Other Minds
Encyclopedia
Other Minds is a San Francisco based private 501 (c) (3) not-for-profit organization, founded in 1992 by Charles Amirkhanian
(who serves as Executive and Artistic Director)and Jim Newman
(President Emeritus). According to their mission statement: Other Minds, Inc., is dedicated to the encouragement and propagation of contemporary music in all its forms through concerts, workshops and conferences that bring together artists and audiences of diverse traditions, generations and cultural backgrounds. By fostering cross-cultural exchange and creative dialogue, and by encouraging exploration of areas in new music seldom touched upon by mainstream music institutions, Other Minds is committed to expanding and reshaping the definition of what constitutes "serious music.". Local musician/composer Adam Fong
has been the organization's Associate Director since 2006.
The name "Other Minds" has been attributed by Jim Newman
to an anonymous obituary that ran in the New Yorker in 1992 which stated that John Cage
"...composed music in other people's minds."
Other Minds has achieved wide recognition and acclaim including the ASCAP award in 2009 for adventurous programming and the American Music Center
's 2005 letter of distinction for service to American composeers.
In addition Other Minds organizes occasional concerts and events known as "New Music Seances" in various venues in the Bay Area throughout the year featuring live performances with local artists of music by undeservedly lesser known past masters such as Henry Cowell
, Ruth Crawford, Dane Rudhyar
, Alan Hovhaness
and Lester Bowie
.
The annual concert series usually occurs in early March and is held at the San Francisco Jewish Community Center's Kanbar Hall
Composers represented in the annual festival have included such artists as Meredith Monk
, Muhal Richard Abrams
, Terry Riley
, Philip Glass
, Frederic Rzewski
, Margaret Leng Tan
, Henry Brant
, Conlon Nancarrow
, Robert Ashley
, Pauline Oliveros
, Lou Harrison
, Laurie Anderson
, LaMonte Young, Leroy Jenkins
, Janice Giteck
, Kyle Gann
, Olly Wilson
, William Parker
, Gavin Bryars
, Michael Nyman
, Brian Eno
and many others.
Henry Brant
's Pulitzer Prize
winning Ice Field
from 2001 was an Other Minds commission. Grawemeyer Award
winner Louis Andriessen
was recently featured as was Mac Arthur Fellow Jason Moran
.
, and much more.
and features a wide variety of international new music common to the mission of Other Minds. Weekly programs are also accessible as an mp3
stream from the program website at the time of broadcast and for at least a week thereafter.
's Player Piano Studies. Other releases include new recordings like 'FIRST LIFE The Rare Early Works' (world premieres of music by Marc Blitzstein
).
Current efforts are being made to release some long out of print recordings of American music by pianist Maro Ajemian
and violinist Anahid Ajemian
. They also stock a selection of contemporary music CDs and related books and scores from other publishers.
Charles Amirkhanian
Charles Amirkhanian is an American composer. He is a percussionist, sound poet, and radio producer of Armenian extraction. He is mostly known for his electroacoustic and text-sound music...
(who serves as Executive and Artistic Director)and Jim Newman
Jim Newman (Dilexi Gallery, Other Minds)
Jim Newman is a film and television producer, contemporary art curator, gallerist and musician.-Musical career and festival management:...
(President Emeritus). According to their mission statement: Other Minds, Inc., is dedicated to the encouragement and propagation of contemporary music in all its forms through concerts, workshops and conferences that bring together artists and audiences of diverse traditions, generations and cultural backgrounds. By fostering cross-cultural exchange and creative dialogue, and by encouraging exploration of areas in new music seldom touched upon by mainstream music institutions, Other Minds is committed to expanding and reshaping the definition of what constitutes "serious music.". Local musician/composer Adam Fong
Adam Fong
Adam Fong is a composer, performer and producer active in the San Francisco Bay area. He studied English and Music at Stanford University earning an M.A. in 2004. He then completed an M.F.A. in media studies at Cal Arts in 2006 where his teachers included James Tenney and Wadada Leo Smith...
has been the organization's Associate Director since 2006.
The name "Other Minds" has been attributed by Jim Newman
Jim Newman (Dilexi Gallery, Other Minds)
Jim Newman is a film and television producer, contemporary art curator, gallerist and musician.-Musical career and festival management:...
to an anonymous obituary that ran in the New Yorker in 1992 which stated that John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
"...composed music in other people's minds."
Other Minds has achieved wide recognition and acclaim including the ASCAP award in 2009 for adventurous programming and the American Music Center
American Music Center
The American Music Center is a non-profit organization which aims to promote the creating, performing, and enjoying new American music. The organization was founded in 1939 by composers Marion Bauer, Aaron Copland, Howard Hanson, Harrison Kerr, Otto Luening, and Quincy Porter.The organization has a...
's 2005 letter of distinction for service to American composeers.
Concerts
Since 1993 they have presented an annual concert series featuring a wide range of composers from every part of the world, some well-known, some rising stars who reflect the aesthetic of Other Minds. These concerts are produced in conjunction with an artist residency retreat held at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in Woodside, California just south of San Francisco in which that year's artists have an opportunity to share their work with each other prior to the festival performances.In addition Other Minds organizes occasional concerts and events known as "New Music Seances" in various venues in the Bay Area throughout the year featuring live performances with local artists of music by undeservedly lesser known past masters such as Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. His contribution to the world of music was summed up by Virgil Thomson, writing in the early 1950s:...
, Ruth Crawford, Dane Rudhyar
Dane Rudhyar
Dane Rudhyar , born Daniel Chennevière, was an author, modernist composer and humanistic astrologer. He was the pioneer of modern transpersonal astrology.-Biography:...
, Alan Hovhaness
Alan Hovhaness
Alan Hovhaness was an Armenian-American composer.His music is accessible to the lay listener and often evokes a mood of mystery or contemplation...
and Lester Bowie
Lester Bowie
Lester Bowie was an American jazz trumpet player and composer. He was a member of the AACM, and cofounded the Art Ensemble of Chicago.-Biography:...
.
The annual concert series usually occurs in early March and is held at the San Francisco Jewish Community Center's Kanbar Hall
Composers represented in the annual festival have included such artists as Meredith Monk
Meredith Monk
Meredith Jane Monk is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. Since the 1960s, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording extensively for ECM Records.-Life and work:Meredith Monk is primarily known for her...
, Muhal Richard Abrams
Muhal Richard Abrams
Muhal Richard Abrams is an American educator, administrator, composer, arranger, clarinetist, cellist, and jazz pianist in the Free jazz medium. Abrams compresses both contemporary and traditional ideas into lean, elegant pieces.- Biography :Abrams attended DuSable High School in Chicago...
, Terry Riley
Terry Riley
Terrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...
, Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
, Frederic Rzewski
Frederic Rzewski
Frederic Anthony Rzewski is an American composer and virtuoso pianist.- Biography :Rzewski began playing piano at age 5. He attended Phillips Academy, Harvard and Princeton, where his teachers included Randall Thompson, Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and Milton Babbitt...
, Margaret Leng Tan
Margaret Leng Tan
Margaret Leng Tan is a classical music artist known for her work as a professional toy pianist, performing in major cities around the world on her 51 cm-high toy pianos...
, Henry Brant
Henry Brant
Henry Dreyfuss Brant was a Canadian-born American composer. An expert orchestrator with a flair for experimentation, many of Brant's works featured spatialization techniques.- Biography :...
, Conlon Nancarrow
Conlon Nancarrow
Conlon Nancarrow was a United States-born composer who lived and worked in Mexico for most of his life. He became a Mexican citizen in 1955.Nancarrow is best remembered for the pieces he wrote for the player piano...
, Robert Ashley
Robert Ashley
Robert Ashley , is a contemporary American composer, best known for his operas and other theatrical works, many of which incorporate electronics and extended techniques. Along with Gordon Mumma, Ashley was also a major pioneer of audio synthesis.Ashley was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan...
, Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros is an American accordionist and composer who is a central figure in the development of post-war electronic art music....
, Lou Harrison
Lou Harrison
Lou Silver Harrison was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo Lou Silver Harrison...
, Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson
Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s...
, LaMonte Young, Leroy Jenkins
Leroy Jenkins
Leroy Jenkins was a composer and free jazz violinist and violist.Jenkins was involved in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians while a public school teacher in Chicago. He co-founded the Creative Construction Company with Anthony Braxton and others...
, Janice Giteck
Janice Giteck
-Biography:Giteck grew up in Hicksville, Long Island and moved to Arizona when she was twelve years old. She attended Mills College, completing her Master's in 1969 and studying under Darius Milhaud. She later studied under Olivier Messiaen, and following this she studied percussion with Daniel...
, Kyle Gann
Kyle Gann
Kyle Eugene Gann is an American professor of music, critic and composer born in Dallas, Texas. As a critic for The Village Voice and other publications he has been a supporter of progressive music including such Downtown movements as postminimalism and totalism.- As composer :As a composer his...
, Olly Wilson
Olly Wilson
Olly Woodrow Wilson, Jr. is a prominent American composer of contemporary classical music, pianist, double bassist, and musicologist. He is one of the preeminent living composers of African American descent.-Life:...
, William Parker
William Parker
-Sportsmen:* Tony Parker, William Anthony Parker II, , Belgian basketball player* Smush Parker , American basketball player* Sir William Parker, 3rd Baronet , British rower and Olympic medalist*Will Parker, rugby union player...
, Gavin Bryars
Gavin Bryars
Richard Gavin Bryars is an English composer and double bassist. He has been active in, or has produced works in, a variety of styles of music, including jazz, free improvisation, minimalism, historicism, experimental music, avant-garde and neoclassicism.-Early life and career:Born in Goole, East...
, Michael Nyman
Michael Nyman
Michael Laurence Nyman, CBE is an English composer of minimalist music, pianist, librettist and musicologist, known for the many film scores he wrote during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Greenaway, and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano...
, Brian Eno
Brian Eno
Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
and many others.
Henry Brant
Henry Brant
Henry Dreyfuss Brant was a Canadian-born American composer. An expert orchestrator with a flair for experimentation, many of Brant's works featured spatialization techniques.- Biography :...
's Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
winning Ice Field
Ice Field
Ice Field is a musical composition by Henry Brant, for large orchestral groups and organ, commissioned by Other Minds for a December 2001 premiere by the San Francisco Symphony. It was awarded the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Music, and premiered on December 12 at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco...
from 2001 was an Other Minds commission. Grawemeyer Award
Grawemeyer Award
The Grawemeyer Awards are five awards given annually by the University of Louisville in the state of Kentucky, United States. The prizes are presented to individuals in the fields of education, ideas improving world order, music composition, religion, and psychology...
winner Louis Andriessen
Louis Andriessen
Louis Andriessen is a Dutch composer and pianist based in Amsterdam. He teaches composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague...
was recently featured as was Mac Arthur Fellow Jason Moran
Jason Moran
Jason Matthew Patrick Moran was an Australian criminal from Melbourne, Victoria, and one of the leaders of the Moran crime family, notable for its involvement in the Melbourne gangland killings. He sported a 12 cm scar on the side of his face.-Early life:Moran was the son of Lewis Moran and...
.
Sound Archives
In 2002 Other Minds inaugurated a free internet webradio service called radiOM, where users can access hundreds of hours of archival recorded audio material including interviews with prominent composers of our time, past OM festival performances, examples of sound poetrySound poetry
Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging between literary and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words"...
, and much more.
Weekly Radio Program
Music from Other Minds is a weekly program produced and usually hosted by Other Minds board member Richard Friedman. It is broadcast on San Francisco radio station KALWKALW
KALW is a public radio station based in San Francisco, California. Its HD FM radio signal is broadcast over the immediate San Francisco Bay Area at 91.7 MHz, and is webcast with live streaming audio.-Background:...
and features a wide variety of international new music common to the mission of Other Minds. Weekly programs are also accessible as an mp3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
stream from the program website at the time of broadcast and for at least a week thereafter.
Record Label
Other Minds also has a record label, with a continually expanding catalog of CDs and DVDs. Some of the releases are of recordings from the now defunct 1750 Arch Records such as '10+2:12 American Text Sound Pieces' and the first complete recording (and the only recording done on his own instruments in his Mexico City studio) of Conlon NancarrowConlon Nancarrow
Conlon Nancarrow was a United States-born composer who lived and worked in Mexico for most of his life. He became a Mexican citizen in 1955.Nancarrow is best remembered for the pieces he wrote for the player piano...
's Player Piano Studies. Other releases include new recordings like 'FIRST LIFE The Rare Early Works' (world premieres of music by Marc Blitzstein
Marc Blitzstein
Marcus Samuel Blitzstein, better known as Marc Blitzstein , was an American composer. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock, directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the Works Progress Administration...
).
Current efforts are being made to release some long out of print recordings of American music by pianist Maro Ajemian
Maro Ajemian
Maro Ajemian was an American pianist. Ajemian's career in contemporary music got its impetus from her Armenian heritage; she became known as a contemporary pianist after performing the U.S...
and violinist Anahid Ajemian
Anahid Ajemian
Anahid Ajemian is an American violinist. Ajemian's career in contemporary music got its impetus from the desire to help young composers of her generation have their compositions performed. Additionally, she enjoyed performing the music of established contemporary performers...
. They also stock a selection of contemporary music CDs and related books and scores from other publishers.