John Cage

This two-CD set celebrating John Cage features works by various luminaries in the international avant-garde circle performing works by or in memoriam of the iconoclastic composer John Cage. Programmed to random play by the listener qua co-creator and mixed with whatever other sounds the listener brings to the listening space and whatever sounds happen to be present, the album becomes what Cage calls "real music," not a relic of music: One hundred and forty-one minutes of 183 pieces of 23 works, in any order, with any other sounds. The irony will not be lost on fans of Cage's work that a recorded tribute album for a composer who disliked the recorded medium is at best a strange tribute. But that said, considering the uniqueness of the collection – and indeed the clout of the listed performers – even the most orthodox of Cage disciples will be pleased with this recording.
Some would say that Frank Zappa's participation alone in this project, featuring his rendition of Cage's infamous 4'33", is worth looking into.

In October 1962, John Cage and David Tudor went to Japan to present a series of historic concerts. Sensation. These are invaluable recordings, since they aren’t of a selected repertoire reconsidered in tranquility but capture the atmosphere of a time when all this was new and highly radical. And it’s a fine programme, played by the best exponents.

This live album documents the meeting of two avant-garde legends, but it is not exactly a "super duo." The curious chemistry these two share is subtler and possibly more rewarding than that. John Cage was a quotable artist. On the subject of albums, he once remarked that “records ruin the landscape.” Elsewhere, in a treatise collected in his 1961 book Silence, the composer offered some opinions about jazz. The genre “derives from serious music,” he wrote, “and when serious music derives from it, the situation becomes rather silly.” Given those harsh judgments, it makes sense to venture an opening question about Cage’s one-off appearance alongside swing-and-improv icon Sun Ra. If Cage himself thought jazz unsuited for “serious” contexts and recordings lame, why should this document of their 1986 shared bill be anything other than a curiosity?

"Silence. Sounds are only bubbles on its surface. They burst to disappear." (John Cage)

Of all the composers of the twentieth century John Cage (1912–1992) is doubtless one of the most inventive and the most determined in the pursuit of his musical goals. The significance of the seven pieces brought together here is the striking panorama of the intelligence of the material presented, over a period of four years, from 1939 to 1943, by the composer whom the critic Fred Goldbeck described as “the greatest Giraudouxian of our age”.

New KONTAKT 5 version of John Cage Prepared Piano library. The original prepared piano and the only samples ever to be authorized by the estate of world-renown composer, John Cage. This particular collection of sounds was created for use in his magnum opus composition, Sonatas & Interludes (February 1946-March 1948). Using his original materials and following the precise instructions found at the head of his published score, various "mutes" were inserted between the strings of the keys, then each note pristinely recorded and programmed to bring you the instrument as Cage himself both envisioned and performed. Forty-five of the piano's eighty-eight keys were prepared, eleven with double preparations; three dynamic levels in five articulations comprise a total of 1,320 samples. This landmark achievement makes an authentic prepared piano, and by extension the works of John Cage, available to sampler owners in one of the most unique virtual instruments ever created.

Nicholas Isherwood made his début as Lucifer in Stockhausen’s Donnerstag aus Licht at Covent Garden, at the age of 25, and has since collaborated closely with composers such as George Crumb, Hans Werner Henze, György Kurtág and Iannis Xenakis. His relationship with John Cage soon developed into what he in his liner notes to the disc calls ‘a love affair’. The composer Sylvano Bussotti has remarked that ‘since the passing of Cathy Berberian, Nicholas Isherwood is the singer who best understands the spirit of the music of John Cage’. On ARIA, Isherwood presents most of Cage’s music for solo voice that is not included in the composer’s Song Books, and most pieces are here recorded for the first time by a male singer. The programme covers 43 years, from A Chant with Claps from the early 1940s to Ryoanji and Sonnekus2 of the 1980s, and includes the celebrated Aria, here performed with a new multi-channel tape realization of Cage’s Fontana Mix, by the Italian composer Gianluca Verlingieri.

An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake