|| General || § ¶Music From Other Minds
I've managed to complete the first three Music From Other Minds programs on CDs and hand delivered them to the KALW studio today. There's a nice article about MfOM in the January KALW Program Guide. I'm producing these programs at home and sending them into the station on CDs. Finding a quiet and acoustically benign spot in the house to record my announcing is proving to be interesting. It may take me a few programs to get the drill down just right. After some experimentation, I've settled on making the voice recordings in the bedroom using an Audio Technica mic and a Sony D7 Walkman DAT recorder, then transferring to AIFF format on my Mac using Audio Hijack from Rogue Amoeba, and then editing the entire program, including the music tracks copied directly from audio CDs, using Apple SoundTrack. The final single 60' AIFF file is transferred to CD using Roxio Jam.The first 3 programs feature composers who will be participating in this year's Other Minds 11 Festival later in February in San Francisco:
Program 1: Michael Nyman and John Luther Adams
Program 2: Evan Ziporyn and Fred Frith
Program 3: Billy Bang and Daniel Bernard Roumain
Music From Other Minds starts Friday January 7 at 11pm on KALW 91.7 FM San Francisco, and can be streamed in real time from their website, www.kalw.org
And now we have a web page: http://www.rchrd.com/mfom/
|| General || § ¶FILE Photo Magazine
Discovered yet another incredible photo magazine on the internet. FILE Magazine is a play on LIFE magazine, but it describes itself as A Collection Of Unexpected Photography. It features some amazing photo galleries by contributors, and many are from amateurs. The internet and photo magazines like FILE, mooncruise, and others, are making it possible for amateur photographers to get their work seen by a wider audience than was ever possible. And its all very exciting.
|| General || § ¶Poetry/Arts in San Francisco: 1954-2004
Now at the California Historical Society (3rd and Mission, SF), is an extremely interesting exhibition of artifacts demonstrating the interaction between poetry and the arts in San Francisco from 1954-2004. The exhibit is called Poetry and its Arts, and was put together by Steve Dickison of the S.F. State Poetry Center. Its worth a trip. Was this the Golden Age of art and poetry in the West? Take a look. The Historical Society is around the corner from the S.F. Museum of Modern Art, on Mission.Exceptional pieces exhibited in the show include:
* Kenneth Rexroth's distinctive, delicate work with pastels
* rarely shown collaborations and individual works by Robert Duncan and Jess
* Kenneth Patchen's fantastical painted beasts
* Allen Ginsberg's West Coast photos from 1955 during the time of his poem Howl to 1984
* Saburo Hasegawa's wildly exuberant calligraphic work based on Lao Tsu's Tao Te Ching
* an original private press work by William Everson (Brother Antoninus), who undertook the printer's trade while in a World War II Conscientious Objector camp in Waldport, Oregon
* paintings by poets Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane di Prima
* Mary Oppen's torn-paper collage depicting her husband, poet George Oppen
|| General || § ¶MfOM #1
The first Music from Other Minds program on January 7 on KALW 91.7 San Francisco will feature music by Michael Nyman and John Luther Adams. Both composers will be featured (and present) at the Other Minds 11 Festival in February. I start going into production this weekend. I should be able to have the first four programs on CDs and sent to the station next week. All the material is ready to go, except for my announcing bits. I have to do that late at night when our parrots Carlos and Percy are asleep in the next room. Otherwise they go wild whenever they hear my voice.|| General || § ¶Michael Nyman
One of the composers to be featured at this year's Other Minds Festival in February is Michael Nyman. I was listening today to his String Quartets 1-3 on Argo, performed by the Balanescu Quartet. I'll be presenting one of these works in our first Music From Other Minds radio program on KALW 91.7 in San Francisco on January 7 (11pm).Later today I spent some time starting a new piece of my own music.
Before I knew it, it came out sounding like Michael Nyman.
Judge for yourself. I call it Owed to Michael Nyman.
|| General || § ¶Other Minds Preservation Project
There's a new issue of MindReader (pdf) out today from Other Minds. Besides articles about the upcoming OM11 Festival in February, there's extensive information about the OM Preservation Project: literally hundreds of tapes of 40 years of music programs from the KPFA-FM archives now reside at the OM warehouse space in Oakland pictured here. And bit by bit these tapes are being digitized and added to the online archive. So far over 400 tapes have been carefully digitized, edited, and uploaded to the archive. This is a time-consuming process, so the backlog is growing. There are now 162 programs online, including recordings from previous Other Minds Festivals. 
This new issue of MindReader is gorgeous! Download your own!
Contents:
1. Preview of the 11th Other Minds Music Festival
2. Letter from Artistic and Executive Director Charles Amirkhanian
3. Profile of Composer Marc Blitzstein
4. Reports on OM's Audio Preservation Project
5. Phrenology: Updates from OM Alumni
6. Upcoming CD Releases
7. Donor Acknowledgements
Please visit http://www.otherminds.org/NEWSLETTER/mindreader.pdf to download a PDF version of MindReader.
|| General || § ¶Radio
Starting Friday, January 7 2005, 11pm, I will initiate a weekly radio program of new music on S.F. Bay Area NPR radio station KALW 91.7. And the program will be called:
MUSIC FROM OTHER MINDS - Fridays 11pm - KALW 91.7 FM
Interestingly, I'll be producing the program from home and delivering CDs to the station by mail.
The first 8 programs thru January and February will focus on the composers and performers that will appear in the Other Minds 11 Festival in late February. The programs will be streamed in real time from the KALW website, and we will eventually put the archived programs for on demand streaming somewhere on the otherminds.org website, yet to be determined. Same for playlists.
I must admit, I'm a bit excited about this. I did my last radio program on KPFA in 1995. Its great to be back presenting new music on the radio.
I'm going to start preparing the first 4 programs next week. Stay tuned.