Giulia Ballaré’s Performance of Early John Cage

This morning the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts released its latest Omni on-Location video. This is a solo guitar performance by Giulia Ballaré playing her own transcription of “In a Landscape,” one of the early solo piano compositions by John Cage. In Steffen Schleiermacher’s eighteen-CD account of performances of all of Cage’s compositions for solo piano, this piece was included in a collection entitled Hommage á Satie. Cage was very much taken by the engaging simplicity of Satie’s music; and the simplicity of “In a Landscape” acknowledges his debt to that composer.

Giulia Ballaré playing “In a Landscape” in a landscape setting

By the same count, that simplicity also lends itself to a “bare bones” melodic line which can be expressed by a solo guitar in the same spirit of the original piano version. Ballaré clearly appreciated that simplicity, and its clarity shimmers in the video work captured by Pauline Gauthey. The same can be said for the video being captured in an outdoor setting (as can be seen above), reminding those familiar with Cage that he was as interested in the natural world as in the musical one.

SFP PIVOT Festival: the Final Program

Choreography and dancer Myles Thatcher (photograph courtesy of the artist, from the SFP Web page for last night’s program)

Last night in the Taube Atrium Theatre, San Francisco Performances (SFP) concluded its annual PIVOT Festival. Curator Andy Meyerson gave a solo percussion performance accompanying choreography by dancer Myles Thatcher. The title of the program was Parallel Play, reflecting the selections as a series of “parallel pairs.”

Those “parallels” involved the coupling of sound and movement. The program began with the now historic coupling of John Cage with choreographer Merce Cunningham. This was followed by Robin Dekkers performing a synthesis of ballet and modern dance to the sounds of Glenn Kotche. The first half of the program concluded with music by Nicole Lizée for choreography by Rex Wheeler. The second half began with “A Noticeable Pause,” Dani Rowe’s choreography set to Danny Clay’s “Still Cycles.” “Portrait” seems to have been a joint project setting movement by Babatunji to the music of Raven Chacon. Thatcher then concluded the program with his interpretation of the Chaconne movement from Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1004 partita for solo violin, arranged for marimba performance by Meyerson and Jack Van Geem.

Taken as a whole, the program served up a rich panoply of music almost entirely from the current century. (The only exceptions were the “bookends” of the program: Cage and Bach!) The Bach arrangement made for a throughly engaging conclusion with unique marimba sonorities that still did justice to the music’s Baroque “roots.” While I found Thatcher’s performances to be somewhat variable, I was still drawn to his interpretation of Cunningham’s “Solo.” Perhaps this just cast too long a shadow over the choreography that would follow!

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Junction Trio Couples Past and Present (again)

Junction Trio musicians Conrad Tao, Stefan Jackiw, and Jay Campbell (photograph by Shervin Lainez, courtesy of Noe Music)

According to my records, the Junction Trio was formed in 2015. All three of the musicians have also presented recitals for San Francisco Performances (SFP). Violinist Stefan Jackiw made his SFP debut in April of 2014 and cellist Jay Campbell made his debut in January of 2020 performing with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Pianist Conrad Tao made his first live performance with SFP towards the end of 2022. For the trio’s first performance, Tao composed what amounted to a tone poem entitled “Eventide,” which he regarded as his “Opus 1.”

In a little less than a month’s time, Noe Music will welcome this trio to the Noe Valley Ministry. The “pillars” of the program will be two piano trios from that period of music history known as the First Viennese School. The first half of the program will conclude with the first of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 70 trios, given the title “Ghost” and composed in the key of D major. The second half will conclude with Franz Schubert’s D. 898, the first of his two piano trios, this one composed in the key of B-flat major. Each of these compositions will be preceded by three of the six pieces for violin and keyboard instrument by John Cage, given the collective title Six Melodies. In addition, John Zorn’s “Ghosts” will be interjected in to the Beethoven trio, following the Largo assai movement, which inspired the “Ghost” title of the trio.

This will be the next Noe Music event of the season, taking place at the Noe Valley Ministry, which is located at 1021 Sanchez Street, between 23rd Street and Elizabeth Street. The concert will begin at 4 p.m. on Sunday, February 22. General admission will be $45 with a $15 rate for students. They may be purchased online through a Noe Music Web page.

Plans for SFP PIVOT Festival

Some readers may recall that one of the highlights planned for the 2025–2026 season of San Francisco Performances (SFP) is the annual PIVOT Festival. This will be the Festival’s eleventh performance, suggesting that its adventurous offerings have staying power! The curator for this season will be Andy Meyerson, who will probably be known to many readers as the percussionist of The Living Earth Show, playing with his partner, guitarist Travis Andrews. The Festival will present three performances, all taking place in the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. The first two will be in Herbst Theatre on the ground floor followed by last on the top floor in the Taube Atrium Theatre. Specifics for each of the programs are as follows:

Vocalist Tanner Porter with musicians Travis Andrews and Andy Meyerson (from the Web page for the first PIVOT Festival performance)

Friday, January 30, 7:30 p.m.: Legacies will survey works by two generations of composers in the Sleeping Giant collective. The first generation will be represented by Timo Andres, Christopher Cerrone, Jacob Cooper, Ted Hearne, Robert Honstein, and Andrew Norman. Both Meyerson and Andrews are protégés of those founders, along with vocalist Tanner Porter, who will join them in presenting this offering.

Saturday, January 31, 7:30 p.m.: The Satellite program will be divided across three diverse bands with both Meyerson and Andrews performing in all of them. The first of these is the Bucket List trio, whose third member is composer and percussionist Mark Applebaum. The second is Koollooꓘ, which some readers may recognize as the title of a one-act performance that will be taking place at The Roar Shack at the end of this month at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, January 28. Meyerson and Andrews will be joined by dance artist Babatunji and composer and instrument designer Dennis Aman.

Sunday, February 1, 7 p.m.: For the final program, Parallel Play, Meyerson will collaborate with San Francisco Ballet soloist and choreographer Myles Thatcher. Thatcher will perform “Child of Tree,” choreographed by Merce Cunningham for music composed by John Cage. This will be followed by “The Filthy 15,” composed by Nicole Lizée for choreography by Rex Wheeler (aka Lady Camden). There will also be a world premiere of Thatcher’s choreography set to music by Johann Sebastian Bach.

A Web page has been created for purchasing tickets for the entire series with options for the different areas in Herbst Theatre. The hyperlinks attached to the individual dates above can be used for purchasing single tickets. Tickets can also be purchased by calling 415-392-2545. In addition, single tickets will be available for purchase at the door with a 50% discount for student rush tickets and 20% off for seniors.

On “Improvement”

1988 photograph of John Cage by Rob Croes (from the Dutch National Archives, made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication)

I have many memories of my past experiences with John Cage, but the one I remember best was the cautionary approach he took to change. The way he put was that those that try to “change the world” end up by only making matters worse. I was reminded of this precept while waiting for the latest upgrade of the MacOS Tahoe release. To be fair, things tend not to get worse; but I usually come away feeling that change usually tends to be “on the surface,” with subtle differences in layout. I never seem to feel that the change actually mattered, since there was little impact on either my activities or the software responses to those activities. This has left me questioning what constitutes “improvement” in the Software Development division of Apple. I doubt that there is any way I can pose this question to Apple; and, even if Apple provided me with a means to do so, would I get a satisfactory response?

Prior to filing this article, I happened to look at my Finder window. It turns out that the slider bars along the bottom and right side of the frame are now “translucent.” There is still an opaque region that accounts for what is displayed in the window, but the space along which that region can be moved has changed. This is progress?

Watching a 3D Documentary on Television

Screenshot of a frame from Cunningham showing two contemporary dancers performing Cunningham’s “Summerspace” (from the IMDb Web page for the film)

This afternoon I used my HBO Max service to watch the 2019 documentary Cunningham. By way of disclaimer, I should note that, as a graduate student, I became “hooked” on the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) as the result of an “accident.” In the summer of 1969, I followed my doctoral thesis advisor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) when he spent the summer at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I served as his teaching assistant, but my principal duty was to take notes for all of his lectures. This was a straightforward undertaking, but it left me with a lot of spare time.

Fortunately, on my first day of personal wandering, I discovered that John Cage was on the campus; and he had put up an announcement for those wishing to attend a “Music and Mushrooms” seminar. Cage, in turn, was the Music Director for MCDC, which was also on the Boulder campus. They were there in preparation for performing in Mexico City. They chose Boulder for its altitude, so they could get their lungs in shape for the higher altitude in Mexico.

Cage’s seminar turned out to be one of driving into the woods and then letting things happen. Since it was a dry summer, very few mushrooms were encountered. However, through Cage, I got to know the other musicians performing with MCDC, David Tudor and Gordon Mumma. I saw two complete (and different) programs performed that summer, and I was hooked. So much so that, when MIT declared January to be a “do whatever pleases you” month for all graduate students, I drove down to New York and watched a full Cunningham season at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

I kept a day-by-day diary of every program that I saw. That then found its way into an article in Ballet Review (Volume iii, issue 3). None of this went down very well with my thesis advisor. However, I was “rescued” through the time I was spending at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where Marvin Minsky helped me find a way to write a doctoral dissertation that was as much about music as it was about parallel processing (an approach to digital computing which, at that time, was in it infancy).

All of these past experiences came back to me as I watch Cunningham. Even the way in which the film, directed by Alla Kovgan, was sequenced seemed to emerge as its own unique approach to parallel processing! Ironically, the documentary was originally created with 3D technology. While I never had the opportunity to see it that way, I knew enough about the “source material” that my mind could add the “third dimension” to just about everything I saw. Indeed, to be fair, Kovgan’s film used that third dimension relatively sparingly, since the lion’s share of the content involved archival footage, much of which filled me with more nostalgia than I anticipated.

I grant that, for those unfamiliar with the Cunningham choreography in the documentary, the “third dimension” would clarify Cunningham’s own “three dimensional” approach to the dances he created. The good news was that most of those dances were already burned into my memory, thanks to the many performances I was fortunate enough to attend. I just had to substitute the dancers I saw on television with those I remembered from the past performances I had attended and documented! Mind you, I would not pass up an opportunity to experience Kovgan’s 3D intentions; but I would not be surprised if that opportunity never arose!

Quieting the Mind

John Cage (photograph by Rob C. Croes, from the Dutch National Archives, made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication)

One of the most memorable quotations I learned from John Cage was that the purpose of art was “to sober and quiet the mind, so that it is in accord with what happens.” This may be the best antidote for recovering from reading the daily news, which, more often than not, seems to throw the mind into a state of crisis, if not downright panic. Mind you, another one of Cage’s favorite quotes was, “Every day is a beautiful day,” another adage that does not hold up very well against news reports. Nevertheless, in my experiences of watching Cage at work (including hunting for mushrooms), I have come to expect that the words I live by are “We do what we can.” Fortunately, I can hold to those words through my activities on this site!

Guitarist Aaron Larget-Caplan Returning to C4NM

Aaron Larget-Caplan and John Cage (screen shot from his YouTube video)

Early next month guitarist Aaron Larget-Caplan will return to the Center of New Music (C4NM). He has prepared a solo recital program entitled A Modern American Guitar Celebration. Of particular interest is that he has arranged three works by John Cage. The best known of these will be the last, the solo piano composition “In a Landscape.” He will also perform two works written for his New Lullaby Project by Ken Ueno and Ian Wiese, respectively. In addition, he will present two of the movements from the solo guitar composition Only Winter Certainties by Daniel Felsenfeld. There will also be a premiere performance of music by Douglas Knehans, as well as a selection by Richard Cameron-Wolfe. Finally, Larget-Caplan will play at least one of his own compositions.

This performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 6.  As most readers probably know by now, the venue is located at 55 Taylor Street, half a block north of the Golden Gate Theater, which is where Golden Gate Avenue meets Market Street. Admission will be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members and students. Tickets may be purchased online through an Eventbrite Web page.

Trifonov Shifts Attention from Europe to Americas

Pianist Daniil Trifonov has been a regular visitor to San Francisco, both as concerto soloist and recitalist, over the course of several years. This coming February, he will return to Davies Symphony Hall as soloist in a performance of Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 18 (second) piano concerto in G minor with the San Francisco Symphony. In addition, this site has tried to keep up with his Deutsche Grammophon recordings, the most recent of which was Bach: The Art of Life, a “family portrait” that juxtaposed works by Johann Sebastian Bach with selections by four of his sons.

Daniil Trifonov on the cover of his latest album (courtesy of Crossover Media)

Trifonov’s latest album takes him across the Atlantic Ocean, so to speak. It is the first of two releases both under the title My American Story. The subtitle for that first release is North, and it offers an impressively diverse account of music composed in the United States. Taken as a whole, it amounts to an engaging account of how music was being made during the twentieth century.

The breadth of that diversity can be oriented around the two concerto selections on the album, each reflecting a different perspective across the two centuries. The first of these is George Gershwin’s “Concerto in F” (originally given the title “New York Concerto”). Following the success of “Rhapsody in Blue,” the conductor Walter Damrosch commissioned Gershwin to compose a full-scale piano concerto for his New York Symphony Orchestra. “Rhapsody in Blue” has been composed for solo piano and jazz band, but it was subsequently prepared for orchestral performance by Ferde Grofé. The concerto, on the other hand, is entirely a product of Gershwin’s own efforts.

A little less than a century later, Mason Bates composed his first piano concerto. It was written for Trifonov and given its first performance in January of 2022. It was co-commissioned by Trifonov and the Philadelphia Orchestra, with whom he played the work’s debut. The recording of that concerto on North was made with that same ensemble led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who has been the ensemble’s music director since 2012.

I feel as if I have been following Bates’ work for almost as long as I have been writing on this site. Unless I am mistaken, that dates back to the spring of 2009, when Michael Tilson Thomas conducted Bates’ “The B-Sides” with the San Francisco Symphony. It took me a while to get used to him (which may be the same for any thoughts he may have had when reading what I wrote about him); but I came away from listening to his concerto with the sense that he had approached it with more security than Gershwin had brought to his “parallel” effort. Indeed, I can confess that my very first impression of Bates leaned towards “enfant terrible;” but the firm and secure hand he brought to composing for both piano and ensemble is a far cry from either of those words!

All the other selections on this first My American Story album are solo performances. I must confess that I was particularly taken with the tracks that involved arrangements of popular tunes by leading pianists from each half of the twentieth century. The earlier of these was one of the most influential musicians (who happened to play piano) of his time, Art Tatum. The second could be said the same for his time, the pianist being Bill Evans. In listening to these tracks, one can easily detect Trifonov’s appreciation of both of those jazz masters. That appreciation also extends to the final track on the album, which is “4’33”,” John Cage’s “silent” composition. On the other hand his approach to the more “serious” composers, such as Aaron Copland, John Adams, and John Corigliano, struck me as more dutiful than engaging; but that is probably just because I am not shy in voicing personal opinions!

SFP: An Evening of Chamber Music with Dance

Calder Quartet members Tereza Stanislav, Benjamin Jacobson, Eric Byers, and Jonathan Moerschel  (photograph by Jesse Holland, courtesy of SFP)

Last night the Calder Quartet returned to Herbst Theatre for their second appearance in the San Francisco Performances (SFP) Shenson Chamber Series. The quartet, whose members are violinists Benjamin Jacobson and Tereza Stanislav, violist Jonathan Moerschel, and cellist Eric Byers, launched the series this past October, when they performed with pianist Timo Andres. This time they partnered with the deaf choreographer Antoine Hunter, who performed with two members of his Urban Jazz Dance Company. The title of the program was The Mind’s Ear: Motion Beyond Silence; and, sadly, only one of the two dancers that joined Hunter was cited by name: Zahna Simon (which could only be found in the “press area” of the SFP Web site).

The high point of the evening extended through the entire second half of the program. Hunter began with a solo performance in total silence. Through his movements, however, he communicated to the audience to encourage them to join him through a series of his motions. This resulted in a “concert experience” that was probably unique to everyone in that audience.

Following the perfect silence of that episode, the Calder Quartet took the stage to perform the original version of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 130 quartet in B-flat major. That is the version that concluded with the “Große Fuge” movement, which, taken on its own, usually lasts for more than a quarter of an hour. Since this was the last of six movements, Beethoven composed an alternative final movement, an Allegro that is about five minutes shorter. The fugue was then published separately as Opus 133.

Those that recall my preview article for this concert know that Paul Taylor tried to create choreography for this music, and the result was one of the more annoying performances I had to review in my early days as a dance critic! Hunter was perceptive enough to recognize the folly of that undertaking, so he confined his choreography to only three of the movements. One of those was an obvious choice, the fourth, in E-flat major, an Allegro assai identified as “Alla danza tedesca” (in the manner of a German dance). He also created a solo for himself set to the second (Presto) movement in B-flat minor. All three dancers then contributed to the choreography for the “Große Fuge.”

Calder could not have given a more convincing account of the music. They knew exactly how to pace themselves through the full duration of this extended journey. Where the choreographed movements were concerned, it was clear that their tempo selections accommodated the needs of the dancers. In spite of the extended duration, the pace was such that both dancers and attentive listeners were ready for the final movement, which the Calder players delivered as the wild ride that gave due justice to every note that Beethoven wrote.

The evening began with a very brief quartet composition by Julius Eastman entitled “Joy Boy.” This was very much a “mood” composition; and it is one that I hope I shall be able to get to know better. It was followed by music that was actually composed for choreography. The work that John Cage entitled “String Quartet in Four Parts” was inspired by an orchestral work created for Merce Cunningham’s dance, “The Seasons.” In following the program, the listener could appreciate how those seasons were ordered, as well as the tonal and rhythmic ambiguities evoked for summer, autumn, and winter. It is only with the emergence of spring that a distinctively clearer rhetoric emerged in the form of a quodlibet. The entire cycle was danced by Simon and the other unnamed Urban Jazz member, making for a thoroughly memorable experience.

Dennis Russell Davies to Return to Other Minds

Dennis Russell Davies performing for Other Minds in 2022 (photograph by David Magnusson, courtesy of Other Minds)

Next month Other Minds will host a benefit recital to celebrate the 80th birthday of pianist Dennis Russell Davies. Davies will be joined by his wife, Maki Namekawa, to present a recital of solo and four-hand piano music. This will be their fifth appearance in San Francisco hosted by Other Minds.

The highlight of the program will be a four-hand arrangement of selected movements from the six-episode tone poem Má vlast (my fatherland). (The best known of those movements is frequently performed on its own: “Vitava,” the Czech name of the river Moldau.) The rest of the program will be focused primarily on the twentieth century, with compositions by Maurice Ravel, John Cage, Philip Glass, and Laurie Anderson.

Only 80 tickets will be available for this event. As of this writing, tickets may be purchased for either $70 or $100. They may be purchased through an Eventbrite Web page. The performance will begin at 8 p.m. on Friday, March 22, preceded by a dessert reception at 7 p.m. The venue will be the McCarthy Art Studio in the Mission, and the address will be provided once ticket purchase has been confirmed.

Further Exploration of Jacquet de La Guerre

Some readers may recall that it was through Sarah Cahill that I first learned about the seventeenth-century composer Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre. My introduction took place through a live-stream recital that was part of the Piano Talks series presented by the Ross McKee Foundation. She played four of the nine movements of the composer’s first suite (in the key of D minor) in the 1687 Pieces de Clavecin collection, the Prelude, the Sarabande, the “Chaconne l’inconstante” (the inconstant chaconne), and the Gigue.

That was enough to pique my interest. After that “first contact,” I had no trouble finding the IMSLP download site, which then allowed me to work my way through all nine of the movements in the score. Meanwhile, Cahill recorded the movements she had performed at her recital, along with the second Courante; and those five movements served to begin her second The Future is Female release, whose title was The Dance. Now, while waiting for the final volume in that series, which is due for release at the end of next month, I decided to take on the second suite in the 1687 collection.

I also decided that I could do with a bit of further guidance in dealing with the opening Prelude music, whose notation seems to serve as a foundation for some degree of improvisation. Here, for example, is the notation that begins the Prelude that Cahill had recorded:

Clearly, the whole notes were not intended to be performed as whole notes! Rather, they seem to outline harmonic progressions that are arpeggiated and embellished with the notated eighth notes.

My understanding of the music was further enhanced by a two-CD Naxos release of all six of the suites in the collection. As the hyperlink indicates, this album is still available for purchase from Amazon.com, even though its release dates back to 2005. The harpsichordist is Elizabeth Farr, and I have now had my first encounter with her approaches to all six of the suites. With that background I now feel equipped to find my way through the second suite (in the key of G minor) in the set.

John Cage used to tell a story that reflected on his approach to composition that was based on tossing coins. As a recall, the pianist David Tudor, who performed many of Cage’s works, supposedly voiced his own opinion of Cage’s techniques. That opinion was distilled down to a single sentence: “Now that it’s so easy, there’s so much to do!” Now that the Internet has made it “so easy” to examine and play so many different publications of music, there really is “so much to do!”

2022: My Year of Nicolas Horvath Recordings

Readers that have been visiting this site for some time probably know that I follow up on my “Month-by-Month Memories” of performances with a less-structured “Memorable Recordings” article. However, this was the year in which Fate led me to take a “deep dive” into the recordings made by pianist Nicolas Horvath. At the beginning of this year, Horvath was no stranger to me. In 2021 I had written in March about the album of his performances of music by Alvin Lucier, followed by an “‘Unknown’ Debussy” article in October;” and, in April of this year, I wrote an article entitled “Horvath Begins Project to Record Tailleferre.”

Nevertheless, I was not prepared for what would happen shortly thereafter. I received electronic mail from Horvath informing me of the albums he had released under his own Nicolas Horvath Discoveries label. Most ambitious was his project to record the complete piano works of Jean Catoire, amounting to 30 hours of music divided across a series of eight volumes. These were to be released through Bandcamp, whose Web page for the first release described Catoire as “the very first (and totally forgotten & neglected) french [sic] minimalist composer.” I wrote my first article about Catoire on July 26, and my account of the final volume appeared on August 25.

For the remainder of this year, I did my best to catch up on other Discoveries releases. Every now and then, I would encounter albums with familiar content. This was the case where John Cage was concerned, as was Hans Otte, whose Das Buch der Klänge (the book of sounds) had been known to me through the album he recorded of his own performance in 1982. My most recent article, which appeared a little more than two weeks ago, involved another “Long-Duration Release” (three hours and 22 minutes), this time of The Chord Catalogue by Tom Johnson.

Visiting Horvath’s Bandcamp page is a sobering reminder that I shall never be able to keep up with all of his recording activities. Since he is based in Paris, I also doubt that I shall have an opportunity to experience one of his concert performances. Nevertheless, I owe much to the Nicolas Horvath Discoveries releases for their impact on how I continue to reflect on both the experience of listening and the attempt to document that experience with text as pretty much my only resource.

John Cage at His Most Lyrical

Following up on yesterday’s account of the six-CD album of pianist Nicolas Horvath playing Dennis Johnson’s “November,”I wish to “shift gears” into the brevity of early compositions by John Cage. The Nicolas Horvath Discoveries series includes a short album of two Cage selections, both of which are less than twelve minutes in duration and both composed in 1948. Each was written for dance created by a different choreographer.

The first track presents “In a landscape,” which was composed for Louise Lippold. Cage specified that the music could be performed on harp or solo piano. In the latter case the performer was instructed to raise both the damper and sustain pedals for the entire duration. The pedals are released only at the final measure, allowing reverberating harmonics to sound. This was followed by “Dream,” composed for a solo performance by choreographer Merce Cunningham, with whom Cage would work for the rest of his life. Reverberation also figures significantly in the performance of Cage’s score.

For those that have been following these articles about Nicolas Horvath Discoveries, these short pieces take us back to the domain of Gita Sarabhai, who had informed Cage that “the purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.” In that context I must confess that I find the extended essay by Bertrand Ferrier (translated into English by Horvath) to be a bit on the excessive side. Presumably, there was at least a bit of irony in the third section being titled “Metaphysics of Simplicity.”

My personal conjecture is that Cage wished to provide both choreographers with an “atmosphere.” Like the air we breathe, we are barely aware of it, leaving us free to devote almost all of our attention to the dancers. Nevertheless, in the absence of the choreography, one can still appreciate “the atmosphere itself” in a performance of both Cage compositions, rather like being fully aware of a deep breath of fresh air.

Islandia Music Records to Launch Schick Series

Composer John Cage (photograph by Rob C. Croes for the Dutch National Archives, from Wikimedia Commons, made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication)

This Friday Islandia Music Records (the label managed by cellist Maya Beiser) will launch a multi-album series of recordings of performances by percussionist Steven Schick, collectively entitled Weather Systems. The title of the first album is A Hard Rain. Most of the release is devoted to innovative approaches to percussion that were explored during the Fifties and Sixties. The contributing composers from that period are (in order of appearance) John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Morton Feldman, Charles Wuorinen, Helmut Lachenmann, and William Hibbard. The album then concludes with an “electronic augmentation” of Kurt Schwitters’ “Ursonate.” Amazon.com has created a Web page for this new album, which is processing pre-orders. Unfortunately, it is only being distributed for digital release; but, fortunately, the download includes the accompanying booklet.

Where the content of this recording is concerned, anyone of my generation will probably see the elephant in the room. That elephant is the album Electronics & Percussion - Five Realizations By Max Neuhaus, a vinyl album released by Columbia Masterworks in 1968. That album is still available through an Amazon.com Web page at what may described politely as “collectors’ prices.” To the best of my knowledge, the CD version has only been produced by Sony Music Japan International, meaning that the price on the Amazon.com Web page will probably also only appeal to serious collectors. Two of the selections on A Hard Rain also appear on Electronics & Percussion: Feldman’s “The King of Denmark” and Stockhausen’s “Zyklus für einen Schlagzeuger” (cycle for a percussionist), given the number 9 in the composer’s catalog.

Now, to be fair, I enjoy the fact that anyone interested in either of these compositions has an opportunity to choose between performances or even listen to both of them. Nevertheless, I have to say that David Behrman tended to make better programming decisions than those made jointly by Schick and his recording engineer Andrew Munsey. As a case in point, consider the opening tracks on A Hard Rain.

The first of these is Cage’s “27 minutes 10.554 seconds” (I have chosen the headline used on the Wikipedia page for this composition to clarify the meaning of the title) scored for a solo percussionist. That meticulous approach to duration suggests that for this piece (and others titled only by the span of the duration), Cage was particularly interested in the interplay of sounds and silence. As a result, there are extended periods of silence in the performance, one of which occurs very early in Schick’s performance (so early that even I wondered whether there might have been a defect in the recording medium). The good news is that Cage was more interested in the general qualities of the passing of time than he was in how time is shared through the alternation of sounds and silence.

However, this becomes problematic on Schick’s new recording when the Cage selection is followed by “Zyklus.” The latter also involves the alternation of sound and silence, since the percussionist has to rotate himself in a circle, surrounded by the instruments he is playing. Stockhausen’s silences tend not to endure as long as Cage’s, but they are just as much a part of the music-making process. The problem, however, is that any listener that is not watching the clock while listening to Cage’s composition will probably have a hard time recognizing when the Cage piece ends and the Stockhausen piece begins! Behrman, on the other hand, ordered the selections on his album in such a way that one could detect significant qualitative changes in progressing from one piece to another.

Is this a matter of picking insignificant nits? Personally, I do not think so. I believe that every composer has a right to have his music recognized as such, even if the indeterminacy of that music is a significant element in the behavior of listening. Thus, while the performer may have to contend with watching both clock and notation at the same time, the listener should only have to focus on listening. In other words, while I can appreciate A Hard Rain as a valuable catalogue of compositions from the middle of the last century, I feel that the production has overlooked the fact that the listener also has a “point of view,” which tends to be even more important when indeterminacy is involved.

The good news for Schick is that the prevailing “digital mindset” is no longer constrained to honor the “program” defined by a recording. One can listen to any track in isolation as easily as one can shuffle the ordering of all of the tracks. (When the tracks are digital, one no longer has to worry about whether or not they are on the same CD!) Were Cage still alive, I suspect that he would relish the ways in which one may take a more creative approach to the act of listening. (On the other hand, I am not sure that either Stockhausen or Feldman would agree with him on this matter!)

Nevertheless, perhaps because my values seem to become more old-fashioned as I get older, the Neuhaus album still appeals to me more than the Schick album does. However, that is just my state of mind in the immediate present. If I spend more time listening to A Hard Rain, who knows where or how my tastes will shift!

Tom Djll to Revive Cage’s “Indeterminacy”

When John Cage visited Europe in 1958, one of his activities involved what could be called a “lecture-performance,” which was originally entitled “Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music.” The original performance involved 30 short stories, each of which could be read in its entirety over the course of one minute. As might be guessed, this meant that Cage read each story at a different pace. By the time Cage decided to perform “Indeterminacy” a second time, the number of stories had increased to 90.

That second version was recorded for release by Folkways in 1959. The order in which the stories were recited was determined by chance, as was the pause between a story and its successor. At the same time that Cage was reciting his stories, pianist David Tudor was performing sections from Cage’s “Concert for Piano and Orchestra.” These sources were mixed together with a pre-recorded tape that Cage had created for his “Fontana Mix.”

After this recording was released, Cage continued to collect and document stories. These would appear as “footnotes” in the publications of his writings. The stories returned to performance in 1965, where they served as “music accompaniment” to Merce Cunningham’s “How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run.” Each time this dance was on the program, Cage would use chance techniques to select the stories her would recite and the lengths of silence between them.

Poster design for the concert being described (courtesy of Tom Djll)

This month Tom Djll will give what may be called a “revival-in-spirit performance,” to which he has given the title “INTERMINACY.” The texts to be read are described as “Lost stories attributed to John Cage.” Djll recently published this collection of stories under the title SHADDAP. The recitation of these stories will include sonic accompaniment provided by Gino Robair and Tim Perkis, as well as Djll himself.

This program will be given two performances, the first in Berkeley and the second in San Francisco. The San Francisco performance will begin at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, December 15. The venue will be Adobe Books, located at 3130 24th Street in the Mission between South Van Ness Avenue and Folsom Street. Copies of SHADDAP will be on sale for $20. The performance of “INTERMINACY” will be preceded by a set taken by Alkimiya Transfer, the duo of Barbara Nerness and Stephanie Sherriff, both working with electronic gear. This is one of those venues where no one will be turned away for lack of funds. However, donations of $10 are suggested and will all go directly to the performing artists. Proof of vaccination will be required for admission, and masks must be worn at all time in the shop.

Trying to Keep Up with Mode Cage Releases

Morton Feldman and John Cage on the cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of Naxos of America)

A little over a week ago, Mode Records released the 54th volume in its Complete John Cage Edition series. The album is also the eleventh devoted to Cage’s compositions for piano. Amazon.com mistakenly interpreted the number on the album’s cover to be Roman, thus listing it as “Works for Piano 2;” but the actual second volume in this sub-collection was a performance of the Sonatas and Interludes suite of compositions for prepared piano, which was released in 1996.

Cage liked to tell a story of his visit to a psychoanalyst. After the preliminary session, the psychiatrist told Cage not to worry and that he would be composing again very soon. Cage replied, “Doctor, you don’t understand; I’m composing too much already!” Every time Mode comes out with a new Cage release, I recall that anecdote and have long given up on that label’s prodigious productivity. When it comes to having a “complete” collection of Cage’s music for piano (including prepared piano), I have long been content with the eighteen CDs that Steffen Schleiermacher recorded for MDG.

Nevertheless, there is one offering on this new Mode CD that deserves attention. Ironically, it has nothing to do with solo piano. Rather, it involves a chamber music arrangement that Morton Feldman made of Cage’s “Cheap Imitation.” For those unfamiliar with the story of how Cage came to compose this piece, James Pritchett provides the backstory in the liner notes:

Cage was to create a two-piano transcription of Erik Satie’s Socrate for a Merce Cunningham choreography, but he was unable to get permission from the publisher. Even worse, he could not even get performance rights to use the published piano-vocal score of Socrate. Cage’s creative solution was to make a piano piece that maintained the exact metrical and phrase structure of Socrate, but with different notes to avoid copyright issues. He called this piece Cheap Imitation. Cunningham responded by calling his dance Second Hand.

I happened to be covering the January 1970 season of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, keeping a day-by-day diary for Ballet Review. (That article was subsequently anthologized by Richard Kostelanetz in his 1992 book Merce Cunningham: Dancing in Space and Time.)

I was there for the world premiere performance of “Second Hand.” That was a time when Cage was wrestling with serious arthritis. Pritchett’s account fails to mention that Cage deliberately prepared his “substitute” in such a way that he would be able to perform it himself.

In the half-century that followed, “Cheap Imitation” may well have become Cage’s most recognizable composition. For one thing it is music that actually has themes, which makes it a rather rare entry in the Cage catalog. In addition it is music that can be played by anyone with modest keyboard skills (and I have to say that I have taken a lot of personal satisfaction out of being able to play the piece with pretty much no difficulties). In that context I would say that, from the listener’s point of view, there is little to differentiate Takahashi’s performance from the one that Schleiermacher recorded.

However, the new Mode release also includes an “alternative” approach to playing “Cheap Imitation.” The Feldman chamber music version was arranged as a present that he gave to Takahashi. This was when Feldman was on the faculty at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and he had invited Takahashi to serve there as artist-in-residence. Feldman presented his alternative instrumentation as a gift to Takahashi when she departed at the conclusion of her tenure.

In other words “Cheap Imitation” has provided a context for a rather rich collection of personal stories. Indeed, there may well be more stories about this piece than there are about Cage’s 4’33” composition. That aspect of the composition may not have figured very much in the notes accompanying the new recording. For that matter, in an age in which history does not seem to signify very much for very many any more, the idea of a piece of music with a rich personal history may not leave much of an impression. Nevertheless, this is an album likely to trigger memories for at least a few of us; and, as one of those “involved parties,” I appreciate having added it to my collection.

BAMPFA Streams Three Post:ballet Films

Last night the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) presented a livestream programmed by Sean Carson presenting performances by Robert Dekkers’ Post:ballet. The program was originally planned to present two new works (only one of which was described on the BAMPFA event page); but a work-in-progress excerpt was added between those two selections. All three of these pieces were realized as films. Carson also moderated a discussion with Dekkers, who choreographed the first selection, and Vanessa Thiessen, the creator of the other two, addressing viewer questions submitted as YouTube comments.

That opening selection was “Eight Whiskus,” taking its name from the solo violin composition by John Cage to which the choreography was set. This was a solo dance by Emily Hansel, which she choreographed jointly with Dekkers. The music was performed by Helen Kim, Associate Principal Second Violin with the San Francisco Symphony. Hansel was filmed performing in the AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park, and the footage was edited by Reneff-Olson Productions. Since Kim was not seen in the film playing while Hansel was dancing, Reneff-Olson presumably also aligned a recording of Kim to fit the “final cut.”

It would probably be fair to say that Hansel was not dancing “to” Kim’s performance, just as Merce Cunningham usually did not dance “to” Cage’s music. Indeed, since Cunningham and his dancers were rarely aware of what their musicians were doing, it may well be that Hansel was filmed in silence. Clearly, the choreography had much more do to with the diverse variety of geometric shapes formed by the trees and their branches in Golden Gate Park than it did with the music. Hansel’s dancing involved highly imaginative techniques through which her body reflected those geometric structures, making the video a vivid viewing experience. The raw sonorities of the violin, rich in upper harmonics through bowing very close to the bridge, provided just the right “auditory context” for Hansel’s geometric explorations.

Emily Hansel, Andy Meyerson, Babatunji Johnson, and Moscelyne ParkeHarrison performing Vanessa Thiessen’s “Surface Down” (screen shot from the YouTube video being discussed)

This was followed by “Surface Down,” part of an extended dance interpretation of the Orpheus myth entitled Lyra. The performance was filmed on a railroad track leading into a tunnel, presumably the path leading to the Underworld. Music was provided by percussionist Andy Meyerson, positioned right at the mouth of that tunnel; and the choreography appeared to be a reflection on Eurydice being taken from Orpheus, escorted to the Underworld by Atropos. Meyerson thus seemed to serve as a “gatekeeper,” an impression reinforced by electronic sounds accompanying his work on vibraphone and drums. The music he performed was composed by Samuel Adams.

The program then concluded with Thiessen’s “La Folia,” a duet danced by Kody Jauron and Colleen Loverde. The dance was named after Danny Clay’s composition, which he composed for the MUSA Baroque Ensemble. Clay, in turn, took the title from one of the oldest harmonic progressions in the history of Western music, providing his own embellished thematic material for that progression.

The choreography was filmed along the Columbus River in Oregon. Much of it involved engagement with both the river and the land along its banks as a basis for Thiessen’s choreography, somewhat in the same spirit in which the geometry of the trees provided the basis for the choreography of “Eight Whiskus.” The film was created by Stephen Kimbrell and emerged as the richest visual feast of the program. What was important, however, was that all of that rich visual background never distracted from the prodigious inventions of Thiessen’s choreography.

As of this writing, the entire program has now been uploaded to YouTube.

Post:ballet to Begin Year with Two New Works

About two weeks ago the Berkeley Ballet Theater and its Artistic Director Robert Dekkers presented Available Light, a livestream program of four new short films involving the collaboration of original dance, music, and film. Dekkers is also Artistic Director of Post:ballet, which provided guest artists for Available Light. One week from today Post:ballet will ring in the New Year with two world premieres. The program will be presented in collaboration with the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) as the first event in BAMPFA’s 2021 Digital Season. As was the case in Available Light, the choreography will be extended with film. Program specifics are as follows:

1. “La Folia” is choreographed by Vanessa Thiessen. The work is a duet that will be danced by Kody Jauron and Colleen Loverde. The title may be familiar, since it is the name of a Spanish harmonic progression that is now recognized as one of the earliest themes in the history of Western music. Composers have been inventing and publishing variations on this theme since the middle of the seventeenth century, but the music for this performance was composed by Danny Clay for the MUSA Baroque Ensemble, which gave the debut performance on May 31, 2014, marking an innovative approach to presenting new music with historical instruments. MUSA will provide the music for Thiessen’s choreography. Four of the performers had given the first performance of Clay’s piece: violist Addi Liu, Gretchen Claassen on gamba, cellist Laura Gaynon, and harpsichordist Derek Tam. On this new film they are joined by violinists Emily Kriner and Sarah Douglass. The film was created by Stephen Kimbrell, working with footage filmed along the Columbia River in Oregon.
2. A totally different experience will be provided by “Eight Whiskus,” choreographed jointly by Dekkers and Emily Hansel. Once again the dance is named after a piece of music. John Cage composed the piece in 1984 as a solo for low voice, but he then reworked the score for solo violin the following year. That is the version that Dekkers and Hansel used; and the violinist will be Helen Kim, Associate Principal Second Violin with the San Francisco Symphony. The choreography is also a solo, and it will be danced by Hansel. Her performance was filmed at the AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park by Reneff-Olson Productions.

Emily Hansel performing “Eight Whiskus” (from the film by Reneff-Olson Productions)

These premiere offerings will be live-streamed beginning at 7 p.m. on Thursday, January 7. BAMPFA will provide the streaming. The site for the video has not yet been finalized, but it will be uploaded to the YouTube Web site for BAMPFA. The performances will be followed by a brief, moderated Q&A with the participating artists.

Reflecting on Some Words of John Cage

Earlier this year, when it was still possible to wander around San Francisco without worrying about others or even having any particular goal in mind, my wife and I made one of our visits to the City Lights Bookstore. I always enter that place thinking that I am not going to do anything other than browse, but I always seem to leave with a new acquisition. On this particular occasion I finally succumbed to purchasing The Selected Letters of John Cage, which my wife had been persuading me to buy simply because my name was in the index.

Since then I have been taking my time in progressing through the book. However, COVID-19 has allowed me to spend more time on it, simply because I feel it necessary to focus on doing productive things. More recently, I have been following the dates of the letters more closely to see which of them address circumstances I knew or had involved my (usually modest) contribution. One of my favorites had to do with Cage complaining about how hard it had been, when he was at the University of Illinois, to have a computer program that would implement his coin-tossing procedure for consulting the I Ching. To hear him tell the story, it took months before the program had been "debugged" enough to be useful.

I was there to hear that story. When the Merce Cunningham Dance Company was visiting Boston on one of their tours, I arranged for both Cage and Gordon Mumma to give a seminar in the Technology Square building that housed the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. When Cage gave his punch line about the amount to time it took to get a working program, one of my colleagues left the lecture hall and went upstairs to the room that housed our PDP-6 computer. By the time the talk had concluded, my friend had created the program and gave Cage a page of its output!

Today I encountered a letter written many years after that incident. It included a sentence that probably would have rolled through my mind at the time:

Music has to do with mind, opening it again and again + more and more.

Back in 1979, when the letter was written, I would have simply filed it away as the usual injunction that we should be as open to electronic synthesis, chance techniques, and microtonality as we usually are to composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Johann Sebastian Bach. These days, however, I realize that the scope of this injunction extends far beyond the immediate present.

In 1979 I tended to revel in my dislikes as much as I waxed enthusiastically over my likes. For example, as a result of my fanatical interest in the music of Gustav Mahler, I found it easy to dismiss Anton Bruckner with my personal motto that "Bruckner tried where Mahler succeeded." Similarly, I had little regard for any opera written after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and before Alban Berg.

Back when I was writing about dance performances, my mentor emphasized that my first goal should be to provide an objective account of the experiences. If there were any "column inches" remaining for my article, only then could I take the liberty to express my opinion. When I first began to shift my attention to writing about the performance of music on this site, those words returned to me. I realized that I had an obligation to provide description, even if I was writing about compositions that I had disliked or simply chosen to ignore on grounds of insignificance.

I take this as a turning point in how I approached the task of listening itself. I realized that the very task of listening to a new performance, even one of music that I felt had been performed to death, was a matter of opening the mind. These days I do not have to worry about whether or not I have enough "column inches" to voice my own opinions. However, that obligation to describe has done more than I can imagine to the ways in which I have refined my listening practices. My guess is that Cage could have cared less if that process of opening provided me with a new way to approach on old Beethoven favorite; but, as is always the case, the principle is more important than the substance that has been selected for both description and subsequent exercises of judgment!