Get hyped for the Other Minds Festival, with Tyshawn & King, Sara & Roscoe, Sylvie & Mary, William & Patricia, & Darius alone: Videos

The 25th edition of the Other Minds Festival, an intently exploratory affair based in San Francisco, was originally scheduled to take place in April 2020. We know what derailed those plans — but the fest is roaring back this week, with four evenings of programming at the Atrium Theater.

I’ll be on hand throughout the festival, which will be presented both in person and via ticketed livestream. So in anticipation of that event, we’re devoting this week’s Take Five to an array of artists on the festival bill.

King Britt and Tyshawn Sorey, “Untitled Three”

Sara Schoenbeck with Roscoe Mitchell, “Chordata”

Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson, “Bent Yellow”

Pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and guitarist Mary Halvorson first collaborated as a duo several years ago, for a fine album, Crop Circles, that arrived early in 2017. In the wake of that release, they toured in Europe and the United States, deepening their rapport. And they brought that additional insight to Searching For the Disappeared Hour, which will be released on Pyroclastic Records on Oct. 29. Halvorson’s “Bent Yellow,” premiering here, captures the balance of sensitivity and flinty clarity in their musical bond, with a particular spidery grace that has been the composer’s stock in trade. Courvoisier and Halvorson perform at Other Minds on Sunday night.

Darius Jones, “Figure No. 2”

William Parker and Patricia Nicholson, “Struggle”

The presence of multi-instrumentalist William Parker and dancer-choreographer-poet Patricia Nicholson at Other Minds should call to mind another unclassifiable summit of the avant-garde: the Vision Festival, which began as a hopeful byproduct of their creative partnership and has taken on a life of its own. On No Joke! — an album due out on ESP-Disk on Oct. 29 — Parker and Nicholson explore their collaboration anew, with contributions from tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, violist Melanie Dyer and others. “Struggle,” featuring Nicholson’s spoken-word verse over a sinuous desert groove, captures the core attitude of the project. (“You know how Sisyphus always be pushing that boulder up a hill?” Nicholson prods.

“Never gettin’ nowhere.”) The political urgency of the track should also suffuse their festival performance on Friday, featuring longtime fellow traveler Hamid Drake on percussion and vocals.

WBGO | By Nate Chinen