Three Quartets for Cage
In 2011-2012 I was asked by three different organizations to compose works commemorating Cage’s Centennial.
Five Seconds For Four Players and Three Pieces [score pdf] — was premiered by Third Coast Percussion along with 99 other works in honor of John Cage, as part of their RENGA project at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (8/31/2012). Though obviously a short work, it extends a thread in my series Aleph…Zain, of which many works take their sonic content by sampling the surrounding repertoire: some sounds echoing prior works, others anticipating works to be played later on the program. Thus the work is five seconds long only superficially; its formal ‘subject’—at least potentially a “reduced” (and more playful) example of Schoenberg’s most opaque aspirations for Gedanke—permeates the performance.
Piece for Four Strangers [score jpg] — at the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature, and Dance and the New School for Social Research’s “Moving Into the Out There: Indeterminacy & Improvisation in Performance & Environmental Practice” (New York, 3/23-3/27, 2012). The work was premiered at the opening event: “John Cage and the Art of Indeterminacy,” followed by a panel discussion.
New-York-based social practices artist and critic Gretchen Till discussed the event on her blog “Loose Ends.” The work was also performed in Northwestern University’s Composition Colloquium series (4/4/2012) and in Santa Cruz (see “Cage 950” below).
Marbles [score jpg] — at New Music Works’ “Cage 950” (Santa Cruz, 9/5/2012), a locative (and multi-location) performance in which I collaborated. I premiered this work (and “…Four Strangers”) with Max Nied, Fernanda Aoki Navarro, Bernardo Barros, and Matt Mitchell on the corner of Pacific Avenue and Lincoln St.
The work was also performed with Wolfgang Harland, Caleb Blondet-Fraser, and audience participants (mostly children) at UC Santa Cruz’s “Toy Concert,” directed by Ma’ayan Tsadka (5/25/2012).
Back to “Merit Review Materials, 2013”