A week from tomorrow, Saturday, December 3, the Other Minds festival is holding a “musical séance” at San Francisco’s Swedenborgian Church, 2107 Lyon Street, at 2pm, 5:30pm and 8pm. The idea is to raise up the spirits of composers from the experimental (or rather, Postclassical) tradition such as Cage, Nancarrow, Cowell, Crawford, Satie, and Rudhyar. I’m not projected to be dead yet myself by that time (unless they know something I don’t), but nevertheless
their star pianist Sarah Cahill (pictured) will play a piece of mine, “Saintly” from my Private Dances, along with works by others from the still-kicking set like John Adams, Terry Riley, and Mamoru Fujieda. There will also be some works for Disklavier presented, including a new work by Daniel David Feinsmith, my own Nude Rolling Down an Escalator, and a couple of Nancarrow’s Player Piano Studies. Sounds like one of those great San Francisco new-music marathons, with Cahill featured throughout (both my pieces are on the 5:30 concert). Wish I could say I’ll see you there, but I’ll be in upstate New York, kicking myself for not having moved to California right out of college like I was tempted to.

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