Election Section

The 11th Other Minds Festival will present programs of new and unusual music, Thursday through Saturday, Feb. 24-26, at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center—including a centennial tribute to 20th-century political composer Marc Blitzstein (best-known for his pro-labor 1937 musical, staged by Orson Welles, The Cradle Will Rock), and a 60th birthday salute to composer, long-time music director of KPFA-fm and co-founder of Other Minds—Charles Amirkhanian. 

Another 60th birthday celebration, on opening night, for English composer Michael Nyman (famed for scoring films by Peter Greenaway), will feature Nyman’s performance of his own work (including that from the Jane Campion film, The Piano, and his String Quartet No. 3, influenced by the music of Armenia, played by local group Del Sol). 

The program begins at 8 p.m. (after a panel discussion with the composers) with Phill Niblock’s “Sethwork,” performed on guitars with e-bow by Seth Josel (accompanied by films by the composer), and composer Daniel Bernard Roumain performing his String Quartet No. 4, “Angelou,” on electric violin with the Del Sol Quartet, and DJ Scientific sampling Maya Angelou’s poetry—a piece commisioned by Other Minds in its world premiere. 

Friday at 8 p.m. is the 60th birthday celebration for Amirkhanian—long familiar to Berkeley listeners as Music Director of KPFA, 1969-92. Amirkhanian co-founded Other Minds in 1992 and continues as its artistic director. His radiophonic tape piece, “Son of Metropolis San Francisco”—utilizing tapes of Bay Area ambient sounds, Synclavier synthesizer and organ chorale—will be performed. 

Following will be innovative British guitarist (and professor of compositional music at Mills College) Fred Frith with both solo improvisations and in duo with Berkeley resident Sudhu Tewari (on homemade electroacoustical instruments from discarded electronic equipment) as the group Normal. The program—which also opens with a composers’ panel—closes with Spanish composer Maria De Alvear singing the world premiere of her work “Gran Sol” with Italian singer Amelia Cuni accompanying in Indian Dhrupad vocal style, and Bay Area favorite Joan Jeanrenaud on cello. 

The centennial tribute to Marc Blitzstein (1905-64) begins at 11 a. m. Sat. with a showing of Tim Robbins’ 1999 film, a fictional recounting of the remarkable circumstances of Orson Welles’ staging of The Cradle Will Rock for (and against!) the Federal Theater Project—which at one point locked out the troupe performing this pro-labor musical. 

At 2 p.m., Sarah Cahill—first of a string of Berkeley residents performing—will play Blitzstein’s unpublished “Piano Percussion Music” (1929), followed by a recital of songs by Blitzstein on texts by Walt Whitman and e. e. cummings, and from his stage and concert works No For an Answer, Regina and The Cradle Will Rock. Vocalists, accompanied by Sarah Cahill, will be Amy X. Neuberg (of Berkeley), John Duykers and Eric A. Gordon, Blitzstein’s biographer (Mark the Music, St. Martin’s Press, 1989). 

Gordon, who will be staging a Blitzstein Centennial tribute Feb. 27 in Great Neck NJ (Blitzstein’s 100th birthday is Mar. 2), will close the program with a discussion of Blitzstein’s life and music after a screening of the 1927 experimental German film Hände (Albrecht Viktor Blum), with Blitzstein playing piano as sound accompaniment. Members of Blitzstein’s family will be in attendance. 

Saturday night at 8 p.m., following the composers’ panel, the closing Festival program will feature five movements from Alaskan composer John Luther Adams’ “Strange and Sacred Noise” (1997), devoted to different combinations of percussion instruments as played by So Percussion quartet—who follow with a performance of Evan Ziporyn’s “Melody Competition” (2000), based on west Balinese Mebarung, a “battle of the bands,” and will incorporate the sounds and techniques of gamelan. Jazz violinist—and Vietnam vet—Billy Bang closes the festival with selections from his “Vietnam Reflections” (released on disk last January), accompanied by a quartet including trumpet and horns, piano, bass and drums.  

Other Minds, in just over a decade, has presented an extraordinary array of both compositional and improvised musics from around the world, besides working with and celebrating eminent—if often neglected—composers, like the late Lou Harrison, Conlon Nancarrow and Ned Rorem. 

This year’s centennial tribute to Marc Blitzstein is a case in point: student of both Nadia Boulanger and Arnold Schoenberg (a unique distinction); documentary film composer; critic who predicted the integration of jazz with compositional concert music; influenced by both Dada and the political imperatives of Bertolt Brecht’s composer, Hans Eissler; WW II veteran and agitprop labor anthem tunesmith and lyricist, Blitzstein composed a great body of unusual—and unusually accessible work—that is long overdue for rediscovery. The 11th Other Minds Festival is determinedly furthering that historical process, as well as showcasing, premiering and commissioning new and recent work.