Plans for Other Minds Festival 30

The beginning of this month saw the release of the plans for the Other Minds Festival 30. It will again take place in October, somewhat earlier than last year. The venue will be the same, but the name has expanded to the Brava Theater for Women in the Arts. (It is still located in the Mission at 2781 24th Street. As was observed last year, the venue is a few blocks to the east of the Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore & Gallery.) Concerts will again begin at 8 p.m. on Thursday, October 8, Friday, October 9, and Saturday, October 10, with a Sunday performance at 4 p.m. on October 11. Panel discussions will precede each performance, beginning an hour before the concert. City Box Office has created a single Web page for purchasing tickets for each of the events, as well as a single Festival Pass for all performances. The works to be performed will be as follows:

• October 8: This will be an evening-length multimedia performance created by Joseph Bohigian entitled I Am He Whose Life and Soul Are Torment. The title refers to the Armenian film director Sergei Parajanov. Vocalist Khatchadour Khatchadourian will also play duduk with electronic accompaniment by Ensemble Decipher.
• October 9: This will be a three-set performance. Sylvie Courvoisier will begin the program with a solo piano set influenced by both European chamber music and American avant-garde jazz. Vocalist Mahsa Vahdat will perform original settings of Persian poetry, accompanied on the setar by Atabak Elyasi. The program will conclude with Friction Quartet performing works by Juri Seo.

Photograph of King Britt by Colin Kerrigan

• October 10: The three sets will present two duos and one solo. Elizabeth Gaver will alternate between Hardanger fiddle and rebec to accompany vocalist Kristin Nordeval, who will augment her performance with live electronics. In the second duo drummer John Diaz will perform with  guitarist Zachary James Watkins, who augments his performances with electronics. The title of the final set is “Blacktronika,” performed on live electronics by King Britt.
• October 11: The Festival will conclude with a solo performance by pianist Charlemagne Palestine.