All I Know² :: Information, transmission, modulation, and noise. - Second Edition

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.

Here's just a sample of whats up on the site. 

Worth a visit.

Here's the press release:

— Other Minds launches the new RadiOM.org —

Free online access to thousands of hours of “Revelationary New Music” 

Performances, composer interviews, sound poetry and more from the archives of 

Other Minds and KPFA Radio music department

"RadiOM is a huge pleasure to trawl through." — Anne Hilde Neset, The WIRE

"An invaluable resource for accessing the history and latest currents of experimental music." — Derk Richardson, San Francisco Bay Guardian 

"A treasure trove of rare performances and reflections from many of America's greatest unconventional composers." — Jason Victor Serinus, Stereophile 

San Francisco, CA, May 14, 2007 — Other Minds marks the 90th birthday of late composer Lou Harrison on May 14, 2007, with the launch of the new radiOM.org, offering free worldwide access to streaming audio and video programs that span the history of new music.  The new website, unveiled at a morning press conference by Charles Amirkhanian, Other Minds Artistic and Executive Director, and former Music Director at KPFA radio, makes easily accessible the expanding Other Minds Archive of 4,500 hours of recorded materials, which includes 3,500 hours of audiotape recordings from the KPFA Radio Music Department collection; highlights from past Other Minds Music Festivals; materials from the private archive of composer George Antheil; selected programs from the Cabrillo Music Festival, and other rare and unusual recordings of classical music, jazz, and experimental forms.  This unparalleled collection of on-air performances, interviews, concerts, rehearsals, conversations and more, is now available completely free of charge at www.radiOM.org. 

Artists represented in the collection include John Adams, Laurie Anderson, Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, John Cage, Lou Harrison, Henry Kaiser, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, Igor Stravinsky, Virgil Thomson, and Frank Zappa, among hundreds of others. 

Amirkhanian says of the programs that aired originally on KPFA:  "At KPFA, experimenters in music, poetry and intermedia events have been given generous amounts of air time which they mold into new and exciting experiments in perception, and provide provocative listening for devotees and skeptical listeners alike.  This includes a vast quantity of experimental music by composers from all over the world.  Many programs feature interviews with the composers themselves, who explain their techniques and goals.  Participants range from the well‑known — John Cage, Lou Harrison, Morton Subotnick — to younger men and women just beginning to make their way." 

Visitors to radiOM.org will be able to access streaming audio and video programs such as: 

• Interviews with Laurie Anderson, Robert Ashley, Anthony Braxton, Gavin Bryars, David Byrne, John Cage, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, Lou Harrison, Conlon Nancarrow, Harry Partch, Steve Reich, Nicolas Slonimsky, Frank Zappa and others; 

• More than 40 years of KPFA music programs (1949-93); Exploratorium Speaking of Music Series (1983-92); Interviews and performances from past Other Minds Music Festivals; 

• Henry Cowell presenting a “Musical Autobiography”; documentaries on New Music in Los Angeles including audio of Schoenberg teaching a music course; an introduction to the history of sound poetry; a 1947 Igor Stravinsky rehearsal; interactive performances, and more. 

The archive continues to grow as the KPFA library is digitized, and Other Minds events and presentations are added.  With the site's redesigned interface and increased functionality, radiOM.org programs are now more easily accessible, with detailed descriptions and enhanced search capabilities. 

Additional archival recordings not publicly available via radiOM.org will be deposited at the San Francisco Performing Arts Library & Museum, and will be available for private listening by students, scholars, and researchers.

A project of Other Minds, radiOM.org makes globally available rare and underexposed content documenting the history of new and experimental music.  Thanks to a partnership with Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive, Other Minds has been able to make programs on radiOM.org available free of charge since the beginning of its development in 2005.  During its development phase, more than 3,000 international listeners, including noted composers, musicians, academics, critics and other fans of experimental music, have registered to explore radiOM's extensive catalog of interviews, live broadcasts and concert recordings. 

The Other Minds Archive 

The Other Minds Archive comprises a rich and unique source for documenting the history of new music during the latter half of the 20th century and into the 21st.  The collection represents decades of some of the boldest and most innovative new music programming ever recorded.

The KPFA Music Department Archive (1949-93) — an audio archive of original, spontaneous live conversations, interviews and performances featuring the leading creators and practitioners of 20th-century music — is the principal or lead collection of the Other Minds Archive.  The KPFA Archive, acquired by Other Minds in 2000 with the assistance of private donors and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, consists of approximately 4,000 analog audiotapes that comprise 3,500 recorded hours. The programs originally aired between 1949 and 1993 on KPFA-FM in Berkeley, an influential participant in the development of the San Francisco area as a national center for new music.  Content includes interviews (50%), concert recordings (20%), other musical recordings (20%), and sound poetry/literature (10%).  To date, Other Minds has successfully digitized more than 1,200 reel-to-reel audiotapes (about 400 hours of audio).  These materials, now available via free streaming access on radiOM.org, represent 180 programs that last from 30 minutes to 2 hours each.

"The San Francisco view of New Music represented in the KPFA/Other Minds archives dates back to 1949, when Henry Cowell came to the studio to play his own music,” explains Amirkhanian.  “Most of the tapes, however, date from 1969, when the first records of Steve Reich were being released. We conducted the first radio interviews with Reich, Laurie Anderson, John Adams, Terry Riley and Lou Harrison, who at the time was very much out of favor and considered a reactionary.” 

Amirkhanian continues:  "It was music that turned away from chromaticism, and that featured a steady pulse and a more overtly beautiful surface.  Some was a hybrid influenced by world, jazz and rock.  It sounded very different from the pointillistic music of the '60s, which is also documented in this archive."

The growing list of additional holdings includes Other Minds presentations, with recordings of live performances, panel discussions, composer presentations, and photographs (1993 to the present); access to Telluride Composer-to-Composer Festival recordings; George Antheil Estate materials; and the Charles Amirkhanian Archive, which in addition to his own composition archives, includes significant collections of relevant photographs and other ephemeral materials, vinyl recordings and correspondence.

The archive's musical content reflects the ever-expanding range of styles employed after 1960, covering artists whose backgrounds range from classical conservatory training to counterculture activism.  The core interviews feature a host of key individuals who have shaped the evolution of new music and other art forms, including composers, conceptual artists, literary figures, poets, visual artists, dancers and choreographers, artists and composers from musical theatre and opera, and the Exploratorium's historic "Speaking of Music" series.  The archive documents a critical set of perspectives in the emergence of technology as a defining aspect of contemporary American life and art through its impact on music. 

More than 180 programs are currently accessible from radiOM.org. The site will expand as Other Minds continues to digitize and preserve material, drawing from the various collections in the Other Minds archive.

Acknowledgements

Other Minds would like to thank San Francisco Performing Arts Library & Museum for co-sponsoring the launch of RadiOM.org.

Support for RadiOM.org is provided by Save America's Treasures through a partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Park Service, Department of the Interior; the Grammy Foundation; The Fleishhacker Foundation; The WHH Foundation; The Amphion Foundation; David Aronow Foundation, and many generous individuals.