Other Minds presents a celebration of the centennial of Pierre Boulez, comprising an inventive concert of music for two pianos played by Gloria Cheng and Ralph van Raat at Littlefield Concert Hall, Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland on Wednesday, March 26, 2025. The duo will perform the composer’s rarely heard Structures Books I and II, alongside music by John Cage, Morton Feldman, Frank Zappa, and Magnus Lindberg, concluding with Igor Stravinsky’s elegant neo-classical masterwork Sonata for Two Pianos.
The eminent French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez (March 26, 1925–January 5, 2016) played a leading role in the development of integral serialism in the 1950s. He went on to play an important role in the field of electronic music, founding the Institut de recherche et coordination acoustique/musique (IRCAM) in Paris in the 1970s. Boulez began his first conducting post in 1958 with the Southwest Radio Symphony Orchestra in Baden-Baden, West Germany and served as principal conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London (1971–75) and the New York Philharmonic (1971–77). This program highlights both Boulez’ own compositions, as well as his profound impact on the leading composers of 20th Century music.