Other Minds Special Programs ➔ Other Minds Presents: Rudhyar In Retrospect: Concert Two, Crisis & Overcoming (Sept. 29, 2010)

Digital Moving Image


Event Type
Music
Origin
Other Minds
Identifier
OMP.2010.09.29.c2.2
Program Series
Other Minds Presents
Program Length
27 min
Dates
| broadcast
| 2010-09-29 | created
Description
On September, 27, 2010, at the Swedenborgian Church in San Francisco, CA, Other Minds presented the first of two concerts dedicated to the music of composer, author, astrologer, painter, and philosopher, Dane Rudhyar. A true Renaissance man, Dane Rudhyar was born in Paris, France in 1895, studied briefly at the Paris Conservatoire, and published his first musical compositions, as well as a book on Claude Debussy, by 1913. In 1916, in a move that he compared to going to the moon, Rudhyar came to the United States where he eventually settled down in California. Throughout the 1920s and 30s Rudhyar continued to compose avant-garde music including scores for plays, ritual dances, and radical “multimedia” performances. However with the advent of the Great Depression, Rudhyar found less support for his type of experimental music, so he began to dedicate more time to his poetry, painting and philosophical writings on astrology and psychology. Beginning in the 1970s, as his writings were gaining popularity among the youth, Rudhyar returned to musical composition, producing a series of piano and orchestral works while also continuing to give lectures, making art, and writing books. Activities that he continued, right up until his death in 1985 at the age of 90.

In this video highlight from the concert, the Ives String Quartet performs “Crisis & Overcoming,” which was originally composed in 1979, and with its salute to European culture perhaps represents the culminating cycle of Rudhyar’s career.

This concert was presented in association with Leyla Rudhyar Hill and the Estate of Dane Rudhyar, and has been made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts as part of “American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius”.
Genres
20th century classical
New music
Musical Selections
Crisis and Overcoming “String Quartet No. 2” (1979) (24:42) / Dane Rudhyar
Performers
Ives Quartet:
Bettina Mussumeli, violin
Susan Freier, violin
Jodi Levitz, viola
Stephen Harrison, cello
Subjects
20th century classical
New music
Chamber music
String quartets