Heralded by NPR as a “Who’s Who of the avant-garde” and The Wire as “a forum for forward thinking composers and an opportunity to hear performances of a uniformly challenging and rigorous nature,” San Francisco’s only international festival of avant-garde music returns to celebrate its milestone 25th anniversary!
Other Minds Festival 25: “Moment’s Notice” will bring to the stage twenty-six of the greatest living artists working in the field of improvised music. Across four nights, OM 25 features a rare convergence of pioneering icons of free improvised music side-by-side with the emerging artists whose work is at once a continuance and an expansion of the jazz avant-garde....
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Heralded by NPR as a “Who’s Who of the avant-garde” and The Wire as “a forum for forward thinking composers and an opportunity to hear performances of a uniformly challenging and rigorous nature,” San Francisco’s only international festival of avant-garde music returns to celebrate its milestone 25th anniversary!
Other Minds Festival 25: “Moment’s Notice” will bring to the stage twenty-six of the greatest living artists working in the field of improvised music. Across four nights, OM 25 features a rare convergence of pioneering icons of free improvised music side-by-side with the emerging artists whose work is at once a continuance and an expansion of the jazz avant-garde.
Festival artists include MacArthur Genius Award winners Mary Halvorson and Tyshawn Sorey; Guggenheim Fellows Jen Shyu, Wadada Leo Smith, and Zeena Parkins; Doris Duke Performing Artist Award winners William Parker and Myra Melford; NEA Jazz Masters Anthony Braxton and Roscoe Mitchell; Berlin Prize Awardee Elliott Sharp; and several additional performers whose music is a vital expression of the traditions of improvisation.
Performances will cross disciplines to include dance, theater, and video including pianist/composer Myra Melford who will partner with Butoh dancer Oguri; William Parker’s dance/theater work, The Sky is Trembling featuring dancer Patricia Nicholson; Wadada Leo Smith’s Reflections and Meditations on Monk in collaboration with live video artist Jesse Gilbert; and Jen Shyu’s luminous Nine Doors, a theatrical work heralded by the New York Times as a “dizzying,” “imaginative ritual” sung in multiple languages and performed by Shyu on a variety of instruments.
Can't attend the festival in-person? Other Minds 25 is also streaming. Visit https://www.otherminds.org/om-25-stream/
Night 1:
Improv Set
Myra Melford, piano
Mark Dresser, bass
Oguri, dance
Improv Set
Ikue Mori, electronics
Zeena Parkins, harp
William Winant, percussion
Nine Doors
Jen Shyu, Compositions, vocals, Taiwanese moon lute, Korean gayageum and soribuk drum, Japanese biwa, piano, dance, sound design, choreography, Timorese gong and Korean gong (kkwaenggwari)
(Kristen Robinson, Visuals; Alexandru Mihail, Director; Kristen Robinson, Set & Props Designer; Solomon Weisbard, Original Lighting Designer; Naoko Nagata, Costume designer; Danang Pamungkas, Javanese “Bedhaya Pangkur Tunggal” choreography; Lianne Arnold, Original Projection Programmer; Satoshi Haga, Co-director with Shyu of “Song of Silver Geese” (2016), which inspired much of “Nine Doors”)
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