Concert 4

the vibe

The Other Minds Festival turns 30! On Thursday–Sunday, October 8–11, 2026, our annual showcase for composers will be held at the Brava Theater in San Francisco’s Mission District. The Festival opens with Joseph Bohigian’s I Am He Whose Life and Soul Are Torment , an evening-length multimedia work about the life of Armenian film director Sergei Parajanov performed by Khatchadour Khatchadourian and Ensemble Decipher . Tara Baghdassarian , art director; Karo Yagjian , costume designer. On Night 2, the Swiss-born, New York-based Sylvie Courvoisier combines European chamber music and American avant-jazz in a performance for solo piano. Mahsa Vahdat performs original song settings of Persian poetry, accompanied by setar player Atabak Elyasi . Night 2 ends with string quartet music by Juri Seo performed by Friction Quartet . Night 3 opens with Kristin Norderval and Elizabeth Gaver , who will present a program for voice, live electronics, Hardanger fiddle, and rebec that reflects on historical and contemporary Norwegian-American exchange. Foreign/Domestic - Zachary James Watkins and John Diaz presents a duo of guitar/electronics and drums. The evening ends with an enlivening set of “Blacktronika” from one of the world’s experts: King Britt on live electronics. At the final concert of OM 30, Charlemagne Palestine , sovereign of embodied minimalism, graces us with a performance for solo piano.