John Cage: Ryoanji (Catalog Raisonné, Volume I)

John Cage: Ryoanji
Catalogue Raisonné of the Visual Artworks Vol. I
Edited by Corinna Thierolf
240 pages, 143 tritone plates
Schirmer Mosel/Verlag
ISBN 978-308296-0625-7
€ 98-, US$ 125-

Between 1983 and 1992, John Cage created some 170 pencil drawings, an intensive exploration of Japan's most famous Zen garden of the Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto.  Working on handmade Indian rag paper at a small light table built into his office desk, the Ryoanji drawings can be seen as the opus magnum of Cage's visual work, illustrating aesthetic and conceptual reflections relevant to his entire oeuvre.

In cooperation with Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, which owns an extensive selection of Ryoanji drawings, and the John Cage Trust, Schirmer/Mosel presents John Cage: Ryoanji, which for the first time presents the complete series of drawings, "Where R = Ryoanji."

Cage first visited the Ryoanji Temple and its early 16th-century rock garden in 1962, during a concert tour of Japan (Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Sapporo) with David Tudor, Toshi Ichiyanagi, and Yoko Ono.  Measuring 30 x 10 meters, the garden consists of carefully raked white pebbles with 15 rocks arranged seemingly at random.  Over a period of ten years, the last decade of his life, Cage devoted himself to drawings addressing the aesthetic order of the complex that is revered in Japan as a perfect depiction of nature.  As with all of his late artistic endeavors, Cage developed chance techniques for each compositional action in the making of these works -- for example, in choosing and positioning the stones that would be circled by the artist's pencil on the paper on in choosing which graphite density to use.

Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki & John Cage
©Yasuhiro Yoshioka

For this first volume of the catalogue raisonné of Cage's visual art, the book's editor, Corinna Thierolf, chief curator at Pinakothek der Moderne, has systematically compiled little known sources on the evolution and on the art-historical context of the Ryoanji drawings.

This book shows, in extraordinarily delicate reproductions, the immense breadth of the Ryoanji drawings, their notations ranging from isolated circular lines to seemingly chaotic and overlapping networks of strokes.  Provided with the proper sequence of all works in the series, the reader can for the first time fully experience the suspense and tension Cage so skillfully created between repetition and uniqueness, order and disorder, agitation and tranquility.  One of Cage's artistic goals was to obtain maximum insight with minimum means -- an achievement impressively attested to in this beautiful edition.

Laura Kuhn

Afterglow

©Rob Shepperson

It's been just over six months since the unofficial close of Cage's Centennial Year, and we're in both afterglow and the trenches here at the John Cage Trust.  Afterglow because so many gratifying things happened over the course of the year,  the trenches because we're still digging ourselves out from under the debris left by so many demands on our resources and time.

I can't write about all of the events that took place, but I'd like to at least touch upon the events created and produced by the John Cage Trust.  One of these events, John Cage's Empty Words at Bard College, has given birth to a new home page for our website!  

John Cage's Empty Words (Bard College, Spiegeltent, June 30/July 1, 2012)

This was a very special (some might say spectacularly weird) overnight event here at Bard College during which 50-odd people gathered together with pajamas and air mattresses in hand to collectively experience a rare, complete recorded reading by Cage himself (Mills College, Oakland, California, 1978).  This event followed Cage's guidelines for any live performance: that Part I begin precisely at a time in the evening that would lead to Part IV commencing precisely at dawn the following day, and that specific macrobiotic foods be served at scheduled intervals throughout the night.  We also showed a perpetual slideshow of 117 images drawn from Henry David Thoreau's Journals, miniatures made grand for the scale of the projection screens.  We followed everything to the letter, and while virtually everyone stayed, very few stayed awake, the venerable George Quasha a notable exception:

  
Because of the limitations of space in Bard's Spiegeltent -- which could accommodate no more than 50 (horizontal) participants -- we enlisted the Hudson Valley's own WGXC 90.7 FM to provide live broadcast via the Internet, which was heard around the world. Here's the radio station team (Galen Joseph-Hunter on the far left, Tom Roe on the far right, in headphones), early on, still vertical:

©Ralph Benko

Just for fun, we added dusk and dawn music, generously provided by Josh Quillen of So Percussion, Bard's resident percussion ensemble:

Empty Words is a marathon text, lasting some 10 hours, drawn from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau.  It is one of Cage's most challenging compositions involving spoken text.  As he described it:

I let it be known to my friends, and even strangers, as I was wandering around the country, that what was interesting me was making English less understandable.  Because when it’s understandable, well, people control one another, and poetry disappears – and as I was talking with my friend Norman O. Brown, he said, “Syntax [which is what makes things understandable] is the army, is the arrangement of the army.

So what we’re doing when we make language un-understandable is we’re demilitarizing it, so that we can do our living.

It’s a transition from language to music certainly.  It’s bewildering at first, but it’s extremely pleasurable as time goes on.  And that’s what I’m up to.  “Empty Words” begins by omitting sentences, has only phrases, words, syllables, and letters.  The second part omits the phrases, has only words, syllables, and letters.  The third part omits the words, has only syllables and letters.  And the last part has nothing but letters and sounds.  
(John Cage, August 8, 1974)

Cage performed Part III frequently throughout the late 1970s and well into the 1980s -- his reading in Milan's Teatro Lirico on Dec. 2, 1977 has entered history, morphing as it did from concert to happening to near riot.   Cage described it as

An incredible happening, in which the spectators became the real protagonists who introduced, after being enticed by my musical stimuli, the violence and contradictions of the reality surrounding us.

Note in the image at the left several spectators joining Cage onstage, one going so far as to remove his reading glasses. 

Photo © Maurizio Buscarino


Empty Words takes front and center stage on the new homepage of the John Cage Trust's website, where we've created a virtual radio station hosting Cage's full-length reading, which you can dip into 24 hours a day.  We've also linked to Stefano Pocci's website devoted to Cage in Italy, www.johncage.it, and specifically to his blog, "Empty Words at Teatro Lirico (Milan, 1977)".  

Cage's Satie: Composition for Museum (Musee d'art contemporain de Lyon, September 28-December 30, 2012)

As guest curator for MAC Lyon, and given remarkably free reign, I conceived of a multi-sensory exhibition that would celebrate Cage's enduring love of the French composer Erik Satie. What better way to celebrate Cage's birth than to continue his deconstructive bent with regard to museums -- to forego the usual emphasis on precious artifacts in favor of manipulated manuscripts and sounded compositions?  Twelve works were showcased on the first floor -- Cheap Imitation (1969), Chorals (1978), Etcetera (1973), Extended Lullaby (1992/1994), Four3 (1991), Furniture Music Etcetera (1980), Socrate (1944), Sports: Perpetual Tango (1984) and Swinging (1989), Song Books (Solos for Voice-3-92) (1970), Sonnekus2 (1985), Two6 (1992), and Letter[s] to Erik Satie (1978) -- all made to commingle in an ever-changing audio mix by the ingenious French physicist, Gilles Reigner.

The exhibition continued on the second floor with a new interactive installation by Mikel Rouse based on Cage's unfinished sound score for his 1982 radio play, James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet, 

©Emily Martin

as well as a technologically adventurous showing of Cage's rarely-seen, late-life collaborative merger of poetry, performance, visual art, sculpture, and music, The First Meeting of the Satie Society (seen above), left not quite complete at the time of his death in 1992.  Also on view was Cage's own "Satie Memorabilia Collection", a rare archival treasure trove held at the John Cage Trust consisting of pamphlets, programs, original drawings and cartoons, buttons, first editions, photographs, and scores.  

Here's a short video produced by MAC Lyon, a virtual tour of all four aspects of the exhibition:

If the sounds intrigue you, get ahold of a copy of the exhibition catalog, as it includes an audio CD composed by Mikel Rouse that simulates a walk through the museum. Designed by Naomi Yang, the catalog also contains essays by yours truly and Thierry Raspail, the spirited director of MAC Lyon, as well as dozens of stellar reproductions of rare photographs, memorabilia, and manuscripts, many of which were included in the exhibition.

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Our work continues in 2013.  The highlight so far this year was hands down the New World Symphony's Making the Right Choices: A John Cage Centennial Celebration (New World Center, Miami Beach, February 8-10, 2013), perhaps the best Cage Festival I've ever attended.  Curated by NWS Artistic Director Michael Tilson Thomas and spanning three days and nights, it took full advantage of the spectacular staging, lighting, and projection possibilities in the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center.  Highlights included the NWS's performance of Cage's Cheap Imitation, the full orchestral version, sans conductor (a revelation unto itself!), enlivened by live performance by two former Cunningham dancers, Brandon Cowles and Andrea Webber (as well as a ghostly apparition of Cunningham himself), performing materials from Second Hand:  

And MTT joining with Jessye Norman for a truly unforgettable performance of Cage's The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs:

They reprised the spectacular theatrical production of Cage's Song Books that was seen/heard at Carnegie Hall in March 2012 with Meredith Monk, Jessye Norman, and Joan La Barbara, and also hosted a new video installation by Mikel Rouse, NWS: 4'33", which simultaneously and randomly presented recorded performances of Cage's iconic work contributed via YouTube by individuals from around the world.  NWS: 4'33" kicked off the festival on Thursday, Feb. 7, 2013, with an introductory talk by Kyle Gann.  

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For those of you planning to be in Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival this summer, you'll want to catch the premiere performances of Victoria Miguel's Laquearia* at Summerhall, running Aug. 2-9, 2013.   Miguel describes Laquearia (which began life as Chessmates, an M.A. in Liberal Arts thesis undertaken at The New School in 2003), as a conversation between Samuel Beckett and John Cage over the game of chess described in Beckett's novel Murphy, providing the structure for the first performances of a new digital version of Cage's Reunion (commissioned for this production by the John Cage Trust).  In effect, it asks and answers the narrator's question: might the game from Murphy be used as the structure for a performance of Reunion?  

©Shigeko Kubota (Toronto, 1968)

Both Beckett and Cage made frequent reference to chess in their work.  In 1968, Cage used a chess game as the structure for Reunion, an event without a score, originally performed on an electrified chessboard created by Lowell Cross.  The game works as a sublimely indeterminate structure: as a game of chess is played, the moves of the players activate four compositions and distribute them to eight speakers surrounding the audience.  At the premiere of Reunion (Toronto, March 5, 1968), Cage played against Marcel and Teeny Duchamp, activating live compositions by Gordon Mumma, Lowell Cross, David Behrman, and David Tudor.  

Here's an audio snippet drawn from that event, recorded by Behrman and included in its entirety on a small 33 1/3 stereo LP recording accompanying a now-coveted publication compiled (and with original photographs) by Shigeko Kubota, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage (Takeyoshi Miyazawa, 1968):



                                                     

Laquearia incorporates Reunion by combining the live sounds generated by the moving of chess pieces as the Murphy game is played on stage, with live feed of the compositions activated by the same game being played via the online version of Reunion, to be hosted by www.johncage.org.  

©Lowell Cross

The online version of Reunion is the work of  Dr. Christopher Jefferson and Dr. Ian Miguel of the University of St. Andrews' School of Computer Science.  It means to faithfully recreate the original indeterminate structure devised by Cage and Cross, while making necessary accommodations for its use of recorded music.  Jacob Carpenter Morris, Lynn Wright, and Marc Thorman have been commissioned to compose new works for the online iteration of Reunion, which will also incorporate Cage's Chess Pieces (1943), thus uniting this new version with the old.

*Miguel's title comes from T.S. Eliot's "A Game of Chess" section of The Wasteland in which the characters are said to have "flung their smoke into the laquearia."  Lacquearia [pronounced lak-we-a'ri-a) means paneled ceiling, but it also refers to a genus of fungi.

Laura Kuhn

John Cage & the New World Symphony!

Dear all,

4'33" is Cage's most famous and still controversial work.  Composed in 1952 for any instrument (or any combination of instruments), the three-movement score instructs the player NOT to play a sound for the duration of the piece.  The first movement lasts 30'; the second 2'23", and the third 1'40".  The work, commonly referred to as "four thirty-three," consists of only the sounds of the performance environment.

From February 8-10, the New World Symphony will host a spectacular three-day festival dedicated to the music and ideas of John Cage, entitled Making the Right Choices: A John Cage Centennial Celebration.  You are invited to attend, and to add your creative genius to the event!

In addition to three evenings of concerts, NWS will host a video installation entitled NWS: 4'33", created by artist Mikel Rouse, which will consist of contributed video performances.  Record and submit your video, then visit the installation during the festival to see your work in the SunTrust Pavilion.  The selected videos will also be used in an online archive of the event, so your recorded contribution may become part of a lasting tribute to this defining and seminal artist.

Here's how to make and submit your contribution, which must be received by February 1, 2013:

*Create a video recording of your performance.  Adhere to Cage's original timings for each of the work's three movements -- 30", 2'23", and 1'40" -- keeping your performance as close to 4'33" as possible.  Please don't incorporate any sort of verbal introduction (it's not needed here!).

*Upload your video to YouTube.  Many of you will already have your own YouTube Channel, but, if not, here's a link to simple instructions:

How to Upload to YouTube

*Once your video is live on YouTube, go to the NWS: 4'33" YouTube site and click on the "Subscribe" button.  Your video will be screened and added to our Playlist.

*You're done!  Congratulations!

For those of you unfamiliar with (or skittish about) YouTube who would prefer to submit your video in another manner, please contact NWS433@gmail.com.

Notice: The submission of your video recording constitutes your legal permission to use it, without limitation, public recognition, or financial compensation, if, in fact, it is selected for us in the NWS: 4'33" video installation.  The NWS 4'33" video installation will be presented during the New World Symphony's upcoming festival and as part of an online presentation of the festival that will be developed for future viewing.

Laura Kuhn

Worth Repeating

SELFRIDGE'S NO-NOISE NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION: SILENT, LOGO-FREE SHOPPING
Posted by Andrew Chan on January 2, 2013

Here's a retail concept that "No Logo" champion Naomi Klein might approve of — maybe. Britain's fabled Selfridges department store is ushering in the new year with a vow of silence. The "Best Department Store in the World" (according to last year's Global Department Store Summit in Paris) is rolling out a "No-Noise" concept to its flagship stores including London starting January 7th and running through the end of February. As part of the promotion, they're even convincing brands to strip their logos in an attempt to reduce visual noise for shoppers. Some of the "de-branded" items on offer include Levi's 501 jeans and the pricey Crème De La Mer face cream line.

According to Selfridges' blog post, "Some of the world’s most recognisable brands have taken the admirable step of removing their logos in our exclusive collection of de-branded products, available in the Quiet Shop." And it's not just about logo-free shopping (or shhopping, as the case may be), as there will be art and meditation, along with food and music, to clear the mind.

The iconic retailer's blog post continues: "We’re reintroducing our Silence Room – an idea first dreamed up in 1909 by Harry Gordon Selfridge" and curating "the best of minimalist design and teamed up with (mod meditation purveyor) Headspace and (returning lit wits) The Idler (hosting "Idle Sundays" throughout the event) to help you find balance in this fast-paced world."

To make sure these minimalist spaces serve as tranquil zones, customers will be asked to leave their cell phones and other digital disruptors at the door, along with their shoes. In return, Selfridges will offer "in-store meditation sessions and pods to deliver mindful messages and meditation practices." For added inspiration, "we will also be showcasing specially commissioned art installations in our windows and staging performances to nurture the imagination, including a performance of John Cage's 4'33" (silent composition)," which will take place on February 23rd.

According to Selfridges creative director Alannah Weston, the silent shopping space "invites customers to find a moment of peace in a world where we are bombarded by a cacophony of information and stimulation." And there will be food for thought, too, as the store is introducing No-Noise "special menus in restaurants (and) mini nutrition clinics, serving fresh juices and sampling organic and biodynamic wines. Don't forget to visit the WAGfree Pop-up bakery, which specialises in delicious wheat and gluten-free goodies."

Follow on Twitter at #nonoise — as you ponder (along with writer William Gibson) whether shoppers will pay a "premium for de-branded designer goods."

As for what Mr. Selfridge himself might think of all this, British TV viewers will get a chance to ponder that starting on Sunday, when ITV debuts its new original series about the department store's founder, starring American actor Jeremy Piven as Harry Gordon Selfridge.

Laura Kuhn

John Cage's Song Books

The first-ever complete recording of all of the Solos for Voices contained in John Cage's Song Books (1970) is now available, thanks to the incredible work of three individuals: Lore Lixenberg and Gregory Rose, vocalists, and Robert Worby, electronics.

Song Books is a collection of 90 Solos for Voice that Cage composed in 1970.  As a theme, he took a line from his diary: 'We connect Satie with Thoreau': Erik Satie being the iconoclastic French composer whom Cage greatly admired, and Henry David Thoreau being the American transcendentalist who lived alone in the woods on Walden Pond and wrote extensively about nature and his peculiarly American form of anarchy.

Any number of the Solos may be performed by any number of people, in any order, selected by chance if you like.  Songs and theatre and electronics mash up Fluxus-like food events, amplified board games, electroacoustic voices, 'animal heads', and intense feedback.  As Cage himself said of the work:

"...to consider the Song Books as a work of art is nearly impossible.  Who would dare?  It resembles a brothel, doesn't it?"

This beautiful 2CD digipack from Sub Rosa comes with a 24-page booklet that includes photos, excerpts from scores, and exclusive texts.  Fabulous, fabulous work, and a long overdue addition to John Cage recordings!


Laura Kuhn

1992 WBAI John Cage Memorial Tribute

Five days after the death of John Cage, on Aug. 17, 1992, the NY-based composer, writer, and lecturer Raphael Mostel produced and hosted a two-hour tribute broadcast on NY's radio station, WBAI-FM.  

As Mr. Mostel describes it, only a few of the many, many friends and associates of John Cage could be invited:  

In the WBAI studio with me were artist William Anastasi (at the time co-artistic advisor to the Merce Cunningham Dance Company), composer Earle Brown, Don Gillespie (who worked with Cage for decades at C.F. Peters, Cage’s publisher), R.I.P. Hayman (composer and a founder of EAR Magazine), Mark Swed (a music critic who is probably more knowledgeable about Cage than almost anyone else alive), and Margaret Leng Tan (a pianist who worked with Cage intensively, especially on annotating his works for prepared piano).  Speaking by telephone sequentially (WBAI only had a single line) were: Christian Wolff, Pauline Oliveros, and David Tudor. The engineer and in-line producer for WBAI was Peter Schmideg, who was the regular host of the station’s weekly program "Soundscapes: Explorations in Radio Sound & Music."

To read Mr. Mostel's essay and hear the broadcast in their entirety, click here.  One of the things that didn't make it into his essay is how David Tudor reacted in the broadcast.  He was obviously overcome with emotion, especially with mention of Cage's relationship to Morton Feldman.  As Mostel later reflected, Tudor may at the time have been under the influence of alcohol or medication, or both, but he (Mostel) was (understandably) loathe to curtail his poignant reverie.

New Music Box is a multimedia publication from the American Music Center, part of New Music USA, dedicated to the music of American composers and improvisers and their champions.  It offers in-depth profiles, articles, and discussions, as well as up-to-the-minute industry news and commentary, a direct portal to its Internet radio station, Counterstream, and access to an online library of more than 57,000 works by more than 6,000 composers.  It is currently featuring a total of five pieces reflecting on John Cage, each falling under the heading of Cage = 100.  In addition to Mostel's contribution, which is titled Walking Along Paths the Outcome of Which I Didn't Know..., are Kurt Gottschalk's Cage and Zen, Perspectives from Two Recent Books (Kay Larson and Rob Haskins), Isaac Schankler's Tudor and the Performance Practice of Concert for Piano and Orchestra, Kevin James' Provenance and Process--100 Waltzes for John Cage, and Petr Kotik's As Influential as Wagner, as Interpretable as Mozart.  

John Cage Obituary on KFPA Radio, August 12, 1992, Charles Amirkhanian is also available in streaming audio format as part of the Other Minds Audio Archive.  

Photo: John Cage (Frankfurt am Main, 1987) ©Anatol Kotte

Laura Kuhn

The Big Day of the Big Week

Happy 100th Birthday, John Cage!

And do we need a celebration?   We cannot avoid it, since each thing in life is continuously just that.

                                                ~John Cage 

It's the big day in the big week in the really big year for John Cage.  I want to take a moment before diving head first into this week's festivities here in New York to thank everyone the world over for their participation in what is proving to be an extraordinary international celebration. I want to thank John Cage, too, for more things than I can count.  What has kept me at the helm of the John Cage Trust for nearly 20 years is my interest in seeing what he'll do next.  What he does next, of course, being very much what we are all doing now.  

The John Cage Trust also celebrates today the launch of its long-awaited fully-searchable, integrated database of works at www.johncage.org.  Thank you to Larry Larson, our Webster Extraordinaire, and his talented team at Larson Associates, Jack Freudenheim and Didier Garcia. Who never, ever give up. And to Andre Chaudron as well, whose prescient www.johncage.info served as our able starting point. 

We are also proud to announce the release of two other labors of love:

Jack Freudenheim's beautiful Prepared Piano App, with a dazzling user interface by Didier Garcia that makes use of Cage's original preparations.






and

The John Cage Trust's own Sonatas and Interludes 3LP Audiophile Box Set, the inspiration of Tony Creamer, a great friend to both John Cage and Merce Cunningham, which features the superb work of pianist, Nurit Tilles, engineer Andreas Meyer, design/production team of Naomi Yang and Donna Wingate, and artist Chad Kleitsch.  

I'm proud to be working with each and every one of you, near and far.  I really can't wait to see what we accomplish together in the next 100 years.

Photograph of John Cage ©Sophie Baker 

Laura Kuhn