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12th Other Minds Music Festival
Annual new music festival includes two world premieres and U.S. premiere
Friday, Dec. 8, 2006, 8 pm • Saturday, Dec. 9, 2006, 8 pm • Sunday, Dec. 10, 2006, 2 pm
Kanbar Hall, Jewish Community Center of San Francisco
San Francisco, CA (October 25, 2006) — The 12th Other Minds Music Festival, presented by Other Minds in association with the Djerassi Resident Artists Program and the Eugene and Elinor Friend Center For the Arts of the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, features some of the most creative voices and exciting performers in contemporary music. Known for presenting unconventional programs of the most inventive voices in new music, the annual festival begins with three days of private retreat for guest composers, and continues with concerts and panel discussions at the Jewish Community Center, San Francisco, December 8-9-10, 2006.
The 12th Other Minds Music Festival offers a rare opportunity to hear important works by eight of today’s most innovative composers, invited by Other Minds Executive Director and Festival Artistic Director Charles Amirkhanian. The festival includes American premieres from two of the world's greatest living composers, Per Nørgård of Denmark and Peter Sculthorpe of Australia, as well as guest composers Maja Ratkje (Norway), Joëlle Léandre (France), Ronald Bruce Smith (Canada), Daniel David Feinsmith (U.S.), Markus Stockhausen (Germany), and Tara Bouman (Netherlands).
Festival concerts are Friday, Dec. 8 (8pm); Saturday, Dec. 9 (8pm); and Sunday, Dec. 10 (2pm), 2006, at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco’s Kanbar Hall, 3200 California St. at Presidio Ave. Panel discussions with composers and performers, hosted by Charles Amirkhanian, begin one hour prior to each concert.
Single-concert tickets are $20–$30 ($20 student/senior; $26 JCC members; $30 general). Ticket packages for all three festival concerts are $50-$75 ($50 student/senior; $65 JCC members; $75 general–not available on web sales).. Tickets may be purchased in person or by mail from the JCCSF Box Office, 3200 California St., San Francisco, CA 94118. For advance sales, call the JCCSF Box Office at (415) 292-1233 or purchase online at www.jccsf.org/arts or www.otherminds.org.
The 12th Other Minds Music Festival gives special focus to the intimate ensemble. The Feinsmith Quartet (Christopher Taylor, piano; Jennifer Culp, cello; Michael Manring, bass; and Gyan Riley, guitar) performs an Opening Night world premiere of Daniel David Feinsmith’s Elohim, dedicated to the memory of A. Jess Shenson, commissioned for the festival by Other Minds with funding from The Shenson Fund, SF Arts Commission, The Argosy Fund for Contemporary Music, and other sources. Del Sol String Quartet (Kate Stenberg, Rick Shinozaki, Charlton Lee, and Hannah Addario-Berry), winners of the 2006 Chamber Music America/ASCAP first prize for adventurous programming, perform works by Per Nørgård, Peter Sculthorpe, Maja Ratkje, and Ronald Bruce Smith.
A number of groups at this year’s festival bridge the gap between composition and improvisation. POING, a Norwegian saxophone-accordion-double bass trio featuring ECM recording artist Frode Haltli, performs with composer/performer Maja Ratkje; the Joëlle Léandre Trio, including bass virtuoso Léandre and German artists Gunda Gottschalk (violin) and Xu Fengxia (guzheng) presents a rare combination of modern and traditional instruments and influences; Markus Stockhausen and Tara Bouman, two accomplished instrumentalists, conclude the festival with their unique blend of compositions, improvisations, and intuitive music.
12th OTHER MINDS MUSIC FESTIVAL — CONCERT PROGRAMS
Friday, Dec. 8 — Concert 8pm; Panel discussion 7pm, Jewish Community Center San Francisco
Peter Sculthorpe: From Saibai (1997) — Stenberg-Zimmerman Duo
In From Saibai, Australia’s best-known composer Peter Sculthorpe draws inspiration from a traditional melody from the island of Saibai, south of Papua New Guinea in Torres Strait. This beautiful, lush piece consists of four parts: an introductory violin solo, a reworking of the traditional melody, a rhythmic section suggesting a Torres Strait Island dance-song, and a more impassioned statement of ‘Saibai’. Kate Stenberg, 1st violinist of Del Sol String Quartet, is featured alongside Swiss pianist Eva-Maria Zimmerman. Dubbed “the voice of the nation” for his determination to document in sound the socio-environmental character of Australia, Sculthorpe, 77, has enjoyed national and international recognition for his original, eclectic style.
U.S. PREMIERE — Per Nørgård: Quartet No. 10 for Strings, “Høsttidløs” (Harvest-Timeless) (2004-05) — Del Sol String Quartet
Denmark’s senior composer, Per Nørgård, 74, has influenced an entire generation of students during his long and illustrious career. One of the first composers in the 1970s to adopt minimalism in his orchestral and chamber music, Nørgård has since explored a variety of styles and techniques. His restless tendency to develop has revealed him to be not only the foremost composer from Denmark, but among the greatest voices of new music of our time. This venerated composer presents his most recent string quartet, Høsttidløs (Harvest-Timeless), performed by Del Sol String Quartet. The Danish title refers to the pale-rosy autumn crocus, a poisonous, late-blooming bulb that emerges after autumn has claimed most other plants. Nørgård explains that the title reflects not only “the paradoxical union of a seasonal time (harvest) and no-time-at-all,” but also the structural contrast in the piece between “abundance and exuberance with sections of immobility and contemplation.”
Maja Ratkje: Gagaku Variations for accordion and string quartet (2001) — Del Sol String Quartet, Frode Haltli
Equally at home performing virtuosic vocal gymnastics and composing challenging chamber and orchestral music, Norwegian Maja Ratkje presents her Gagaku Variations, which grew out of transcriptions and analyses of traditional Japanese gagaku music. Ratkje’s transformations of this 1200-year-old court music are based upon wabi sabi, or (according to author L. Koren) “a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. It is a beauty of things unconventional.” Ratkje, 33, has burst onto the international new music scene since completing her studies at the Norwegian State Academy of Music in Oslo in 2000, and is an active performer and engineer as well as composer.
WORLD PREMIERE — Daniel David Feinsmith: Elohim (2006) — Feinsmith Quartet
One of the leading young talents in American music, Bay Area-based composer Daniel David Feinsmith presents the world premiere of Elohim, a work drawing inspiration from mystical Judaism and North Indian Classical Music as well as the western classical tradition. The piece, commissioned by Other Minds, will be performed by the Feinsmith Quartet, featuring acclaimed New York pianist Christopher Taylor, Jennifer Culp (cello), Michael Manring (electric bass), and Gyan Riley (guitar). Feinsmith, whom Terry Riley describes as “one of the most inspired and original musicians that I have had the pleasure to work with,” has written for a variety of ensembles, including Kronos Quartet, Sonos Handbell Ensemble, Alexander String Quartet, and Adler Fellows of the San Francisco Opera.
Saturday, Dec. 9 — Concert 8pm; Panel discussion 7pm, Jewish Community Center San Francisco
Per Nørgård: Wie ein Kind, for mixed chorus a cappella (1980) — Volti; Robert Geary, conductor
Over the past 50 years, Per Nørgård’s creative activity has engaged the special nature of the ‘Nordic’ tradition, experimented with serial techniques and other modernist innovations, focused on nuance and mood, and created highly structured hierarchy-based music. Wie ein Kind, one of the most-performed classical works in Danish choral music, marks the beginning of a period in Nørgård’s life when he focused on division, contrast and catastrophe. The composer describes Wie ein Kind as a confrontation of “two forms of poetical statement, one of which arose in a tortured, schizophrenic soul (Adolf Wölfli), whereas the other is the product of a highly respected poet (Rainer Maria Rilke).” The three-movement work will be performed by celebrated San Francisco-based vocal ensemble Volti.
Established by Robert Geary as the San Francisco Chamber Singers in 1979, Volti quickly launched its mission to encourage, foster and showcase contemporary American music and composers, and to introduce contemporary vocal music from around the world to San Francisco Bay Area audiences. In addition to extensive performing and recording, the innovative ensemble has founded the annual Choral Arts Laboratory program for young American composers, and the Choral Institute for high school singers. In addition to their “rich, warm, generous and evocative” (San Francisco Classical Voice) sound, Volti has earned ASCAP and Chorus America’s Award for Adventurous Programming four times, most recently in the spring of 2005.
Maja Ratkje and POING
Featured as a composer in Friday’s concert, Maja Ratkje appears on Saturday as a performer, wielding an impressive arsenal of unconventional vocal techniques and electronics. She is joined by fellow Norwegians POING, who have worked with Ratkje as a trio, as soloists, and in chamber and improvisational settings. Together they have performed many concerts based on Brecht/Weill repertoire with Ratkje as a vocalist, and premiered Ratkje’s first opera, “No Title Performance and Sparkling Water” (2003). POING, one of the leading ensembles for contemporary music in Scandinavia, featuring accordion, saxophones, and bass, has premiered over 40 works by European and Asian composers, one of whom describes the group as “musicians who are not only capable of playing the impossible, but who also do so with pleasure.”
Joëlle Léandre Trio
Over the past thirty years, French double bassist, composer and improviser Joëlle Léandre, 55, has become one of the dominant figures in new music. As both a technical virtuoso and improvising artist, she has collaborated with contemporary mavericks Pierre Boulez, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and Giacinto Scelsi, and has played alongside jazz and improvisation legends Anthony Braxton, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, and John Zorn. She appears with two prolific performers from Germany, Gunda Gottschalk (violin) and Xu Fengxia (guzheng). Their commingling and manipulation of European and Asian traditions through improvisation will offer an unusual and singular contribution.
Sunday, Dec. 10 — Concert 2pm; Panel discussion 1pm, Jewish Community Center San Francisco
Ronald Bruce Smith: String Quartet No. 2, “Nostalgia” (2006) — Del Sol String Quartet
The Vancouver Sun described Ronald Bruce Smith as a composer who is “filling in silence’s blank canvas with the delicacy of an impressionist’s brush.” In his recent String Quartet no. 2, “Nostalgia”, Smith makes reference to another musical impressionist, Maurice Ravel, borrowing material from all four movements of Quatuor á Cordes. The Canadian composer also draws on material from jazz giant Bill Evans’ versions of My Romance and Alice in Wonderland, incorporating both quotations and formal designs from these disparate sources. Smith’s fascinating and complex sound world is activated here by Del Sol String Quartet, to whom the piece is dedicated.
WORLD PREMIERE — Peter Sculthorpe: Quartet No. 16 for Strings, with didjeridu (2005) — Del Sol String Quartet, Stephen Kent
Master didjeridu player Stephen Kent joins forces with Del Sol String Quartet in the world premiere of a new version of Peter Sculthorpe’s sixteenth–and most recent–string quartet. Like much of Sculthorpe’s other work, Quartet No. 16 for Strings combines Western European influences with folk music from the Pacific Rim. Inspired by letters from asylum seekers in Australian detention centers, the piece comprises five movements: Loneliness, Anger, Yearning, Trauma, Freedom. The result is a work of contrasts, containing rich, modal melodies, aggressive rhythms in odd meters, fleeting and colorful gestures, and sweet, sustained harmonies. Sculthorpe freely bases three of the five movements on an ancient love song from Central Afghanistan, invoking not only the agonized testimony of mistreated refugees in Australia, but the plight of asylum seekers everywhere.
Markus Stockhausen and Tara Bouman: Compositions, Improvisations and Intuitive Music
Under the moniker “Moving Sounds,” Markus Stockhausen, 49, and Tara Bouman, 36, have toured throughout Europe and the United States, offering a unique blend of compositions, improvisations, and intuitive music. Stockhausen, son of the eminent German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, has made a name of his own as a trumpet virtuoso, having released over 50 CDs, and toured extensively as a soloist. Likewise, Dutch clarinetist Tara Bouman has developed a successful international career as a soloist and chamber musician, and has worked with prominent composers including Stockhausen, Georges Aperghis, György Kurtag, and György Ligeti. Together, Stockhausen and Bouman will conclude the festival with their unique, collaborative blend of composed and spontaneous music.
About Other Minds
Other Minds is a global New Music community where composers, students, and listeners discover and learn about innovative music by composers from all over the world. Other Minds is a private not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization based in San Francisco. In addition to presenting the annual Other Minds Music Festival, projects include the Other Minds Record Label, Other Minds Online Archive, and the internet radio station RadiOM.org.
Other Minds gratefully acknowledges support for the 12th Other Minds Music Festival from National Endowment for the Arts, Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, San Francisco Arts Commission, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, The Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation, Liz and Greg Lutz, Goethe-Institut San Francisco, Argosy Foundation; and in-kind support from Laurel Inn, Amoeba Records, and San Francisco Bay Guardian.
— For more information, visit www.otherminds.org —
