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Ryoanji (1983-1985)
| composer |
John Cage (1912-1992) |
| performers |
Paul Taub, bamboo flute
Stuart Dempster, trombone
Matthew Kocmieroski, percussion
Jessika Kenney, voice |
| publisher |
C. F. Peters (ASCAP)http://www.edition-peters.com
|
| recording |
Live concert performance at Drums Along the Pacific festival, Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, Washington, March 28, 2009 |
| duration |
22:11 |
Matthew Kocmieroski:
"Ryoanji is named after the famous Zen garden in Kyoto, Japan, consisting of raked sand in which are set a number of rocks. Cage suggests that the percussion part may be thought of as the sand and the solos as the rocks. The percussion part consists of a series of pulses without any discernible pattern. The music for the solos appears as a series of shapes, which were created using actual rocks (which Cage was fond of collecting) as templates. The solos are performed within a given microtonal range and time frame; each has the possibility of up to three additional prerecorded parts played simultaneously. There are a number of simultaneous solos for various instruments and/or voice which may be used, or not, in any combination ... The solo for voice was written in Seattle in November of 1983 during one of Cage's residencies at Cornish College of the Arts. The other solos may also be related to Cornish."
John Cage (1912-1992), whose career spanned over 50 years, is arguably the most influential American composer of the 20th century. His influence extended well beyond the musical community into the worlds of dance, theater, visual art, and philosophy.
Born in Los Angeles, California, Cage attended Pomona College for two years, and in 1931 began compositional studies with pianist Richard Buhlig. He travelled to New York City to study with Henry Cowell at the New School for Social Research and later with Adolph Weiss. Cage then began work with Arnold Schoenberg, whom he followed to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1934. Schoenberg was an important influence on Cage, whose early pieces attempt to extend his teacher's twelve-tone systems.
In 1938 Cage moved to Seattle, Washington to work as a dance composer and accompanist at the Cornish School of the Arts. There he met choreographer and dancer Merce Cunningham, who would become a lifelong artistic colloborator. Cage's early innovations grew out of his work with dance: he focused on the use of time as the primary source of musical structure, created percussion works such as First Construction (in Metal) (1939) using all kinds of objects from tin cans and brake drums to Asian instruments, and worked with electronic devices including variable-speed turntables and frequency recordings as in Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939). The lack of percussion space for a particular dance performance led Cage to experiment with 'preparing' a piano, placing objects on the strings to create a variety of sounds and percussive effects.
Cage's percussion ensemble toured throughout the West Coast and collaborated with composer Lou Harrison's group in San Francisco. In 1941 Cage moved to Chicago, Illinois to teach at the Chicago School of Design; the following year he continued east to New York City, where his work with prepared piano and increasing interest in Indian music and philosophy resulted in the breakthrough Sonatas and Interludes (1946-1948) for prepared piano. For this work he received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation and National Academy of Arts and Letters.
After a year travelling in Europe, Cage returned to New York in 1949 and met composer Morton Feldman, with whom he shared an intense exchange of ideas and music for many years. Cage, Feldman, Earle Brown, and Christian Wolff later became known as the New York School of composers. During this creative period, silence began to play a significant role in Cage's music, an outgrowth of his growing interest in Zen Buddhism and Japanese culture. "Lecture on Nothing" (1950) was the first of many literary expressions of his developing musical philosophy, which Cage later described in an autobiographical statement:
"In the late forties I found out by experiment ... that silence is not acoustic. It is a change of mind, a turning around. I devoted my music to it. My work became an exploration of non-intention. To carry it out faithfully I have developed a complicated composing means using I Ching chance operations, making my responsibility that of asking questions instead of making choices."
Inspired by Feldman and the I Ching, an ancient Chinese coin-tossing oracle, Cage began to incorporate these 'chance operations' in his work, making room for "whatever sound comes along" (Cage). Notable compositions from this period include Music of Changes (1951) and the now-infamous silent work 4'33" (1952). Cage's use of chance grew to include what he called 'indeterminacy,' or ambiguous systems of notation which are realized differently with each performance. It is found in works such as the Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957-1958) and Variations II (1961).
By the early 1960's Cage had achieved an international reputation, in part due to the publishing of his seminal Silence: Lectures and Writings (1961). As a result his commissions, performances, and speaking engagements increased considerably. Among his significant later compositions are the multimedia orchestral work Renga (1975-1976), the radio play Roaratorio: an Irish circus on Finnegans wake (1979), and the five Europeras (1987-1991). Cage also became more active in other media including poetry, painting, printmaking, and film. The final phase of his musical output began with the composition Two (1987), in which fragments of music are strung together through overlapping periods of time, later referred to as 'number' or 'time bracket' pieces. Cage composed 43 such works in the last five years of his life.
related websites
http://www.johncage.info
Flutist Paul Taub has played an active role in the Seattle, Washington contemporary music scene for over three decades. As founding member and executive director of the Seattle Chamber Players, he has performed and recorded American and world premieres of music by John Cage, George Crumb, Sofia Gubaidulina, Ned Rorem, Toru Takemitsu, Reza Vali, and Peteris Vasks, among others. He has also worked extensively to promote Soviet/Russian composers in the United States and vice versa:?his Soviet repertoire has been featured at the Goodwill Arts and Leningrad Musical Spring Festivals, and with the Seattle Chamber Players he has performed several times in Russia and Poland as well as in Costa Rica, Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Lithuania, and Ukraine. A native of New York City, Taub has been a resident of Seattle and a faculty member of Cornish College of the Arts since 1979. He holds degrees from Rutgers University in New Jersey and California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, studying with flutists Michel Debost, Samuel Baron, Marcel Moyse, and Robert Aitken. In 2009 he celebrated 30 years in Seattle with a recital of international solo flute music and Henry Brant's concerto for flute and flute orchestra Ghosts and Gargoyles (2001). Taub's performances have been recorded on the Albany, CRI, mode, New Albion, New World, and Periplum labels.
Trombonist and composer Stuart Dempster is a leading figure in the development of contemporary trombone technique and performance. He initially studied at San Francisco State College (now University) in California and served as principal trombonist of the Oakland Symphony; in 1968 he joined the faculty at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he is now Professor Emeritus. Dempster tours regularly throughout the US and Europe performing his own music and commissioned works by composers such as Luciano Berio, Donald Erb, Andrew Imbrie, Ben Johnston, Ernst Krenek, and Pauline Oliveros. He co-founded the Deep Listening Band with Pauline Oliveros and Panaiotis, collaborated with choreographer Merce Cunningham in Meet the Composer's Composer/Choreographer Project, and in 1993-1994 was composer-in-residence with Seattle's New Performance Group. Dempster's honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois, and a Fulbright scholarship to Australia where he studied the aboriginal Australian instrument didjeridoo. He is the author of The Modern Trombone: A Definition of Its Idioms (1979). Dempster has recorded for many labels including Columbia, Deep Listening, First Edition, mode, New Albion, New World, Nonesuch, Orion, Periplum, 1750 Arch, and ¿What Next?.
Matthew Kocmieroski is principal percussionist with the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra in Seattle, Washington. He also performs regularly with the Seattle Symphony and Seattle Opera, and serves as the president of the International Guild of Symphony, Opera and Ballet Musicians. In the field of chamber music, Kocmieroski was co-founder of the New Performance Group, which he directed for ten years, and a founding member of Taneko and the Pacific Rims Percussion Quartet. He often performs with the Seattle Chamber Players and has appeared at music festivals throughout the Pacific Northwest as well as in Norway, Poland, and Russia. Kocmieroski has recorded for the Albany, Crystal, innova, mode, and New Albion labels and can be heard on numerous movie, television, and video game soundtracks. He is an instructor at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.
Jessika Kenney is a vocalist and composer based on Vashon Island near Seattle, Washington. Interested in both traditional sources and experimental methods, Kenney has performed and recorded classical Persian vocal repertoire with ney master Ostad Hossein Omoumi, new and traditional Javanese music with Gamelan Pacifica and Gamelan Madu Sari, and the music of contemporary composers such as John Cage, Hans Eisler, Lou Harrison, Eyvind Kang, and Tadao Sawai. Her teachers include the jazz vocalist Jay Clayton at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle and Nyi Supadmi in Central Java, Indonesia, where she studied traditional Javanese vocal music and collaborated on music and theater in experimental settings. Kenney has created numerous wayang (shadow plays) and many works for voice and mixed ensemble. She currently teaches voice at Cornish College of the Arts, where she completed her music degree in 2007. Her performances can be found on the Endless, Haft Dastgah, Ipecac, Koto World, Mimicry, Present Sounds and Tzadik labels.
related websites
http://www.cornish.edu/music/faculty/paul_taub
http://faculty.washington.edu/dempster
http://www.cornish.edu/music/faculty/matt_kocmieroski
http://www.cornish.edu/music/faculty/jessika_kenney
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