Charles Amirkhanian

Charles Benjamin Amirkhanian (born January 19, 1945; Fresno, California) is an American composer. He is a percussionist, sound poet, and radio producer of Armenian origin. He is mostly known for his electroacoustic and text-sound music. Career Amirkhanian received his Master of Fine Arts from Mills College in 1980, where he studied electronic music and techniques of sound recording. He was music director of Pacifica Radio’s KPFA-FM in Berkeley, California, from 1969 to 1992, where he initiated the long-running program dedicated to avant-garde music, Ode to Gravity. He was also a lecturer in the Interdisciplinary Creative Arts Department at San Francisco State University from 1977 to 1980. In 1984, the American Music Center awarded him its Letter of Distinction for service to American composers through his work at KPFA FM in Berkeley, California. This was followed in 2005 by another for his co-founding and directing the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco. From ASCAP in 1989 he received the Deems Taylor Award, also for service to American composers. Amirkhanian received a 1997 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. In 2009, Chamber Music America and ASCAP honore