A Lotta Sonatas

Other Minds is besot with excitement for the white-hot pianists Dennis Russell Davies and Maki Namekawa to perform A Lotta Sonatas in their first appearance with Other Minds since we brought them for 2024’s celebration of Davies’ 80th birthday. This time we’ll be celebrating Lou Harrison’s 109th birthday, who worked and taught for many years at Mills—first as a piano accompanist for the Department of Dance at Mills College between 1937 and 1942 and then as the Darius Milhaud Chair of Musical Composition at Mills College between 1980 and 1985. For their sixth appearance with Other Minds, the duo will perform works by Lou Harrison, William Bolcom, Joe Hisaishi, Philip Glass, Paul Hindemith, and Arvo Pärt. The Hisaishi and Glass sonatas were written especially for Namekawa. This concert is part of Other Minds’s PastForward series, presented in cooperation with the Center for Contemporary Music, Northeastern University and Mills Performing Arts.