Other Minds is an American

nonprofit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

based in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

. It was founded In 1992 by

Charles Amirkhanian Charles Benjamin Amirkhanian (born January 19, 1945; Fresno, California) is an American composer. He is a percussionist, sound poet, and radio producer of Armenian origin. He is mostly known for his electroacoustic and text-sound music. Perfor ...

and

Jim Newman James Newman may refer to: * James Newman (actor) (born 1992), American actor * James Newman (singer), English singer-songwriter * James C. Newman, American engineer and materials scientist * James H. Newman (born 1956), American astronaut * James ...

. According to their mission statement, the organization is dedicated to the "encouragement and propagation of

contemporary music Contemporary classical music is classical music composed close to the present day. At the beginning of the 21st century, it commonly referred to the post-1945 modern forms of post-tonal music after the death of Anton Webern, and included serial ...

." The name "Other Minds" has been attributed by Jim Newman to an anonymous obituary that ran in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'' in 1992 which stated that

John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...

"...composed music in other people's minds." Other Minds has achieved wide recognition and acclaim including the

ASCAP The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) () is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadca ...

award in 2009 for adventurous programming, the American Music Center's 2005 letter of distinction for service to American composers, and the

American Composers Forum The American Composers Forum is an American organization that works for the promotion and assistance of American composers and contemporary classical music. It was founded in 1973 as the Minnesota Composers Forum and is based in Saint Paul, Minn ...

2017 Champion of New Music award for Other Minds Executive and Artistic Director

Concerts

Since 1993, Other Minds has presented an annual festival featuring a wide range of international composers. These concerts were previously produced in conjunction with an artist residency retreat held at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in Woodside, California south of San Francisco in which that year's artists had an opportunity to share their work with each other prior to the festival performances. In addition, Other Minds organizes concerts and events in various venues in the Bay Area throughout the year, including the series "The Nature of Music" and "Latitudes." "New Music Seances" feature live performances with local artists of music by lesser known past masters such as

Henry Cowell Henry Dixon Cowell (; March 11, 1897 – December 10, 1965) was an American composer, writer, pianist, publisher and teacher. Marchioni, Tonimarie (2012)"Henry Cowell: A Life Stranger Than Fiction" ''The Juilliard Journal''. Retrieved 19 June 202 ...

Ruth Crawford Ruth Crawford Seeger (born Ruth Porter Crawford; July 3, 1901 – November 18, 1953) was an American composer and folk music specialist. Her music was a prominent exponent of the emerging modernist aesthetic and she became a central member of a g ...

, Dane Rudhyar,

Alan Hovhaness Alan Hovhaness (; March 8, 1911 – June 21, 2000) was an American-Armenian composer. He was one of the most prolific 20th-century composers, with his official catalog comprising 67 numbered symphonies (surviving manuscripts indicate over 70) and ...

, and Lester Bowie. Special concerts have been held celebrating the centennials of composers

and Conlon Nancarrow. The annual festival was held at the Great Star Theater in San Francisco's Chinatown in 2022. Composers represented in the annual festival have included such artists as

Meredith Monk Meredith Jane Monk (born November 20, 1942) is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. From the 1960s onwards, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording ...

, Muhal Richard Abrams,

Terry Riley Terrence Mitchell "Terry" Riley (born June 24, 1935) is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his music became notable for it ...

Philip Glass Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimal music, minimalism, being built up fr ...

Frederic Rzewski Frederic Anthony Rzewski ( ; April 13, 1938 – June 26, 2021) was an American composer and pianist, considered to be one of the most important American composer-pianists of his time. His major compositions, which often incorporate social an ...

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. She is also known to be a classical music performer using unconventio ...

, Henry Brant, Conlon Nancarrow, Robert Ashley,

Pauline Oliveros Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016) was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music. She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center ...

, Lou Harrison, Laurie Anderson,

Julia Wolfe Julia Wolfe (born December 18, 1958) is an American composer and professor of music at New York University. According to ''The Wall Street Journal'', Wolfe's music has "long inhabited a terrain of its own, a place where classical forms are rech ...

, Natasha Barrett, LaMonte Young, Leroy Jenkins, Ben Johnston,

Janice Giteck Janice Giteck (born June 27, 1946 in New York) is an American composer. 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 study ...

Kyle Gann Kyle Eugene Gann (born November 21, 1955, in Dallas, Texas) is an American professor of music, critic, analyst, and composer who has worked primarily in the New York City area. As a music critic for ''The Village Voice'' (from 1986 to 2005) and ...

, Olly Wilson, William Parker, Gavin Bryars,

Michael Nyman Michael Laurence Nyman, Order of the British Empire, CBE (born 23 March 1944) is an English composer, pianist, libretto, librettist, musicologist, and filmmaker. He is known for numerous film soundtrack, scores (many written during his length ...

Brian Eno Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno (; born Brian Peter George Eno, 15 May 1948) is a British musician, composer, record producer and visual artist best known for his contributions to ambient music and work in rock, pop an ...

, Øyvind Torvund,

Raven Chacon Raven Chacon (born 1977) is a Diné-American composer, musician and artist. Born in Fort Defiance, Arizona within the Navajo Nation, Chacon became the first Native American to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music, for his '' Voiceless Mass'' in 2022. ...

, and many others. Henry Brant's

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...

winning '' Ice Field'' from 2001 was an Other Minds commission. Grawemeyer Award winner

Louis Andriessen Louis Joseph Andriessen (; 6 June 1939 – 1 July 2021) was a Dutch composer, pianist and academic teacher. Considered the most influential Dutch composer of his generation, he was a central proponent of The Hague school of composition. Although ...

was featured in 2011 as was MacArthur Fellow Jason Moran.

Preservation & Online Archives

Since 2000, Other Minds has been involved in preserving audiovisual materials which includes an extensive audio collection from the KPFA Music Dept. Archives, as well as the organization's own programming collection. In 2002 Other Minds inaugurated a free online archive called radiOM, where users can access hundreds of hours of archival audio material including interviews with prominent composers of our time, past OM festival performances, examples of

sound poetry Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging literacy and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words". By definition, sound poetr ...

, and much more. The organization's physical archives have been housed at UC Santa Cruz since 2016. This includes approximately 4,000 reel-to reel, cassette, DAT, and video tapes of interviews and live performances from the Berkeley-based radio station

KPFA KPFA (94.1 FM) is an American listener-funded talk radio and music radio station located in Berkeley, California, broadcasting to the San Francisco Bay Area. KPFA airs public news, public affairs, talk, and music programming. The station sign ...

Broadcasts

Music from Other Minds is a weekly program produced and hosted by Charles Amirkhanian and Other Minds staff since 2005. It is broadcast on San Francisco radio station KALW and features a wide variety of international new music common to the mission of Other Minds. Weekly programs are also accessible via streaming from the program website following the broadcast. The Other Minds Podcast was launched in 2022 and features interviews with composers and performers of contemporary music such as

Theresa Wong Theresa Wong (born March 31, 1976) is an American cellist, vocalist, composer and improviser in the field of experimental music. In 2013 she lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. Early life and education She was born in Schenectady, New York, Uni ...

Lars Petter Hagen Lars Petter Hagen (born 2 August 1975) is a Norwegian contemporary composer, former director of the Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival and currently an adviser for the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. Biography Hagen studied at the Norwegian Aca ...

, and

Mari Kimura (; born 1962) is a Japanese violinist and composer best known for her use of subharmonics, which, achieved through special bowing techniques, allow pitches below the instrument's normal range. She is credited with "introducing" the use of violin ...

Record Label

Other Minds also has a record label, with a continually expanding catalog of CDs, LPs, 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 Nancarrow's Player Piano Studies. Other releases include new recordings like 'FIRST LIFE The Rare Early Works' (world premieres of music by

Marc Blitzstein Marcus Samuel Blitzstein (March 2, 1905January 22, 1964), was an American composer, lyricist, and librettist. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-union musical ''The Cradle Will Rock'', directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the Wo ...

) and a reissue of

Michael Tilson Thomas Michael Tilson Thomas (born December 21, 1944) is an American conductor, pianist and composer. He is Artistic Director Laureate of the New World Symphony, an American orchestral academy based in Miami Beach, Florida, Music Director Laureate of ...

's The Complete Music of Carl Ruggles with the

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra is an American symphony orchestra located in Buffalo, New York led by Music Director JoAnn Faletta. Its primary performing venue is Kleinhans Music Hall, which is a National Historic Landmark. Each season it p ...

. Current efforts are being made to release some long out of print recordings of American music by pianist

Maro Ajemian Maro Ajemian (July 9, 1921 – September 18, 1978) was an American pianist. Ajemian's career in contemporary music grew from her Armenian heritage. She became known as a contemporary pianist after performing the U.S. premiere of Aram Khachaturian' ...

and violinist

Anahid Ajemian Anahid Marguerite Ajemian (January 26, 1924 – June 13, 2016) was an American violinist of Armenian descent. Her career in contemporary music began from her desire to help young composers of her generation get their compositions performed. A ...

. They also stock a selection of contemporary music CDs and related books and scores from other publishers. Other Minds also has an annual digital release series called Modern which is focused on unearthing archival works by the unsung pioneers of electronic music from the Bay Area and beyond. Recent releases have featured music by Bay Area composers including Cheryl E. Leonard, Brian Baumbusch, and Christopher Luna-Mega.

References

External links