OM 11 presented a 60th birthday tribute to Other Minds founding artistic director Charles Amirkhanian featuring the San Francisco concert premiere of his radiophonic tape piece, “Son of Metropolis San Francisco”. The work is a part-abstract, part-representational audio snapshot of idiosyncratic Bay Area sounds, ranging from barking elephant seals at Ano Nuevo Beach to a runaway overflow valve next to a hot tub at Harbin Hot Springs. In between, listeners hear Tongan gardeners, a Chinese sitcom, and conga drummers at Ocean Beach, manipulated on a Synclavier digital synthesizer and ultimately offset by a hypnotic and meditative organ chorale. Originally commissioned by Studio 3 Hörspiel of the West German Radio in Cologne, and New American Radio for the NPR satellite system, the work has been broadcast internationally, but is best heard in a concert hall. Composed in 1986 in the Oakland studio of Henry Kaiser and with his assistance, the music was performed over a surround-sound array of state-of-the-art loudspeakers from the noted Berkeley, CA firm Meyer Sound. This condensed 26-minute version of the original 55-minute work “(Metropolis San Francisco”) was made in 1997. |
