This week's MUSIC FROM OTHER MINDS program 106 features a new release from Paris on the trAce label of what the producers refer to as "Post-Minimalism". I just don't think the term applies, but it sounds catchy. There are some good pieces in this 2-CD release 19 composers from 4 countries. We add some related pieces by French composer/performer Hervé Zénouda, and end with an early string quartet (his first) by the Irish composer Ian Wilson.

Ian Wilson: String Quartet #1 Winter's Edge - Vanbrugh Quartet - Black Box Music BBM 1031 (UK 2000)

The full program is available as an mp3 stream over the internet from the MFOM website all this week. 

The next Music from Other Minds program (#107) will feature Heinz Holliger's Violin Concerto, after a short piece for piano and metronome by Mauricio Kagel

 Friday May 11 and Monday May 14, KALW 91.7 FM San Francisco 11pm, and streaming on demand from our website after broadcast. 

My new camera arrived... a Nikon D80. Digital SLR.

I haven't bought a new SLR camera in almost 10 years. Around 1966 I bought a Nikkormat, my first "real" camera. At some point I upgraded to my Dad's F,  and then in the late 70's I switched to an F2, which I used for the next 20+ years. About seven years ago I put the heavy F2 away and bought an N80, (known in Japan as the F80), which I've really enjoyed using. These are all film cameras, and a couple of hundred of the thousands of photos I've taken with them since the 60's are on my photo blog.

I tend to hold on to equipment for a long time. Recently I brushed off the F2, attached my favorite 85mm Nikkor lens, charged it up with some TriX film (remember TriX?) and tried to see if there was any life left in my old friend. (Boy, is it heavy, especially with that lens!) We'll see when the contact sheet comes back.

Meanwhile the time had come to order the D80.

Check the photo blog often. The next postings will be with the D80. Stay tuned.

This weekend I put my new camera through its paces. Saturday I was up at Pt Reyes, about 50 miles north of San Francisco, and on the coast. A special place. Then today, Sunday, I roamed around San Francisco. I guess I took about 200 pictures. Not all were worth showing, but there were some. Here are two. The first is Pierce Ranch at Pt Reyes, a restored dairy farm from the 1850's. It's extremely photogenic. But I discovered I had some settings wrong in the camera and they came out too blue. Easily corrected in photoshop, but clearly I'm still learning the camera.

The other is from the Mission section of San Francisco. One of the real problems I've discovered with doing urban street photography is trying to find a scene that is not obscured by parked cars. I don't know how Joe does it... he seems to find places without cars. In S.F. that seems nearly impossible.

Walking around as a tourist in your own town can challenge our jaundiced eye. Things seem so familiar so why bother taking a picture... I'm still too inhibited to take pictures of people face on. I feel I need permission. Actually, you don't in a public place like the street. But you might get yelled out, or worse. There are lots of homeless sleeping in doorways, and drunks on the street. But I can't make myself take their picture. Their lives seem so desparate and pathetic that I can't add more disrespect by objectifying their image. Lucky for me I like walls.

There's more to come on the photo blog. 

Today we (finally) launched the new radiom.org website!

It's taken a couple of years and some heavy lifting by a dedicated staff at Other Minds. But now we're up with a real database, registration system, and nice graphics.

There are about 200 programs available for streaming right now, and about 1000 in the process of being digitized and uploaded to our archive.

Not only are there recordings of the past 12 Other Minds Festivals, but many hours of interviews and special documentary programs on new music that were heard on KPFA from the late 1950's up to the late 80's.

We have Charette Design in S.F. to thank for the overall redesign and architecture of the new site. It really looks great.

Two piano concertos by Henry Cowell from 1928 and 1941, and 4 Dances by John Cage from 1943 will be featured on my next MUSIC FROM OTHER MINDS program Friday 5/18 and Monday 5/21 at 11pm on KALW (San Francisco) and on demand from our website, otherminds.org/mfom.

UC Berkeley Webcasts | Video and Podcasts: Alfred Brendel in Conversation

Alfred Brendel is recognized by audiences the world over for his legendary ability to communicate the emotional and intellectual depths of whatever music he performs. A supreme master of his art, his accomplishments as an interpreter of the great classical and romantic composers--Mozart, Schubert, and others--have earned him a place among the world's most revered musicians. A man of wide-ranging talents, Brendel is also an acclaimed essayist and a published poet. The Townsend Center is pleased to present such a celebrated pianist in conversation with director Anthony J. Cascardi, offering a unique opportunity for audiences to hear Brendel's reflections on music and culture prior to his campus performance on Sunday, March 18.

This concert is reviewed in a subsequent posting.

Jerry Kuderna, piano and Nora L. Martin, vocalist perform:

Hans Eisler's cycle of 18 songs on Poems by Bertolt Brecht

A rare complete performance of songs Eisler and Brecht composed during their exile from Germany in the late 30's and 40's.

It speaks to the necessity to sing 'during dark times'.

Friday May 25, 8 pm

2323 Shattuck Avenue
Fidelity Bank Building Berkeley, California

The former Fidelity Guarantee Building and Loan Association Building built in 1925 by architect Walter Harris Ratcliff, Jr. (1881-1973) is the most beautiful bank ever built in Berkeley. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com

And, I will be there. See my previous post about this duo's concert in April. 

Music by Frederic Rzewski will be featured as part of the Berkeley Edge Fest June 8 & 10 in Hertz Hall, with Ursula Oppens performing. Click on the photo on the left to watch Sarah Cahill discuss Rzewski's music.

The Cal Performances website has more videos and information.

And, there's an interview with Paul Dresher talking about his solo opera, The Tyrant, also to be performed at the Edge Festival.

Composer Interviews
Sat, June 9, 2-4 pm
125 Morrison Hall (Department of Music, UC Berkeley Campus)
Free and open to the public
Pianist and radio host Sarah Cahill will talk with Edge Fest artists in successive interviews. First Frederic Rzewski with pianist Ursula Oppens, then Paul Dresher, will take the stage to discuss their music and the process of collaboration in the creation of new work. These sessions will bring forward some of the more significant and compelling aspects of the work performed at Edge Fest concerts.

As part of the ongoing Berkeley Arts Festival, Jerry Kuderna and Nora Lennox Martin gave an impressive performance of Hanns Eisler's 18 Songs on texts of Bertolt Brecht in downtown Berkeley last night in the abandoned Fidelity Savings building on Shattuck Avenue.

Kuderna began the evening with Arnold Schoenberg's Piano Piece, opus 33b (1933), one of the composer's earliest pieces from his exile in California. And it concluded with Roger Sessions' Piano Sonata #3 (1965).

But the Eisler was the central attraction.  It's not clear (at least to me) when these songs, published by Breitkopf as "Die Ausgewälte Lieder", were written. The Brecht poems date from the 30's and 40's and into the mid 50's -- before, during, and after the Second World War. 

Eisler was a student of Arnold Schoenberg in the 20's in Berlin, and later worked with Brecht on stage productions, film, and chamber music. Eisler left Europe ahead of the Nazi's, and lived in the US from 1938-48. He earned two Oscars for his film music before being expelled by the House Un-American Activities Committee. From 1949 until his death in 1962, Eisler was an important figure in the musical life of East Germany.

The texts of these songs are, as expected, dark. „Wirklich, ich lebe in finsteren Zeiten“ ("Truly, I live in the darkest times) Brecht writes in the Elegy from 1939. Eisler's accompaniement is colored with irony and foreboding. 

The Kuderna/Martin performance was riviting. Nora Martin's angelic voice added a striking contrast to the devastating words of the poet. With translations of the texts conveniently projected on the wall, the audience immediately felt the weight of those darkest times, even as the sounds of the streets outside threatened to overtake the performance. Full, rapt attention was not to be deterred by skateboarders and car horns tonight. This was, after all, an awesome performance.

And I don't think the relevance to the political situation here today escaped many in the audience.

The opening and closing pieces, the Shoenberg and Sessions works, altho some 30 years apart, share a common ground with each other, and with the Eisler. While Eisler abandoned his teacher, Schoenberg, early on, the influence of the second Viennese school could still be heard in his piano writing -- but with a palatable ironic twist. 

Sessions, perhaps the lone American composer to have completely fallen under Schoenberg's style, wrote his 3rd Sonata in response to the Kennedy assassination. With it he unleashed a torrent of notes in waves of contrasting emotions. Jerry Kuderna mentioned that it may have taken him six or more years to master this single work and to get to the point where he fully understood it all. Kuderna's mastery of this extreme piece of piano writing was clearly apparent. 

There is a wonderful website devoted to the Subject: Hanns Eisler that is worth visiting. For one thing, I didn't realize all the films Eisler was involved in, going back to the 1920's. Some of them are now available on DVD (and have made their way onto my own Netflix queue.)

And, I've been told to expect the video of last night's performance to make it's way onto the Berkeley Arts Festival website sometime soon. Something to certainly look forward to. 

Just posted my 250th image on the photo blog.