{"id":486162,"date":"2026-10-05T21:50:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T21:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/486162\/"},"modified":"2026-10-05T21:50:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T21:50:18","slug":"other-minds-festival-starts-a-new-chapter-for-avant-garde-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/486162\/","title":{"rendered":"Other Minds Festival Starts a New Chapter for Avant-Garde Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

What\u2019s the state of experimental music<\/a> today?<\/p>\n

\u201cCalifornia,\u201d composer Charles Amirkhanian says, laughing. \u201cIt\u2019s happening here. Occasionally we\u2019ll let in someone from New York \u2014 or Norway. But we don\u2019t have any problems finding material.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amirkhanian has long mastered the art of creating a home for the avant-garde.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the co-founder of Other Minds, a leading nonprofit and record label dedicated to noncommercial music<\/a>, and as the former music director of KPFA, he\u2019s spent decades championing composers who push beyond conventional boundaries. He also has cultivated an audience willing to follow them there through Other Minds\u2019 annual festival<\/a>, which brings freewheeling musicians and sound poets from around the world to San Francisco.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to make sure that there\u2019s a home for out-there music, the stuff that\u2019s not commercially viable, but is exciting and experimental and pushes things forward,\u201d Bohigian says. \u201cWe want to serve that small but dedicated audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the composers who make the music,\u201d Amirkhanian adds.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Other Minds Executive and Artistic Director Charles Amirkhanian and Associate Director Joseph Bohigian chat at their offices in the David Brower Center in Berkeley on Sept. 17, 2026. \u00a0(Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n

\nTwo kindred spirits, born half a century apart\n<\/p>\n

On a cloudy Thursday, Amirkhanian and Bohigian sit together in Other Minds\u2019 downtown Berkeley office, surrounded by stacks of CDs and a bust of legendary 20th-century Bay Area new music composer Henry Cowell (\u201cthe godfather,\u201d Amirkhanian says). Through the glass windows, cars and passersby screech and blare from below, making their own kind of experimental music.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a fitting soundtrack for an organization whose mission is, in part, to listen differently.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite a nearly half-century age gap, Amirkhanian and Bohigian are kindred spirits. Both of them are percussionists, steeped in a tradition that includes iconoclastic musicians like Cowell, Lou Harrison and others. And both are Armenians from Fresno, the agricultural city in California\u2019s heartland which is home to one of the oldest and most vibrant Armenian diasporas in the U.S. Both have drawn on their heritage in their work in forward-thinking ways.<\/p>\n

The two first met in 2011 when Bohigian was a freshman at Fresno State University. Amirkhanian was doing a guest performance at the Fresno New Music Festival, and guest-lectured in one of Bohigian\u2019s music classes. At the festival, the students performed an octet Amirkhanian had written as part of a career-long fascination with the noisiest percussion instrument: the ratchet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Other Minds Associate Director Joseph Bohigian holds a program for the Other Minds Festival at the organization\u2019s offices in the David Brower Center in Berkeley on Sept. 17, 2026.\u00a0(Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n

\nReviving the legacy of an Armenian auteur\n<\/p>\n

Bohigian\u2019s latest work will premiere Thursday on the opening night of this year\u2019s Other Minds festival. He will debut I Am He Whose Life and Soul Are Torment<\/a>, an evening-length multimedia performance inspired by the life of Soviet-Armenian auteur Sergei Parajanov.<\/p>\n

Bohigian\u2019s composition draws from Parajanov\u2019s abstract 1969 film, The Color of Pomegranates, about the 18th-century bard Sayat-Nova, who sang in Armenian, Georgian and Azeri \u2014 the languages of the region. The film was released four years before the director was jailed by the USSR for homosexuality and sentenced to hard labor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The piece brings together Sayat-Nova\u2019s folk music\u00a0 \u2014 performed by Bay Area wind instrumentalist and vocalist Khatchadour Khatchadourian<\/a> \u2014 with the electronic music tradition that Bohigian is immersed in, to illustrate scenes from Parajanov\u2019s life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bohigian describes the piece as theatrical, involving staged visual elements and costumes in addition to the electronics and vocals.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Amirkhanian will also be performing a song he composed when he was 18: \u201cSonatina for Four Bass Drums, Op. 4.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it\u2019d be fun to dredge something up from the past,\u201d he muses.<\/p>\n

\"\"Other Minds Executive and Artistic Director Charles Amirkhanian at the organization\u2019s offices in the David Brower Center in Berkeley on Sept. 17, 2026. \u00a0(Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n

\nFinding the \u2018other minds\u2019\n<\/p>\n

Amirkhanian also grew up in Fresno, in a household steeped in classical music.<\/p>\n

His mother and her three sisters were all classical pianists. Because Fresno sits roughly halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, musicians traveling between the two cities would sometimes stop there, giving Amirkhanian opportunities to encounter performers and music that might otherwise have passed him by.<\/p>\n

One day his father brought home a 78 rpm record with an Armenian rug pictured on the cover and two Armenian names: Alan Hovhaness and Maro Ajemian. Thinking it was an Armenian folk album, he bought it for the family. It turned out to be one of John Cage\u2019s early commercial releases.<\/p>\n

Cage\u2019s approach to sound opened another world for Amirkhanian. He remembered a piano altered with screws, erasers and other objects inserted among its strings.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mother told him to take it back to the shop,\u201d Amirkhanian recalls. \u201cBut the shop would not take it back.\u201d<\/p>\n

The record stayed, and set Amirkhanian on a lifelong path toward \u201call the sounds that you could incorporate into music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cage, who died in 1992, also inspired the festival\u2019s name, thanks to a dismissive New Yorker obituary of the artist that says: \u201cHis epitaph might read that he composed music in other peoples\u2019 minds.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Other Minds Executive and Artistic Director Charles Amirkhanian (left) and Associate Director Joseph Bohigian chat at their offices in the David Brower Center in Berkeley on Sept. 17, 2026. \u00a0(Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n

\nOther Minds\u2019 electronic futures\n<\/p>\n

Today, Other Minds\u2019 Berkeley office houses an archive of roughly 4,000 audio tapes from the earliest days of KPFA. The record label releases music that might struggle to find a home elsewhere, particularly work that is too experimental or noncommercial for larger labels. The organization also has a two-hour program on KALW<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Other Minds now also has a holiday in San Francisco. Mayor Daniel Lurie last week proclaimed Oct. 2, 2026 as Other Minds Day, in recognition of its 30th anniversary and the festival\u2019s enduring contribution to San Francisco\u2019s cultural life.<\/p>\n

Both men are surprisingly optimistic about the future, even as artificial intelligence<\/a> begins to reshape the way music is made and consumed. Amirkhanian notes that we\u2019re already \u201csurrounded by dangers: politically, culturally \u2014 and we\u2019re going to get through it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other Minds Festival<\/a> takes place Oct. 8\u201311 at Brava Theater in San Francisco. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What\u2019s the state of experimental music today? \u201cCalifornia,\u201d composer Charles Amirkhanian says, laughing. \u201cIt\u2019s happening here. Occasionally we\u2019ll…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-486162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}