John Cage recordings

[moesgaard]

Always loved "Prelude to mediation" on Hat, one of the first Cage records i bought.
I only know the cartridge Music with Tudor, Kosugi and Pugliese on Mode, but i really love it. Is the RZ better?
Other faves of mine: All the number pieces on Hat Hut, the 58 with winds is great, and the Two4/two6/five2/five5/seven/seven2 by the Ives ensemble is amazing.
Finally, i should mention the One5 by Louis goldstein (coupled with Feldman's triadic memories), lovely

[Stephen]

I only know the cartridge Music with Tudor, Kosugi and Pugliese on Mode, but i really love it. Is the RZ better?

I've got that one as well. Cartridge Music and Kagel's Acustica are the only pieces that I have ever done comparative listens of. Not so long ago I stretched out on the sofa, turned the lights off and listened to three recordings of Cartridge Music back to back (I have since bought the Wandelweiser), my impression then was that the Bertoncini was my favourite, though it doesn't half feel like I'm sticking my neck out considering the personnel on the others.

Other faves of mine: All the number pieces on Hat Hut, the 58 with winds is great, and the Two4/two6/five2/five5/seven/seven2 by the Ives ensemble is amazing.

If anyone knows where I can get a copy of the latter, please tell me.

[free math]

not exactly music, but I enjoy Cage performing Empty Words (parte III)

maybe in the same vein: Mureau

i really like Frances-Marie Uitti's reading of the Lecture on Nothing too.

[rostasi]

Huge collection of Cage, but my favorite is the one that hasn't been released:
the complete Empty Words done with music by Amacher.
I have it on a set of tapes and would love to see it released officially on discs.

[cdeupree]

There was a Wergo release last year by Stefano Scodanibbo that included the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, Freeman Etudes 1-5 (transcribed for bass), Dream, Ryoanji and Radio Music, the best recording of the Concert I've got. However, the Mode release of the Piano Concertos is also very nice, but the killer there is Fourteen, Cage's piece for bowed piano and ensemble. Finally, Ulrich Kreiger's version of Four5 on the original Walls of Sound disc was a revelation, the first time I'd heard any of the number pieces and still one of the most powerful.

[bedouin]

also, let's not forget the reading of Four6 / Decentred on Another Timbre. 30 minutes of single note textures overlaid by various percussive taps, bells, sax, electronics. Brilliant! (as is the rest of the album BTW)

Philip Clark, in the new issue of The Wire, has high praise for the new Cage/Jennings disc on Another Timbre...

interested to hear more about this Jennings guy. Is anyone aware of any recordings?

[snailed]

interested to hear more about this Jennings guy. Is anyone aware of any recordings?

He's pretty notoriously under-recorded, grouped in with the other composers associated with La Monte Young / MELA Foundation that haven't had much if anything released (Richard Maxfield, etc). Jennings has a collaborative track on a recent Charlemagne Palestine album (Sharing a Sonority - Alga Marghen, 2008), but it's nothing to go out of your way for, IMO - seems like a forgotten tape that was released just due to the fact that Jennings has had so little released. Besides that and the new AT release, that's all I'm aware of. Oh - and here, on UbuWeb: http://www.ubu.com/sound/moorman.html

Anyone know of anything else?

[Dan Warburton]

There are a few bootlegs.. but that's why this new Tilbury disc, which I'm really looking forward to, is so important.
Meanwhile, on Jennings, there's this (from http://melafoundation.org/tj01.htm ):

Terry Jennings was born in Eagle Rock, California on July 19, 1940. Showing an early interest in music, he began playing the piano at the age of four, was taught by both of his parents, and by the age of 12 was studying John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano. In junior high school Jennings was a featured clarinet soloist with the orchestra. He also made arrangements of Stravinsky piano pieces so that the orchestra would have music to play that he liked. He attended John Marshall High School in Los Angeles, the alma mater of composer La Monte Young, whom Jennings met in 1953. Jennings played and studied with Young and was greatly influenced by him. In 1954, at the age of 14, Jennings entered the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and Art where he studied saxophone with William Green. It was in 1957 that he met Dennis Johnson, another composer who was not just an influence on him, but also a great appreciator of his music. In addition to his study of composition with La Monte Young, he also studied with Robert Erickson at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Leonard Stein at the California Institute of the Arts.

Jennings' first serious works were composed in 1958 with his style of composition eventually developing in the direction of modal improvisations, through which his saxophone playing prompted comparison with the great Indian shahnai player Bismillah Khan, and the American jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. Jennings first came to musical prominence in the late 1950s when he began to compose in the style of Young's influential early works involving sustained tones and expanded time concepts. He was introduced to the New York avant garde in 1960, when Young opened his series of concerts at Yoko Ono's loft with two programs of Jennings' music. Jennings was a part of many important new music concerts of the 1960's, both as a composer and a performer, premiering, among others, Richard Maxfield's Wind for tape and saxophone composed as a portrait of Jennings. He worked with the James Waring Dance Company (1962) and performed and recorded with Young's Theatre of Eternal Music. Jennings' Piano Piece (June 1960) and String Quartet (1960) were published in An Anthology (edited by Young in 1963), which led to their performance in England by Cornelius Cardew, John Tilbury and others. Jennings also wrote a collection of very beautiful poems which have remained almost completely unknown outside a small circle of his closest friends. Jennings' music has been performed throughout the United States and Europe, including concerts in New York, Ann Arbor, Seattle, Boston and Los Angeles. Terry Jennings died in San Pablo, California on December 11, 1981.

The New Grove Dictionary of American Music states: "With Young and Terry Riley, Jennings was involved in the earliest developments of drone-inspired, modal, repetitive music. He is best known for two piano works of 1965, Winter Trees and Winter Sun, both of which exemplify the repetitive, nonvirtuoso keyboard style he was among the first to employ; sets of phrases are played quietly in a specified order but repeated at will, in relatively free rhythm, and with liberal use of the sustaining pedal, creating a meditative mood and an understated lyricism. Jennings had a decisive influence on such composers as Harold Budd, Peter Garland, and Howard Skempton, who in the early 1970s created a body of so- called 'minimalist' keyboard music and were among the few musicians to perform his works. In later years Jennings composed works in a neoromantic style, including the song cycle The Seasons (1975)."

[Herb Levy]

interested to hear more about this Jennings guy. Is anyone aware of any recordings?

He's pretty notoriously under-recorded, grouped in with the other composers associated with La Monte Young / MELA Foundation that haven't had much if anything released (Richard Maxfield, etc). Jennings has a collaborative track on a recent Charlemagne Palestine album (Sharing a Sonority - Alga Marghen, 2008), but it's nothing to go out of your way for, IMO - seems like a forgotten tape that was released just due to the fact that Jennings has had so little released. Besides that and the new AT release, that's all I'm aware of. Oh - and here, on UbuWeb: http://www.ubu.com/sound/moorman.html

Anyone know of anything else?

There was at least one other commercial recording of Jennings' music.

Saxophonist Jon Gibson made an album called "In Good Company" for Philip Glass's Point label in the early 1990s. In addition to pieces by Adams, Gibson, Glass, Reich & Riley, the CD includes a short recording (less than 5.5 minutes) of a 1962 composition by Jennings, "Terry's G Dorian Blues", with La Monte Young playing a keyboard accompaniment.

I don't think Glass's current label has re-issued the disc, but it shows up on various download sites from time to time.

[Dan Warburton]

Saxophonist Jon Gibson made an album called "In Good Company" for Philip Glass's Point label in the early 1990s. In addition to pieces by Adams, Gibson, Glass, Reich & Riley, the CD includes a short recording (less than 5.5 minutes) of a 1962 composition by Jennings, "Terry's G Dorian Blues", with La Monte Young playing a keyboard accompaniment.

Yes, good call Herb, but the piece is so short it's almost a throwaway. I believe Charles Curtis has recorded / is thinking of recording the piece for cello and saxophone, and will try to follow that lead up (I have scouts out hunting for a CC interview for PT, will keep you posted).
Incidentally, Wandelweiser should put the abovementioned piece out - it's recent Malfatti forty years ahead of its time. Amazing stuff.

[Stephen]

I recently picked up this one after seeing it recommended in the year end list at A Spiral Cage



Its a DVD audio, and about 2 hours of material here, which I am finding hard to digest without either pissing off my partner, or just having stuff to do which distracts my attention, but its gradually seeping in. The first piece is what sounds quite literally like sounding sculptures, whirring and changing away quite noisily, but threaded together with long stretches of (digital, i think) silence. Then there's three dense Number Pieces, much larger ensembles than any other number pieces I've heard so they become really dense with interweaving tones. it's making me wonder if any of the other OgreOgress Cage discs might be worth a snatch.

[billygomberg]

I have a great affinity for these recordings:

http://www.wergo.de/shop/en_UK/products/show,93686.html

slightly "curious" instrumentation - great performances and recording.

[cdeupree]

it's making me wonder if any of the other OgreOgress Cage discs might be worth a snatch.

I like the Three2/Twenty-Three/Six/Twenty-Six album, a nice alternation between longer works for strings and shorter works for percussion. The anonymous cello performance of One7 and One8 is a little dry.

[javier4w]

also, let's not forget the reading of Four6 / Decentred on Another Timbre. 30 minutes of single note textures overlaid by various percussive taps, bells, sax, electronics. Brilliant! (as is the rest of the album BTW)

Philip Clark, in the new issue of The Wire, has high praise for the new Cage/Jennings disc on Another Timbre...

interested to hear more about this Jennings guy. Is anyone aware of any recordings?

There's a beautiful take of Four6 by italian guitarist Elena Càsoli in her cd Changes Chances (Stradivarius 2007), together with compositions by Elliott Carter and Terry Riley. According to the liner notes, she plays half a dozen different guitars (some of them very old) and objects.

_________________

[milton.parker]

interested to hear more about this Jennings guy. Is anyone aware of any recordings?

He's pretty notoriously under-recorded, grouped in with the other composers associated with La Monte Young / MELA Foundation that haven't had much if anything released (Richard Maxfield, etc). Jennings has a collaborative track on a recent Charlemagne Palestine album (Sharing a Sonority - Alga Marghen, 2008), but it's nothing to go out of your way for, IMO - seems like a forgotten tape that was released just due to the fact that Jennings has had so little released. Besides that and the new AT release, that's all I'm aware of. Oh - and here, on UbuWeb: http://www.ubu.com/sound/moorman.html

Anyone know of anything else?

the one other one that's turned up is 'Terry's Cha-Cha' on John Cale's archival 'Stainless Gamelan'. that one and the Palestine track are fun, but it's all about the duet with Moorman on Ubuweb, mystifyingly beautiful three minutes, I always need to listen to that 2 or 3 times in a row. for now La Monte Young is sitting on the rest

I only have 10 minutes of the Amacher / Cage tapes, lo-fi, but it's beautiful and I hope it comes out someday

[yonhosago]

Didn't know were to post this, but it has some John Cage recordings in it.

Two friends and me set up and played a version of Variations IV (1963), a score containing very brief instructions to play music in special or open places, and some points and circles to use in a map of a selected place.

We play the music in the roof of a four-storey building, from 8 to 10 PM, last wednesday.

The complete details and some recorded excerpts at http://www.arsomnis.com/artesmusicales/variations-iv/

[Damon_Smith]

I like the excerpts I've heard from the James Tenney performances -- in many hands the emphasis is put entirely on the rhythmic aspect of the piece, but in his preparations he really manages to bring out the sympathies & harmonies hiding in the chords

I've not heard the Tilbury recording either, I must do so eventually....I got kind of overwhelmed after seeing James Tenney perform Sonatas and Interludes, at a really nice venue (a church). It remains one of the most memorable live music performances I've ever seen/heard. I don't think he was reading music, but I guess he knows the pieces well. His pacing was really organic and yes, he did manage to bring out the sympathies & harmonies hiding in the chords.

There's a couple of YouTube video's of Tenney playing it that are great (discounting the low quality You Tube of course). HatART is going to be reissuing the Tenney performance of this at some point (its on the list for this year)

I went to a lecture/demo of them by Tenney and saw him perform them in concert (one lung and pneumonia, fucking heroic!) a few days later. I don't know about how it stacks up as a definitive perfomance for the work, but both experiences stand out as some of the most passionate musical experiences I have ever had. He mentioned Hat bringing out a recording.
I feel lucky to have seen them. He knew that music inside and out - maybe better than Cage!
I like Markus Hinterhauser's version, as well as his other double cd of the rest of the prepared piano work.
His Feldman and Scelsi are nice, too.
There is so much great music by Cage.

[ReverendLove]

It's actually my favourite.

[simon reynell]

I love this one - the performance of Two5 especially. By some way the best recording of that piece imo.
I don't think it's still available as a cd (it came out on the Etcetera label), but you can get download it here: http://www.vo2ov.com/John-Cage-Music-fo ... 44485.html

[Notice Recordings]

I recently picked up this one after seeing it recommended in the year end list at A Spiral Cage



Its a DVD audio, and about 2 hours of material here, which I am finding hard to digest without either pissing off my partner, or just having stuff to do which distracts my attention, but its gradually seeping in. The first piece is what sounds quite literally like sounding sculptures, whirring and changing away quite noisily, but threaded together with long stretches of (digital, i think) silence. Then there's three dense Number Pieces, much larger ensembles than any other number pieces I've heard so they become really dense with interweaving tones. it's making me wonder if any of the other OgreOgress Cage discs might be worth a snatch.

Not sure if someone responded to this yet. But that description sounds really appealing. I love his Number Pieces. I think it's fascinating that he composed such music towards the end of his life and more easily coincide with MY life and how I perceive things. They are also more organic and textural, which is something that's important to me. Where did you get this disc ?

Regarding the OgreOgress discs. I have "Three2 • Twenty-Three • Six • Twenty-Six". I picked it up a while ago, and it was the first Cage disc I owned. (Up until then I just endlessly copied avant-garde classical CDs from local and university libraries, which is how I was introduced to this stuff.) It's a very, very special disc. IMO it's recorded and produced well. The design is impeccable. I always look for the others, but never find them. This one ( http://www.discogs.com/John-Cage-Violin/release/1088120 ) has a funny layout...

Anyway, I'll look for the DVD Audio disc.

Thanks

Evan of Notice Recordings