Concert One Thursday, March 1 Featuring the Norwegian ensemble asamisimasa compositions by Øyvind Torvund and Simon Steen-Andersen The palindromic Norwegian ensemble asamisimasa kicks off three nights of concerts at the JCCSF with a full program of works by young mavericks Øyvind Torvund and Simon Steen-Andersen (both born in 1976). Torvund's virtuosically quirky Neon Forest Space combines influences from Purcell to Black Flag in seven sections, making use of radios, aerosol cans, bird whistles and an electric milk steamer. Audiences will also be treated to the world premiere of his new work, Willibald Motor Landscape, composed especially for asamisimasa. Where Torvund's work harnesses an incredibly disparate collection of sounds, Steen-Andersen focuses on a kind of micro-world, amplifying barely audible instrumental gestures in both sound and video. In his words, he is "trying to approach the human being behind the instrument, because then music can suddenly be about everything that is most important: communication, being, fragility and intimacy." His set of four recent works concludes with a haunting piece for cello with a "video-shadow," bringing the concept of amplification into a multimedia context. Concert Two Friday, March 2 Compositions by Gloria Coates, Harold Budd, and Ikue Mori with Del Sol String Quartet, Keith Lowe, Tyshawn Sorey and Ken Ueno Esteemed expat Gloria Coates (b. 1938) and the ambient/avant-garde legend Harold Budd (b. 1936) are joined by Japanese-American innovator Ikue Mori on this eclectic program. A prolific composer and declared "the greatest woman symphonist" by Kyle Gann, Gloria Coates has remained outside of the mainstream of American classical music, having lived in Europe since 1969. Born in Wisconsin, she began experimenting with overtones and clusters at age nine, and has continued to explore the outer limits of expressive tools in her deep catalog of 15 symphonies, nine string quartets, and numerous other works. San Francisco's Del Sol String Quartet tackles her String Quartet No. 5, an emotive masterpiece whose first movement is a double canon with the first violin and viola tuned a quarter-tone sharp. Budd brings his trademark atmospheric piano style to the Other Minds stage in collaboration with Seattle bassist Keith Lowe. After a purported retirement in 2004, Budd has in recent years re-emerged, producing new works that blur the line between minimalism and his better-known ambient music collaborations with Brian Eno. The evening concludes with a special set of improvisations led by Japanese punk drummer-turned electronics composer-performer Ikue Mori. Equally at home as a soloist or collaborator, Mori brings a drummer's sense of propulsion and invention to her laptop-based improv. She'll perform solo, and also together with Tyshawn Sorey (drums) and Ken Ueno (voice / throat-singing). Concert Three Saturday, March 3 featuring the Magik*Magik Orchestra compositions by Lotta Wennakoski, John Kennedy, Tyshawn Sorey, and Ken Ueno On the final evening of OM 17, John Kennedy and Finland's Lotta Wennäkoski offer new takes on the chamber ensemble: Kennedy, who each spring conducts the Spoleto Festival's contemporary music programs, presents the world premiere of a new work for mixed chamber quartet, plus a percussion duo for recycled materials. He also appears onstage conducting the Bay Area's collective Magik*Magik Orchestra in Wennäkoski's touching Nosztalgiaim for chamber orchestra. Recent Rome Prize and Berlin Prize winner and UC Berkeley professor Ken Ueno presents the premiere of Peradam, a new work for Del Sol String Quartet with video, commissioned by Other Minds. Ueno's stated mission is "to champion sounds that have been overlooked or denied so that audiences reevaluate their musical potential." His remarkable vocabulary of beatings and overtones combines here with scratches, whispering bow scrapes, and vocalizations by the quartet members, to evoke the eponymous stone—first used in the French Surrealist novel Mount Analogue, a curved crystal so clear that it is only revealed to those who seek it "with sincere desire and true need."