Juri Seo is a Korean-born American composer and Professor of Music at Princeton University. She merges many aspects of music from the past century, in particular its expanded timbral palette and unorthodox approach to structure, with a deep love of functional tonality, counterpoint, and classical form. With its fast-changing tempi and dynamics, her music explores the serious and the humorous, the lyrical and the violent, the tranquil and the obsessive. She has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, Koussevitzky Commission, and Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and received commissions from the Fromm Foundation, Barlow Endowment, and Tanglewood. In the interview, we talk about Juri’s interest in classical forms, just intonation, and humor in music.

Music: “Ostinato” and “Fugue” from Obsolete Music by Juri Seo, performed by Latitude 49 (New Amsterdam Records); Just Intonation Etudes by Juri Seo, performed by Friction Quartet; “Jack-in-the-Box” from Toy Store by Juri Seo, performed by Jinjoo Cho (Carrier Records)

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The Other Minds Podcast is hosted and edited by Joseph Bohigian. Outro music is “Kings: Atahualpa” by Brian Baumbusch (Other Minds Records).

Foreign/Domestic is the improvisational duo of composer, guitarist, and sound artist Zachary James Watkins and drummer John Diaz. Zachary James Watkins studied composition at Cornish College and received an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College. He has received commissions from documenta 14, the Kronos Quartet, and the Seattle Chamber Players, and releases music on the labels Sige, Cassauna, Confront, The Tapeworm, and Touch. John Diaz is a free-form drummer and improviser whose work is guided by intuition and deep listening. Drawing from free jazz, hardcore, and traditional Venezuelan drums, he approaches the drum set as an open and flexible instrument. Born and raised in Venezuela and now based in Castro Valley, California, Diaz is an active presence in the Bay Area underground music scene. In the interview Zachary and John talk about their early musical influences in Lubbock, Texas and Venezuela, their approach to improvisation or real-time composition, and Watkins’ idea of “high vibration resonance.”

Music: Santo Session I : Motion Study by Foreign Domestic, engineered by Zachary James Watkins at Santo Recording on March 29, 2023, mastered by mixture151 : Xopher Davidson (Sixtyhurts)

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The Other Minds Podcast is hosted and edited by Joseph Bohigian. Outro music is “Kings: Atahualpa” by Brian Baumbusch (Other Minds Records).

Pianist-composer Sylvie Courvoisier is a Brooklyn-based native of Switzerland and winner of the Swiss Grand Prix and The American Academy of Arts and Letters Music Award. She has earned renown for balancing two distinct worlds: the deep, richly detailed chamber music of her European roots and the grooving, hook-laden sounds of the avant-jazz scene in New York City, her home for more than two decades. Courvoisier will perform solo on Night 2 of this year’s Other Minds Festival in San Francisco. In the interview, Courvoisier talks about improvising with radios as a child, her multi-stylistic musical education, and the influence of composer Conlon Nancarrow.

Music: Frisking (for Henry Cowell), La descente des alpages (for Julian Sartorius), Soliloquizing (for Wadada Leo Smith), and Preluding (for Conlon Nancarrow) composed and performed by Sylvie Courvoisier (Intakt Records)

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The Other Minds Podcast is hosted and edited by Joseph Bohigian. Outro music is “Kings: Atahualpa” by Brian Baumbusch (Other Minds Records).

Performer, composer, and improviser Kristin Norderval’s repertoire spans the renaissance to the avant-garde, and her credits as a soprano soloist include performances with the Oslo Sinfonietta, Philip Glass Ensemble, and the San Francisco Symphony. As a composer, she combines her operatic lineage with electronic experimentation, placing emphasis on small-scale opera, cross-disciplinary work, and interactive technology. Norderval will perform with Elizabeth Gaver on Night 3 of this year’s Other Minds Festival in San Francisco. On the podcast, we talk about Norderval’s operatic training, improvising with medieval instruments, and her research into singing and Parkinson's disease.

Music: Kristin Norderval and Elizabeth Gaver improvising; Front the North by Kristin Norderval; The Trials of Patricia Isasa by Kristin Norderval; Kristin Norderval and Elizabeth Gaver improvising

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The Other Minds Podcast is hosted and edited by Joseph Bohigian. Outro music is “Kings: Atahualpa” by Brian Baumbusch (Other Minds Records).

Marina Peterson is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her work has an emphasis on sound and urbanism, and she is the author of the 2021 book Atmospheric Noise: The Indefinite Urbanism of Los Angeles, which examines ways in which environmental noise, atmosphere, sense, and matter cohere through noise pollution legislation and the politics of airport noise from the 1960s to the present. Peterson will speak about her work at Other Minds’s The Nature of Music on Wednesday, September 9, 2026, at the David Brower Center in Berkeley. On the podcast, we discuss the emergence of the concept of noise pollution in the 1950s and ‘60s, municipal noise mitigation around airports, and making the microphone present in field recordings of the wind.

Music: wind noise 4 by Marina Peterson

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The Other Minds Podcast is hosted and edited by Joseph Bohigian. Outro music is “Kings: Atahualpa” by Brian Baumbusch (Other Minds Records).

Theodore Gordon is a musicologist and musician whose work connects experimental music, critical organology, and science and technology studies. He has performed with viola and Buchla instruments at venues including Elastic Arts, Experimental Sound Studio, and Roulette. Gordon is Assistant Professor of Music at Baruch College, and serves on the Doctoral Faculty at the CUNY Graduate Center. His first book, The Composer’s Black Box: Making Music in Cybernetic America, published in December 2025, shows how scientific concepts and technologies borrowed from cybernetics, information theory, and systems-thinking became catalysts for new musical organizations in the 1960s. This interview, like the book, focuses on these concepts through the work of Morton Subotnick, Donald Buchla, Pauline Oliveros, Sun Ra, and Alvin Lucier.

Music: As I Live & Breathe by Morton Subotnick, live at Other Minds 27; Silver Apples of the Moon by Morton Subotnick (Nonesuch Records); “The Cosmic Explorer” from Nuits de la Fondation Maeght by Sun Ra (Shandar); Mnemonics I by Pauline Oliveros; Vespers by Alvin Lucier

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The Other Minds Podcast is hosted and edited by Joseph Bohigian. Outro music is “Kings: Atahualpa” by Brian Baumbusch (Other Minds Records).

Pianist Stephen Siek served as a professor of music at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, where he taught piano, music history, American music, the aesthetics of music, and film music. He is currently Director of the Emeritus College Academy for Continued Learning at Arizona State University. He has performed and lectured at piano conferences for organizations such as the Historical Keyboard Society of America and the American Liszt Society. Siek is a specialist in the keyboard music of the Federalist Era American composer Alexander Reinagle. Reinagle was born in Edinburgh and immigrated to America in 1786, first briefly to New York before settling in Philadelphia and later Baltimore, where he died in 1809. He quickly became an important figure in the musical life of Philadelphia, where he performed at the 1787 Constitutional Convention and attracted the attention of George Washington. Siek will visit the Bay Area to perform the music of this little-known early American on Monday, July 20, 2026, the 240th anniversary of Reinagle’s first performance in the United States, at Littlefield Concert Hall at Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland. Siek joins the podcast to talk about the life and work of this underrecognized American composer.

Music: Sonata in D I. Allegro con Brio, Sonata in E II. Adagio, Variations On "Steer Her Up And Had Her Gawn," Sonata in C II. Adagio, and Variations On "Lee Rigg" by Alexander Reinagle, performed by Stephen Siek (Titanic Records)

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The Other Minds Podcast is hosted and edited by Joseph Bohigian. Outro music is “Kings: Atahualpa” by Brian Baumbusch (Other Minds Records).

Composers Inside Electronics is a group of composer/performers dedicated to the composition and live collaborative performance of electronic and electro-acoustic music. The group was formed in 1973 with David Tudor and is known for its pioneering use of original live electronics, including custom-built software instruments, resonant sculptural instruments, rotating and focused loudspeaker systems, and ultrasonic instruments. On June 26 and 27, 2026, Composers Inside Electronics (John Driscoll, Phil Edelstein, Michael Johnsen, John Bischoff, Paul DeMarinis, and James Fei) will perform music by David Tudor for his centenary with Other Minds and Mills Performing Arts at Littlefield Concert Hall at Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland, California. They joined us on the podcast to talk about working with Tudor in the 1970s, the importance of feedback in Tudor’s music, and the challenges of performing his work today on recreations of the original instruments.

Music: Untitled by David Tudor, performed by Michael Johnsen; Forest Speech by David Tudor, performed by Composers Inside Electronics; Pulsers by David Tudor, performed by Michael Johnsen; Microphone by David Tudor, performed by Composers Inside Electronics; Speaking in Tongues by John Driscoll, performed by Composers Inside Electronics

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The Other Minds Podcast is hosted and edited by Joseph Bohigian. Outro music is “Kings: Atahualpa” by Brian Baumbusch (Other Minds Records).