Morton Subotnick and Dieter Schnebel at Other Minds Festival in San Francisco

This month San Francisco's innovative Other Minds Festival presents works by Dieter Schnebel and Morton Subotnick. On March 6 Michael Bach performs Schnebel's Mit Diesen Händen for voice and cello with his own unique curved Bach.bow. Written for Mr. Bach, the work is based on a harrowing text by post WW II author and Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Böll. The composer elaborates:

When Michael Bach had some texts from Heinrich Böll's unpublished works sent to me, the text "Mit diesen Händen" (With these Hands) appealed to me in particular. The reflections and experience of the war and its horrors not only re-awakened my own experiences, but also had an immediate effect in their own right. In being worked into a musical form the text was not to be made musical through, as it were, a normal setting. Rather it was to be embedded in an appropriate musical context. The instrumental part arose in a continual dialogue with the cellist Michael Bach, inspired by his experiments in sound and playing technique.

The festival includes two more works by Schnebel which showcase the composer's wide ranging compositional style as the Other Minds Ensemble performs his Quintessenz and Poem für 4 Kopfe on Friday, March 7.

Morton Subotnick's The Other Piano for piano and live electronics sees its performance on Saturday March 8 at the hands of pianist Kathleen Supové with the composer himself performing the live electronics. The electronic element in The Other Piano is more precisely described as real-time sound processing. The processing is an improvised space "painting" of the piano sound as it is being performed. The piano music is precisely notated while the improvised processing is guided by a set of instructions for each of the work's four movements, giving each movement its own distinct musical character. All concerts at the Other Minds Festival take place at Kanbar Hall in the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco from Thursday, March 6 through Saturday, March 8.

For more information on the Other Minds Festival, visit www.otherminds.org.

To learn more about the music of Morton Subotnick, www.mortonsubotnick.com.

Morton Subotnick
The Other Piano (2007)
for piano and live electronics
45'

Dieter Schnebel
Mit Diesen Händen (1992)
for voice and violincello
35'

Quintessenz (1993-94)
for vocal quartet (SATB) piano and instruments
12'

Poem für 4 Kopfe (1987-1989)
from Zeichen-Sprache
for ensemble
60'