As with many of Cage's works, Song Books is indeterminate with regard to performance. In order to highlight the immense and open possibilities of the score, Cage: Beyond Silence offers audiences a rare opportunity to experience multiple versions of this work, further inviting audiences to engage with the ephemeral qualities of music so important to…
Talks, Workshops, and Hands-On Activities. Unpack Song Books with our expert guides. This beautiful score includes over 90 solos exploring a wide range of notational systems, including pictures, maps, and text. Participate in workshops and talks with Joan La Barbara, Richard Kostelanetz, and David Patterson
ABOUT THE EVENT Pushing the boundaries of instrumental performance techniques and electro-acoustic sound production, the New England-based seven-member ensemble The BSC offers a bold interpretation of Cage’s Song Books. Ripe with texts by Thoreau, Satie, Duchamp, Buckminster Fuller and Merce Cunningham, this performance will fill the beautiful acoustic space of the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral, inviting…
As with many of Cage's works, Song Books is indeterminate with regard to performance. In order to highlight the immense and open possibilities of the score, Cage: Beyond Silence offers audiences a rare opportunity to experience multiple versions of this work, further inviting audiences to engage with the ephemeral qualities of music so important to…
• Variations I (1958) performed by Christopher Colucci and Jorge Cousineau • Variations II (1961) performed by Nate Wooley and Susan Alcorn • Variations III (1962) performed by Bonnie Jones and Jesse Kudler With vastly open and indeterminate scores and happenings, Variations I – VIII (1958 – 1967) is a series of compositions that foreshadows…
Pianist Margaret Leng Tan returns for a performance of one of John Cage’s most important works, Sonatas and Interludes (1946 – 48). Percussive and rhythmic, Sonatas and Interludes is a collection of twenty pieces - sixteen sonatas and four more freely structured interludes - composed for prepared piano, a Cagean innovation that uses screws, bolts,…
Relache, longtime champions of Cages music in Philadelphia, present an interactive and multimedia evening including Hymnkus (co-commissioned by Relache in 1986), Lecture on the Weather, the vocal work Litany for the Whale, and a brand new arrangement of Apartment House 1776, a worked based on early American fuguing tunes.
Created the year he died, Cages only feature-length film One11 (1992) was composed entirely using 1,200 random operations devised by a computereach determining the movements of a crane-mounted camera and the qualities of lighting within an empty room. A meditation on the perception of emptiness that harks back to Cages much earlier 433 (1952), One11…
The beauty behind Cages Number Pieces is the simplicity and directness of their artistic intention, and their ability to be realized in an abundance of ways. Led by Michael Pisaro, this hands-on workshop reveals the ingenuity of Cages scores by allowing participants to create their own versions of the Number Pieces.
"One7" (1990), for a solo performer, was written to celebrate the birthday of Cages friend Pauline Oliveros. It is one of a few Number Pieces in which there is no specific content whatsoever other than the time brackets. Cage instructs his performer to fill the brackets by any means of producing sounds. One can perform…
The internationally acclaimed JACK Quartet performs three of Cages late works for string quartet, Music for Four (1984), Four (1989) and the exceptionally rarely heard Five3 (1991) for string quartet and trombone. Unlike the chaotic, multi-centered works of the 1960s and 70s, these pieces reflect a more restrained and nuanced aspect of Cage's compositional voice,…
A once in a lifetime event. Four preeminent post-Cagean composer-performers join together on the stage for a performance of Cages Four6 (1992), a work dedicated to musician and composer Pauline Oliveros on the occasion of her sixtieth birthday. Scored for a quartet with any way of producing sounds, Four6 is perhaps the most open of…
New Yorks Either / OR performs three of Cages final works, Four3 (scored for one or two pianos, twelve rain sticks, violin or oscillator and silence) and Two6 (for violin and piano), both based on a chance-derived score called Extended Lullaby, based on Erik Saties Vexations, as well as One5 for solo piano. Periodic performances…
Curtis 20/21 and the Curtis Percussion Studio present a portrait of John Cage. The program will focus exclusively on his percussion works from the 1940s, including Third Construction, Amores, Living Room Music, In a Landscape, and arrangements of his Sonatas and Interludes, interspersed with video recorded interview segments with the composer himself.
Laurel Karlik Sheehan gave the Canadian premiere of Two2 with Jack Behrens in 1990. Rob Haskins is a respected Cage expert and scholar. Together they bring an authority and expertise to this performance of Two2.
The PRISM saxophone quartet and the Curtis Institute of Musics 20/21 Ensemble join forces for a program that includes a selection of Freeman Etudes for solo violin (1977-80), Sonata for Two Voices (1933), Music for Nine (1984-87), Four5 for saxophone quartet (1991), and to close the festival Thirteen (1992), Cages final composition.
ALASH ENSEMBLE wth beat boxer Shodekeh, double bassist Garth Stevenson, and vocalist/guitarist Annie Lynch ALASH are masters of Tuvan throat singing, a remarkable technique for singing multiple pitches at the same time. Masters of traditional Tuvan instruments as well as the art of throat singing, Alash are deeply committed to traditional Tuvan music and…
SOUND POETRY EFFECTS CATALOG curated by Danny Snelson, with live performances by Caleb Beckwith, Mark Johnson, Timothy Leonido, Kate McGuire, John Paetsch, and Danny Snelson Join Bowerbird for its first event exploring sound poetry, an artistic form that bridges literary and musical composition. As Joan La Barbara reminds us, voice is the original instrument. Already…
