The 15th Annual Other Minds Music Festival feat. KIdd Jordan | March 4th – 6th, 2010

New
Orleans saxophonist and jazz patriarch Kidd Jordan has been invited to
perform at the 15th Other Minds Music Festival in San Francisco. Other
Minds, in cooperation with the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the
Eugene and Elinor Friend Center for the Arts of the Jewish Community
Center of San Francisco, and the Polish Cultural Institute in New York,
is bringing together some of the most innovative musical minds at work
in the world today.

Three days of public performances from
March 4-6, 2010 at San Francisco’s Kanbar Hall will be preceded by a
private five-day retreat for the composers on the verdant grounds of
the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in the hills of Woodside,
California, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Pre-concert discussions will
be held at 7pm, concerts commence at 8pm.

In addition to
Jordan, the festival features highly influential senior composers: Chou
Wen-chung, the first modern Chinese composer to emigrate to the US, and
a mentor to such composers as Tan Dun and Chen Yi; composer and former
Village Voice music critic Tom Johnson.

Local favorites
include Carla Kihlstedt, and Gyan Riley. Other guests include Lisa
Bielawa, winner of this year’s prestigious Rome Prize, Poland’s rising
star Pawe³ Mykietyn, Switzerland’s radical minimalist Jürg Frey, and
prize-winning electronic music composer Natasha Barrett. Featured
performers include bassist William Parker, ROVA Saxophone Quartet,
Quatuor Bozzini, the Del Sol String Quartet, Left Coast Chamber
Ensemble and the Gyan Riley Trio with Michael Manring.

Charles
Amirkhanian, Executive Director of Other Minds says “This year’s
Festival represents the culmination of years of planning, and we expect
an extraordinary week of shared exploration, discovery and delight, for
our composers, performers, and most importantly, our audiences.”

Each
year Amirkhanian, together with OM Associate Director Adam Fong,
invites composers of differing age, gender, nationality, technique, and
philosophy to the annual Festival . . . , “We try to make the group as
diverse as possible, to get them out of their comfort zones and
generate some energy in the discussions.” says Mr. Fong. “Every year we
have nine composers with completely different backgrounds, but they
always find unexpected interests in common, and leave the retreat with
a feeling of camaraderie. It’s special because these friendships are
new: so many other festivals bring together composers who see each
other all the time — Other Minds makes space for unexpected
connections.”

Indie Jazz aptly describes Sir Edward “Kidd”
Jordan as a “genteel man” who is “probably the single most
under-documented jazz musician of his generation, a fact that is even
more remarkable when you consider that he is also one of the busiest
musicians in the world.”

He has performed and recorded with
such legends as Cannonball Adderley, Fred Anderson, Ornette Coleman, Ed
Blackwell, Ellis Marsalis, Ray Charles, Cecil Taylor, Stevie Wonder,
Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, Ed Blackwell, The Temptations, Big
Maybelle, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Peter Korvald, William Parker, Alan
Silva, Louis Moholo, Sunny Murray, Harnid Drake, and Ellis Marsalis,
just to name a few.

A big part of Mr. Jordan’s résumé is the
Improvisational Arts Ensemble a group he founded with drummer Alvin
Fielder, trumpeter Clyde Kerr, Jr. and bassist London Branch. The
inclusion of the late Alvin Thomas transformed the group into the
Improvisational Arts Quintet. Kidd developed a close musical
relationship with innovative pianist Joel Futterman back in the early
90’s and they continue to perform and record together. His first
recording was titled, “No Compromise” and that very accurately
expresses his personal conviction about his music.

Kidd
organized the first World Saxophone Quartet in 1976 that included
Julius Hemphill, David Murray, Harniet Bluiett, and Oliver Lake. His
work has been documented by CBS News 60 Minutes and he was honored with
Offbeat magazine’s first Lifetime Achievement Award for Music
Education. In 1985 the French Ministry of Culture bestowed knighthood
on Mr. Jordan as a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the
French government’s highest artistic award for his work as an educator
and performer. In 2008 Mr. Jordan was also named a Lifetime Achievement
Honoree at the Vision Festival XIII in New York City.

This
virtuoso unselfishly shared his gift of and passion for music for 51
years, 36 of which he spent at Southern University at New Orleans. In
June of 2009, he received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the
Preservation Resource Center during their 9th Annual Ladies in Red
Event, and NOLA.TV’s Asante Awards respectively.

Jordan has been
known to practice by playing musical phrases in response to bird’s and
other sounds of nature. For Kidd creating music is all about developing
one’s ear. As he says, “you have to hear what you’re trying to get at.”
Asked to define his work, he calls it “creative improvisational music.”