Charles Amirkhanian
"I use non-pitched, speech and ambient sounds ... I consider speech sounds to be percussion points or sound objects which I use for composing. When I got into radio, I started thinking about the idea of speech and the delivery, as well as the literary aspect ..."
Charles Amirkhanian is a composer, percussionist, sound poet, and radio producer. He is a leading practitioner and proponent of text-sound composition and has been instrumental in the dissemination of contemporary music. His recent work combines processed ambient and found sounds with text-sound and develops layers abstraction which interlock with representational or narrative constructs.
Amirkhanian's commissions include West German Radio (Cologne), National Endowment for the Arts, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio VPRO (Nether- lands), Swedish Radio/Fylkingen, 1984 Summer Olympics, Radio Luxembourg, and choreographers Anna Halprin, Bill T. Jones, Richard Alston of Ballet Rambert (London) ... He directed the Speaking of Music series at the Exploratorium (San Francisco), he was the founding Co-Director of the Composer-to-Composer Festival in Telluride, Colorado, and, for many years, Musical Director of KPFA-FM Radio in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Amirkhanian currently lives in San Francisco and directs the Other Minds Music Festival.
Available CDs
