiple carillons spread throughout the Dallas/Fort Worth metro area: Islands of Sound. Click the link in our bio to stream.
Virgil Thomson, photographed ca. 1973, outside hom Virgil Thomson, photographed ca. 1973, outside home of Charles Amirkhanian and Carol Law. Photo by Carol Law.
🍌 The OM Archives Delivers the Goods Yet Again 🍌 🍌 The OM Archives Delivers the Goods Yet Again 🍌 @odetogravity in front of two large portraits of men who were possibly broadcasters for the KIRO/KSEA network at the time. Taken at KSEA studios in Seattle, WA, January 1988.
🐛 Next Thursday, April 16th: David Rothenberg at T 🐛 Next Thursday, April 16th: David Rothenberg at The Nature of Music! 🐛 How does one play music with animals in a way that respects their nature and agency? Other Minds welcomes musician and philosopher David Rothenberg to answer this question in the West Coast premiere of his work Eleven Paths to Animal Music (2025) at the Goldman Theater, David Brower Center. Based on one section of his 2019 book Nightingales in Berlin, David Rothenberg’s Eleven Paths to Animal Music, is a composition that contains vignettes of natural environments recorded on his travels—from frogs in the Amazon, nightingales and wind in the Camargue, leafcutter ants in Costa Rica, and a lake in Brandenburg, among others. This piece encourages performers to listen closely to whole natural environments and find a way to play together and within them. In addition to the inspiration he takes from the natural world, Rothenberg also cites Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, George Crumb’s Vox Balaenae and Tierra Whack’s Whack World. The remainder of the event will contain shorter pieces where Rothenberg plays with whales and insects, along with a discussion of how and why he embarked on this more-than-human musical quest. Link to tickets in our bio.
📀 Braxton and Fei on Tuesday! 📀 “Composition 429” 📀 Braxton and Fei on Tuesday! 📀 “Composition 429” is the first piece using a new writing method that Braxton calls “Lorraine.” It’s immediately apparent that the duo have been playing together for decades, Fei having appeared on numerous recordings of Braxton’s work throughout their years working together. Despite this, Duet marks their first recording as a duo. Covering the spectrum of saxophones, the pair harmonizes strings of melodies that hover between the angular and the familiar. As Braxton himself puts it, “memories and shadows of ‘beingness’ adorn the ornamentation of old ruins and blessed relics.” The Lorraine system calls for performers to play the written material as composed followed by an extrapolative section where players improvise with the material following an additional layer of more abstract notation, but always in rhythmic unison. In this performance, Braxton and Fei are accompanied by “Diamond Curtain Wall Music,” an electronics system that continuously derives pitch information from their performance. This multitude of layers expands and contracts and interacts in an ever-changing kaleidoscope that even stretches to encompass the composer’s past work - in this case Braxton’s “Ghost Trance Music,” Compositions No. 272 and No. 343. The pair cover a dizzying swath of territory over the course of the piece’s 40 minutes. Listen and buy: https://othermindsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/duet-other-minds-2021
📻Last Night on MFOM! Hear This! Percussion Music📻 📻Last Night on MFOM! Hear This! Percussion Music📻 Percussion music that spans the sonic gamut with taps, scrapes, whistles and space, melodies, rhythms, and noise. Music composed by Charles Amirkhanian, Amy Brandon, Swapan Chaudhuri, Jacob Druckman, Anna Höstman, Roscoe Mitchell, Monica Pearce, Michael Torke, Ryan Scott, Hiroki Tsurumoto, and Mohammed Abdul Wahab; performed by Swapan Chaudhuri, The Meadows Percussion Ensemble, Roscoe Mitchell, Dominic Murcott, Sandbox Percussion, Ryan Scott, Third Coast Percussion, and Trinity Laban Percussion Ensemble. Listen here: https://www.otherminds.org/broadcast/868/
A view of Conlon Nancarrow's machine to punch pian A view of Conlon Nancarrow's machine to punch piano rolls, on a table in his home workshop. Nancarrow's shoulder and hand can be seen to the left. Mexico City, 1969. Photo by Charles Amirkhanian.
🆒 📀 Half-Dragged by Henry Birdsey 📀 🆒 Henry Birds 🆒 📀 Half-Dragged by Henry Birdsey 📀 🆒 Henry Birdsey is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and audio engineer based in New Haven, CT, working primarily with the pedal steel, lap steel, microtonal organ, violin, and homemade instruments. Educated by microtonal theorist and composer Kyle Gann, among others, Birdsey has emerged as a prominent voice in the avant-garde music scene over the last several years. Touring extensively in the United States and abroad as a solo act and as half of Tongue Depressor with Zach Rowden, Birdsey has developed a musical language that utilizes sensuous usages of just intonation tunings, musical drones, and inventive recording and amplification techniques. In his debut OM release, "Half-Dragged," Birdsey uses a bowed lap steel guitar tuned to a system of his own design, prepared with various metal objects, to create a work that is environmental in scope. Birdsey's recording process involves placing amplifiers and microphones throughout a space, in different rooms with unique acoustic properties, to create a complex field of phasing, standing waves, and oscillating sound layers. The material on the album was developed while on tour on the West Coast in early 2020 and recorded in his isolated home town of Ripton, Vermont. "Half-Dragged" opens with a hollow metal drone of murky origin, accented by strong buzzing down bows across the steel wound strings. Over the course of the first two movements, Birdsey flirts with the tonal possibilities of the lap steel, expanding and contracting the interval sizes by bowing only choice strings and open harmonics. By the third movement, the work becomes much less restrained allowing the listener to appreciate the dark complexity of the tuning and amplification of the work. Half-Dragged ends approximately where it started, but this time with a much more zealous recapitulation of the opening drone. Listen and buy here: https://othermindsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/half-dragged
The Swedish composer Anders Eliasson, taken by Cha The Swedish composer Anders Eliasson, taken by Charles Amirkhanian, during his visit to Stockholm’s Fylkingen Society in 1972. Born in 1947, Eliasson worked as a jazz trumpeter before studying with Ingvar Lidholm and Valdemar Söderholm, at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. He has composed modern orchestral, vocal, and chamber works for traditional instruments and was a member of the artistic committee of the Electronic Music Studio Foundation in Stockholm, from 1972 to 1973.
🐦 @d.rothenb on the OM Podcast! 🐦 David Rothenber 🐦 @d.rothenb on the OM Podcast! 🐦 David Rothenberg is a composer, clarinetist, philosopher, and author of several books on animal songs, including "Why Birds Sing," which was turned into a documentary by the BBC in 2006. He has more than forty albums under his own name, and has worked with scientists to decode the mockingbird’s song and written stories on cicada music for the New York Times and whale music for National Geographic. Rothenberg will travel to the Bay Area to talk about playing music with animals at Other Minds’s The Nature of Music series on April 16, 2026 at the David Brower Center in Berkeley. Rothenberg will also give the West Coast premiere of his work "Eleven Paths to Animal Music," which features recordings of natural environments from his travels. On the podcast, Rothenberg and Joseph Bohigian talked about what animal song tells us about animal cultures, which animals are the most musical, and making field recordings for his piece "Eleven Paths to Animal Music." Click the link in our bio to listen, subscribe, and buy tickets for Rothenberg's upcoming Nature of Music.
📻 David Rothenberg on MFOM 📻 On last night's Musi 📻 David Rothenberg on MFOM 📻 On last night's Music from Other Minds, Rachel Schonfeld introduced the music of David Rothenberg by walking through many of his past projects and albums. This program is in preparation for our next Nature of Music 20 on April 16th at 7:30pm at the Goldman Theatre in the David Brower Center where David will give the West Coast premiere of his newest work, "Eleven Paths to Animal Music." The program also features music that inspired this work, such as George Crumb’s "Vox Balanae," and Olivier Messiaen, and similar, nature-based music, from the Other Minds Label. Listen to the 2-hour program here: https://soundcloud.com/other-minds/mfom-867 Link to buy tickets to David's Nature of Music here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-nature-of-music-20-david-rothenberg-tickets-1983896989300?aff=oddtdtcreator
Nature of Music 20: @d.rothenb How does one play Nature of Music 20: @d.rothenb How does one play music with animals in a way that respects their nature and agency? Other Minds welcomes musician and philosopher David Rothenberg to answer this question in the West Coast premiere of his work Eleven Paths to Animal Music (2025) at the Goldman Theater, David Brower Center. Based on one section of his 2019 book Nightingales in Berlin, David Rothenberg’s Eleven Paths to Animal Music, is a composition that contains vignettes of natural environments recorded on his travels—from frogs in the Amazon, nightingales and wind in the Camargue, leafcutter ants in Costa Rica, and a lake in Brandenburg, among others. This concert is the 20th edition of Other Minds’s Nature of Music series, made possible through generous support from the EarthWays Foundation. Links to tickets in our bio.
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