Browse by Artist: CAGE, JOHN

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Atlas Eclipticalis & Winter Music/103
Label:	ASPHODEL
Format:	4CD
Price:	$31.00
Catalog #:	ASPH 2000CD

Two live, unedited performances of Cage's orchestral music: "At last Eclipticalis With Winter Music" (recorded 5/19/93, performed by The Orchestra of the SEM Ensemble, conducted by Petr Kotick, piano by David Tudor) and "103" (recorded 11/21/98, performed by the Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Petr Kotik)." Kotik and Cage met for the first time in May, 1964, performing a 3-hour, six percussion version of Atlas Eclipticalis. Kotik's association with Cage continued until the composer's death in 1992." John Cage: "We've now played the Winter Music a number of times. I haven't kept count. When we first played it, the silences seemed very long and the sounds seemed really separated in space, not obstructing one another."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano
Label:	EL RECORDS (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	ACMEM 088CD

New UK issue of what the premiere recording of this historic work, originally issued by Dial Records in 1951, as performed by Maro Ajemian; later reissued by CRI, but long unavailable on that label. "John Cage was one of America's most important avant-garde/classical/conceptual composers of the 20th century. The influence of his works such as sonatas and interludes for prepared piano in both jazz and underground popular music (Stereolab, Broadcast and the like). This vintage recording dates from the early '50s when nothing like it had ever been heard before and is the perfect introduction to Cage. Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano is John Cage's magnum opus. This is the first recording of this work, played by the Armenian pianist Maro Ajemian over 50 years ago, when the music was new and shocking. It still is."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Birdcage
Label:	ELECTRONIC MUSIC FOUNDATION
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	EMF 013CD

"In 1972, John Cage, accompanied by a film crew from Germany, went to upstate New York to work for 3 days in the State University of New York at Albany's electronic music studio. He carried with him three piles of tapes: (1) sounds of birds in aviaries that he had made in the prior two weeks, (2) recordings of himself singing his 'Mureau', and (3) ambient sounds. While listening to tapes of himself singing 'Mureau', he commented, 'It makes the birds seem less ridiculous.' The result of his work was 'Birdcage', a complex, exuberant, and joyful fabric of juxtapositions of all of the sounds, to be played back in a space in which, as Cage put it, people were free to move and birds to fly."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Sonatas & Interludes for Prepared Piano
Label:	EXPLORE RECORDS (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	EXP 004CD

Explore Records is a new UK-based classical reissue label. This Cage CD features the historic performed of John Tilbury (prepared piano), first released on Decca's HEAD label in 1975. Recorded All Saint's, Petersham, December 1974. This is the first International CD release featuring this recording. "One of John Cage's most important works for prepared piano in a sought-after recording by one of the champions of twentieth-century piano music, English pianist John Tilbury (who will be 70 in 2006)?sensitively played by an expert and recorded with obvious fascination for the sounds as such."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Sonatas and Interludes Vol. 1
Label:	FYLKINGEN (SWEDEN)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	FY 1010CD

1997 CD release, recorded 1965. "The recordings of John Cage: Sonatas and Interludes (1946-48) with Yuji Takahashi on prepared piano was originally made in 1965 and released on two LPs 1966. It was Fylkingen Records first release with the intention to make documentations of Fylkingens concerts in public, and a test of the sound expert Stig Carlssons thoughts about recording techniques. The sonatas and interludes are an attempt to express in music the 'permanent emotions' of Indian tradition: the heroic, the erotic, the wondrous, the mirthful, sorrow, fear, anger, the odious and their common tendency to toward tranquillity."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	John Cage
Label:	GET BACK (ITALY)
Format:	LP
Price:	$20.00
Catalog #:	GET 412

"Originally released in 1978 by Tomato. Joshua Pierce (piano and prepared piano) with Jay Clayton (voice) and The Paul Price Percussion Ensemble (conducted by Joshua Pierce) recorded all the tracks at the Minot Sound Studio in White Plains, New York during the year 1977. Contains 'A Room' (1943), 'She Is Asleep' (1943), 'Seven Haiku' (1952), 'Totem Ancestor' (1943), 'Two Pastorales' (1951) and 'And The Earth Shall Bear Again' (1942). Original artwork. 180 gram HQ vinyl."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Etudes Australes For Piano
Label:	GET BACK (ITALY)
Format:	2LP
Price:	$27.00
Catalog #:	GET 419

"John Cage is perhaps the most influential and controversial American composer of the 20 th century avant-garde, with a body of work spanning 5 decades. His 1974 Etudes Australes were based on notes derived from star charts of the Australian sky. The 32 etudes have no specified tempo or time and it is left up to the performer to decide the duration of each note. Each etude also requires that certain keys are held down throughout the piece (generally accomplished by using a rubber wedge) creating halos of sound that alter the surrounding notes."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Thirty Pieces, Music For Piano
Label:	HUNGAROTON
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	HUNG 12893CD

1987 release. "Thirty Pieces For Five Orchestras" (1981), performed by the Savaria Symphony Orchestra, conducted by L�szl� Tihanyi, Dieter Kempe, Zsolt Serei, Katalin Doman, and Mark Foster; musical direction by P�ter E�tv�s. "Music For Piano" Nos. 4-19, 21-84 (1952-56). (Realization by A. Wilheim). Performed by Zolt�n Jeney, Andr�s Wilheim, L�szl� Vidovszky, L�szl� Sary, Barnab�s Dukay (pianists). "Hungaroton continues its invaluable Cage series, this time moving away from the percussion works of past volumes. The works presented here make this self-recommending for anyone devoted to this important 20th century thinker/composer."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Works for Percussion, Vol. 2 (1941-1950)
Label:	HUNGAROTON
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	HUNG 31845CD

2000 release, 2nd in a series of 4 percussion CDs on Hungaroton. Perfromed by the Amadinda Percussion Group. This CD features many of Cage's most famous and important works, from his peak era: 1941-1950): 'Third Construction' (1941); 'Credo in Us' (1942); 'Imaginary Landscape No. 3' (1942); 'Imaginary Landscape No. 2' (1942); 'The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs' (1942); 'forever and sunsmell' (1942); 'Amores' (1943);
'She Is Asleep' (1943); 'A Flower' (1950).

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Works For Percussion, Vol. 4 (1940-1956)
Label:	HUNGAROTON
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	HUNG 31847CD

New 4th volume. Performed by the Amadinda Percussion Group. "'27' 10.554' for a Percussionist is part of a series Cage prepared between 1953 and 1956, referred to in his sketches at the time as 'The ten thousand things'. The idea of the series was that each of the works -- all of which were composed using the same rhythmical structure (which in this case is rather a layout in time, as a regular beat is no longer present in the pieces) could be performed in any combination, and even that some works sectionalized at the relevant structural points might be performed if desired by several performers at the same time. (The possibility of a layered assemblage is the fundamental idea of the series Music for Piano also being written at the same time.) Eventually five of the planned series of works were completed: two compositions for prepared piano, one for string instruments, the percussion composition here recorded and a performance with words. We have no data concerning the performance of the cycle using full forces. (One vocal work and a composition intended for recorded tape remained in sketch form.)"

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Works For Percussion, Vol. 5 (1936-1991)
Label:	HUNGAROTON
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	HUNG 31848CD

5th volume. Performed by the Amadinda Percussion Group. "A decade and a half after John Cage's death, his oeuvre still has much to offer in the way of surprise. Cage had always said he was a poor historian when it came to his own works -- and we are only now beginning to understand what exactly he meant by that. When in 1962 he finally found a publisher and set out to draw up a catalog of his works, he created a selection without including every piece in the inventory, but had apparently forgotten about certain pieces whose manuscripts were, for one reason or another, no longer in his possession. He never looked the lost works up in his earlier lists of works and never tried to find them either. Yet the odds of them turning up then were probably higher than today when, more often than not, it is a matter of chance that for example bequests, from dancer or musician contemporaries of Cage, which end up public libraries, are sifted through properly. In the near past, several works by Cage came to light this way; most recently two pieces from the library of Mills College (Oakland, CA) one of whose title even had not been known to scholars. 'Dance Music (for Elfrid Ide)' was composed in 1940 for a dance production completing the studies of Elfride Ide (it received its premiere, and probably its only performance, on May 20, 1940 at Mills College)."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Four Walls
Label:	LONG ARMS RECORDS (RUSSIAN FEDERATION)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	CDLA 2048

Performed by: Alexei Lubimov (piano), Marianne Pousseur (soprano). Live performance at Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival, Austria In the night of July 8/9, 1994, recorded by WDR Koeln. Music for the Dance Drama, choreographed by Merce Cunningham, New York 1944, for piano solo and voice. "What are 'Four Walls'? Is it no so that the four noble truths comprise a series of four sounds? Incidentally, when there are four, there always will be a place for a fifth. However when there are more than seven -- it starts to be dangerous. A piece begins with a chord -- the sound emblem of the name joHn CAGE (the letters correspond with the Latin names for the notes) and is all constructed on diatonic permutations of the motto, derived from the name, with the addition of the notes D and F, which add up to an octave. (If one has the wish, one could assemble other words from this set of notes-letters.)"

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Music Of Changes
Label:	LOVELY MUSIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	LCD 2053

Performed by Joseph Kubera, the first complete recording of this important solo piano work. "Music of Changes is a manifesto. It marks Cage's first comprehensive 'exploration of non-intention' through the systematic use of chance operations to create a complete, major work. Begun in May 1951, Music of Changes was named in honor of the I Ching, or Book of Changes, the ancient Chinese book of oracles that had become Cage's means of synthesizing chance with rigorous discipline. Cage's notation heralded a new concept of musical time, placing the performer in a new relation to the score, one in which orientation is the occurrence of events rather than to the relations between them, which is to say to action rather than to memory. Performances of Music of Changes have been rare since David Tudor ceased playing the work in the late 1950s; Herbert Henck and, more recently, Joseph Kubera are among the few pianists to have assayed the obstacles posed by its innovations. For all its prominence in the history of postwar music, Music of Changes has remained more discussed than heard, more treatise than artwork." --John Holzaepfel.

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Variations VII
Label:	MICROCINEMA
Format:	DVD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	MC 749DVD

"In 1966, 10 New York artists and 30 engineers and scientists from Bell Telephone Laboratories collaborated on a series of innovative dance, music and theatre performances, 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering, held in October at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City. The artists were John Cage, Lucinda Childs, �yvind Fahlstr�m, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, David Tudor and Robert Whitman. Archival material has been assembled into 10 films, each of which reconstructs the artists' original work and uses interviews with the artists, engineers and performers to illuminate the artistic, technical and historical aspects of the work. Variations VII, performed at 9 Evenings, was the next to last in John Cage's series of indeterminate works that he had begun in 1958, which made increasing use of electronic equipment and systems. This DVD documents the only complete performance of Variations VII and also presents a stereo audio recording of the full 85 minutes of the performance. This rare and historical film is the second in the 9 Evenings series from E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology) and ART PIX and was produced by Billy Kl�ver and Julie Martin of E.A.T. and directed by Barbro Schultz Lundestam." All-region DVD, two-sided for both NTSC & PAL formats. 41 minutes + 85 minute audio track.

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Atlas Eclipticalis with Winter Music
Label:	MODE
Format:	3CD
Price:	$46.00
Catalog #:	MODE 003/6CD

Originally released as a 4-LP set on Mode in 1986, finally reissued on CD for the first time. Featured compositions: "Atlas Eclipticalis' (1961, for chamber ensemble); "Winter Music" (1957, for 3 pianos); "Atlas Eclipitcalis" (1961, for orchestra); "Winter Music" (1957, for 20 pianos). "The long awaited reissue of Mode's second LP set, remastered with bonus tracks. Cage's relationship with the Cornish Institute in Seattle dates back to the 1930s, when he taught there and performed as accompanist for many dance pieces. Cornish was also the scene of several of his musical discoveries and innovations. Cage's celebrated return to the Cornish Institute in 1983 led to these recordings of his conducting 'Atlas Eclipticalis' performed simultaneously with 'Winter Music' -- a rare opportunity to hear Cage perform his own works. Two complete 80-minute long performances are presented here, captured live in concert. New 96khz/24-bit mastering made from the original analog tapes. The original liner notes by John Cage and the New Performance Group's Matthew Kocmieroski are supplemented with new essays on 'Atlas Eclipticalis' by Cage's long-time colleague and publisher Don Gillespie, and on 'Winter Music' by Stephen Drury."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	The Complete String Quartets Volume 1
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 017CD

Mode is an interesting NY label, perhaps best known for their intention of releasing a recording of every John Cage piece ever composed! An almost complete listing of their CD catalog is listed here. Volume 3 in the Music of Cage series (first 2 volumes are o/p LPs only, awaiting CD reissue). First of 2 CDs containing Cage's string quartets, performed by the Arditti Quartet. Recorded live at Wesleyan, 1988 Beautiful cover art of an original etching by Cage; liner notes by Cage & Arditti. Cage's string quartet works can be dazzlingly abstract and well worth absorption.

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	The Complete String Quartets Vol 2
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 027CD

Repressed, new 2003 24-bit remastering. Volume 5 in the Music of John Cage Series. 2nd volume of String Quartets, performed by the Arditti Quartet. Two pieces are played: "String Quartet in Four Parts" (1950) -- "A pivotal work in Cage's oeuvre, the quartet shows the composer's transition between the rhythmically complex percussion works before it and the extravagant chance works of the 1950s." "Four," from 1990, was composed specifically for Arditti and "opens a world of microtones, the 4 independent players forming constantly shifting textures and harmonies." Extensive liner notes by James Pritchett.

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Roaratorio
Label:	MODE
Format:	2CD
Price:	$31.00
Catalog #:	MODE 028/29CD

Repressed. Volume 6 of the Music of Cage series. 1987 Performance of this legendary radio-play, featuring the Joyce-inspired text "Writing For the Second Time Through Finnegan's Wake" mixed over a live group of Irish Folk musicians. "Some merely listening to the radio at home wrote to the BBC to complain of a concert which sounded like crossed wavelengths with liberal helpings of static and feedback." Comes with a thick booklet of information and some of the most supremely disorienting music you could desire.

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	The Piano Works 2
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 050CD

A new recording of "Sonatas And Interludes" for prepared piano, performed by Philippe Vandre. This is the first version to use a Steinway "O"-type baby grand piano (as Cage originally composed and designed the piece for). "Cage's masterwork is quite different -- a big piece with a quiet voice. The prepared piano operates entirely by muting: by attaching objects to the strings of the piano. Cage alters their sounds in various ways, turning the piano into a percussion orchestra akin to a gamelan. The results are different from note to note -- but always quieter than before."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	The Piano Concertos
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 057CD

Volume 16 of the Complete Cage Works. Includes "Concert For Piano & Orchestra" (performed by David Tudor & Ensemble Modern; "...an ever expanding galaxy of sonic possibilities with the principle of independence"); "Concerto For Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra (performed by Stephen Drury); "Fourteen" (perf. by Drury; "the solo piano is not played conventionally, rather its strings are bowed with rosined nylon fishing line, producing an ethereal, mysterious sound.")

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Cage Performs Cage: The Text Pieces I: The Artists Pieces
Label:	MODE
Format:	2CD
Price:	$31.00
Catalog #:	MODE 084/85CD

"Cage's reading of his text pieces was legend -- as recited in his unique, gentle voice -- often had a 'musical', soothing quality. And just as often, a humorous side. These are not stories in the traditional sense with a plot; rather they are based on mesostics. Basically, a mesostic uses a person's name or word as a vertical center for each stanza of the text. Cage would then choose texts and, using chance operations, search them for sentences containing a letter of this word. Each subsequent line of the stanza would have to contain the next letter of the word, and would be aligned underneath until the complete word was composed to form one stanza. The process would then be repeated over and over until the writing was completed (based on the parameters Cage would select for that work). In this way, Cage would be able to write something relevant about that person without knowing what he was going to say. This first set of Cage Performs Cage centers around mesostics for his friends and associates; the artists Jasper Johns and Morris Graves. And, in the 'Series re Morris Graves', we get the rare opportunity to hear John Cage sing." Volume 20 of The Complete John Cage Edition.

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	The Orchestral Works, 2
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 086CD

Includes "Etcetera: For Chamber Orchestra With 3 Conductors" (1973), "Etcetera 2/4 Orchestras: For Large Orchestra Divided Into 4 Smaller Ensembles With Their Own Conductors" (1986). "The first recording of two major orchestral works by John Cage, recorded under the composer's supervision at the New England Conservatory's John Cage festival in 1991. These works are about 'multiplicity' -- of performing options, of ensembles, of conductors; tape music or live music, standard or unconventional notation, repetition or non-repetition. Each piece also contains a tape recoding of the environment where the work was created -- in the country for "Etcetera", the city for 'Etcetera 2/4 Orchestras'. The ensembles are directed by Cage specialist Stephen Drury." Volume 21 of The Complete John Cage Edition.

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	The Works For Violin 4
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 100CD

"Volume 4 of Irvine Arditti's masterful traversal of the complete works for violin by Cage combines two of his beautiful early pieces for violin and piano along with Two, also for violin and piano; and two later works for violin solo. An overlooked gem in Cage's early style, the Nocturne receives a rare CD recording here. The beguiling 6 Melodies is an instantly simple work in which the violin must play (as in much of Cage's music for violin) without vibrato. Its exotic quality is as hypnotic as an Indian raga. Together, these two works offer a wonderful, appealing introduction for the uninitiated to Cage's music."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	A Cage Of Saxophones I
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 104CD

The Works for Saxophones 1, performed by Ulrich Krieger. "Between 1983 and 1991 John Cage wrote three pieces specifically for saxophone or including saxophones, Four5, Five4 and Hymnkus, which are combined here for the first time on one CD. In addition, Cage authorized Ulrich Krieger's arrangement for saxophone of Ryoanji. Krieger also made a saxophone arrangement of Five, one of the few compositions from this period performable on any instruments. Krieger is joined here by a top group of German new music performers, including noted pianist Mario Bertoncini."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	The Works for Piano 4
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 106CD

"Until recently at Cage's publisher in New York, C.F. Peters, there was a box of works which Cage had held off publishing or had simply forgotten about. Among them were the dance pieces, Triple Paced and Ad Lib, Jazz Study and the film score, Works of Calder, all composed between 1942 and 1950. At Peters' request, Margaret Leng Tan was enlisted to edit these works as part of a new volume of Cage's piano pieces -- they have been recorded here in conjunction with that publication."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	The Orchestral Works 3
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 108CD

"Cage scored 108 for the largest number of players in any of the Number Pieces -- its duration of 43'30" makes an oblique reference to his groundbreaking 4'33' (1952). 108 can be played on its own or with either of two solo works from the same year, One (for cello) and One for the sho, a mouth organ with bamboo pipes that acts as one of the harmony-producing instruments in Japanese gagaku. Both solo works were composed for artists very important in Cage's final years -- cellist Michael Bach and Mayumi Miyata, who had pioneered the sho as a contemporary concert instrument. When One? is performed with 108, it becomes a concerto but a very unusual one, and a fine example of Cage's aesthetic. The orchestra disappears entirely in two sections of the piece, but not to herald a grand cadenza: the sho music continues much as it had before, a quiet, serene, almost timeless utterance. Indeed, the regal simplicity of the sho makes it an ideal instrument for Cage, who tried to make his final work like writing on water -- an action, incomparably graceful, that would leave no traces."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	The Works For Violin 5
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 118CD

"Irvine Arditti continues his acclaimed traversal of the complete music for violin by John Cage. This disc contains music from two different periods of Cage's composition.The Chorals have their origins in Erik Satie's Douze petits chorals, dating from Satie's years of study at the Schola Cantorum (1905-8). Its notation calls for precise microtonality, and demonstrates Zukofsky's suggestion 'to make a continuous music of disparate elements, single tones, unisons, and beatings'. 'One' is, perhaps, the most unusual of Cage's violin works. The first note, a single F, is sustained for an extremely long duration. This note is followed, after a short silence, by another F, and then another! Other notes appear eventually, but the result is one of the listener losing all sense of relating one to another, verging on a kind of trance."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	The Works For Piano 5
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 123CD

"Hayd�e Schvartz (piano); Jack Bruce (vocals). 'Four Walls' (1943-44), 'Soliloquy' (1945), '3 Easy Pieces' (1933). 'Four Walls'is a powerful and pivotal work in Cage's oeuvre. This large-scale piece was written as a 'dance-drama' with text and dance by his long-time collaborator Merce Cunningham. Cage said that 'Four Walls' deals with the 'disturbed mind.' This feeling is accentuated by the dramatic music, whose use of repetition, intense ostinatos, and silence evokes at times a harrowing closed-in sensibility. 'Four Walls' shows Cage's seminal ideas on silence, repetition and gradual change, as well as influences of Eastern philosophy and music -- its use of repetition foreshadows later minimalist music."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Variations I-III
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 129CD

'Variation 1' (1958), 'Variation II' (1961), 'Lecture On Nothing' (1959), 'Variation III' (1962-63). Performed by the Motion Ensemble. "John Cage's 'Variations' are from his most experimental period. They are graphically notated pieces which allow the performers to create their own scores within specific guidelines. 'Variations I, II, and III' are scored for any number of players and any sound producing means. The goal of this project is to produce a document in sound of Cage's musical philosophy, which allows for aesthetics that are rather independent of those in traditional western music. Each piece is presented here in a very different manner. The realization of 'Variation I' uses traditional instruments in combination with typical 'Cagean' toys and gadgets (eg. whistles, squeaky toys, etc.) that were common to many Cage-supervised orchestra pieces. 'Variation II' introduces the idea of simultaneous performance with the addition of 'Lecture on Nothing' (as an 'instrument' for the Variations II score) as well as featuring extensions of the traditional violin and double bass sounds. Finally, 'Variations III' uses only electronic instruments to bring the spectrum of sounds as far from the traditional instruments as possible."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	From Zero
Label:	MODE
Format:	DVD
Price:	$27.00
Catalog #:	MODE 130DVD

"Four films on John Cage by Frank Scheffer and Andrew Culver. 84 minutes (plus extras). DVD only release with bonus extras of 'Making of' film and interviews. A Major film on John Cage by renowned Dutch director Frank Scheffer in collaboration with Cage's associate Andrew Culver. The group of films, entitled From Zero are: '19 Questions': Cage answers 19 questions on a variety of subjects, using chance operations to determine the duration of his colorful and often witty answers. 'Fourteen': The acclaimed Ives Ensemble perform Cage's piece of the same name. Filmed with multiple cameras using chance operation to determine the position, angle, focus and aperture settings of each shot. 'Paying Attention': Agreeing on a predetermined duration, Scheffer worked with the video portion and Culver the audio from an interview with Cage. 'Overpopulation and Art With Ryoanji': The audio combines Cage's spoken performance of his text Overpopulation and Art simultaneously with his Ryoanji four voices and percussion."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	One8
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 141CD

"Cage's 'One8' was composed for cellist Michael Bach, an artist who had a very important place in Cage's late work. Its duration of 43' 30" makes an oblique reference to Cage's groundbreaking 4'33" (1952)." "Using both standard and curved bows, he made his way through Mr. Cage's 43-minute sequence of sustained notes, sustained chords, progressions of chords, and eerie, high-pitched harmonics with a sense of serenity that invited a listener to regard the work not as a collection of disparate, disjointed sounds, but as an other-worldly ritual." -- The New York Times.

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	44 Harmonies from Apartment House 1776/Cheap Imitation
Label:	MODE
Format:	2CD
Price:	$31.00
Catalog #:	MODE 144/45CD

Volume 33 of Mode's Complete John Cage Edition. Features 2 long works: "Cheap Imitation" (1977, for solo violin; performed by Irving Arditti); "44 Harmonies from Apartment House 1776" (1976, for string quartet, performed by Arditti Quartet). World Premiere Recording of "44 Harmonies" which is 103 minutes long. "Irvine Arditti completes his complete traversal of Cage's works for solo violin with 'Cheap Imitation' in this set. In 1969, John Cage transcribed a two piano version of Erik Satie's 1918 music drama 'Socrate' to accompany Merce Cunningham's choreography 'Second Hand'. At the last minute, the French firm that held the copyright to Satie's score refused to allow the performance. With an ingenious rewriting, Cage retained the rhythmical architecture of the musical lines, but replaced each note with a new tonal value, creating a melodically original work with an identical rhythmic structure."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	The Works For Piano 6
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 147CD

6th volume Mode's continuing series. Features: "Music Of Changes" (1951); "Suite For Toy Piano" (1948); "Seven Haiku" (1952); performed by Martine Joste (piano, toy piano), recorded 2003. "This disc collects three early piano works of John Cage, including his classic work for toy piano and early works composed using chance. 'Music Of Changes' is a seminal piece in 20th century composition because it is the first work to be fully composed using chance operations. The title makes reference to the ancient Confucian book the I-Ching which, together with lectures by the Japanese Zen master Suzuki, introduced Cage to the concepts of chance. The title also makes reference to Cage's change in musical direction with this work. Cage prepared charts of squares which indicated numbers for tempo, dynamics, sounds, duration, rests and overlapping of material. He then used chance operations based on these numbers to compose a piece -- devoid of personal choice and influences -- which was then conventionally notated. The element of noise is also introduced into the composition, with indications for sound to be made by closing the piano lid, pedal noise, playing inside the piano, knocking under the keyboard, etc."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	The Works For Piano 7
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 158CD

Performed by Margaret Leng Tan (piano, prepared piano). Features: "Chess Pieces" (1944; first recording); "Sonatas & Interludes" (1946-48; for prepared piano); plus Vittorio Rieti's "Chess Serenade" (1944, first recording). "In 1944, John Cage was invited to participate in 'The Imagery of Chess' exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City. The artists included Calder, Noguchi, Motherwell, Breton, Duchamp, Ernst, Man Ray, Tanning and other leading surrealists. Cage contributed a painting entitled 'Chess Pieces.' It was purchased at the show and went into a private collection. For decades it was deemed lost and was (almost) forgotten by Cage aficionados and scholars. Re-assembling the original artworks for 'The Imagery of Chess Revisited' show (2005-06) at the Isamu Noguchi Museum in New York led to the tracking down of the Cage painting. Cage expert Margaret Leng Tan set about transcribing the music in the painting into a playable score which receives its premiere recording here. 'Chess Pieces' is from 1944, an emotional and creative year for Cage; besides echoes of Satie, 'Chess Pieces' contains prophetic touches of minimalism and has features in common with his monumental piano piece, 'Four Walls,' from the same year."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	The Works For Piano 7
Label:	MODE
Format:	DVD
Price:	$27.00
Catalog #:	MODE 158DVD

DVD-audio version in 5.1 surround sound. With 3 additional documentary videos: John Cage's Prepared Piano (an insightful look at the history of the prepared piano narrated and performed by Ms. Tan); CAGE: Music/Art/Chess (a visit to 'The Imagery of Chess Revisited' exhibit at the Isamu Noguchi Museum with curator Larry List and Ms. Tan). John Cage's Box Of Preparations. The DVD-audio features the same music as on the CD version, but in 24-bit surround sound DTS and Dolby Digital surround. Dedicated 24-bit stereo mix. 'Chess Pieces' is presented with full performance video. Region 0, NTSC, Total running time approx. 172 mins.

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	A Cage Of Saxophones 2
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 160CD

The Works for Saxophones 2, again performed by Ulrich Krieger. "Ulrich Krieger follows up his successful A Cage of Saxophones 1 volume with the second installment of Cage works for saxophone(s), spanning a period of over 50 years. For this volume, Krieger combines works specifically composed for saxophone with works of no specified instrumentation that are suited for saxophones and winds. This CD collects three rarely heard early works, all written without indications for specific instruments. Krieger has arranged them here for his ensemble of saxophones and other instruments. For the middle period works, Krieger has excerpted the solo instrumental parts related to saxophones from the scores to Concert for Piano and Orchestra and Atlas Eclipticalis -- Cage permitted the option for the various instrumental parts to be performed as solos. The late works are covered by Two, originally composed for flute and piano, here premiered in the Cage-sanctioned version for saxophone."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	One11 and 103
Label:	MODE
Format:	DVD
Price:	$27.00
Catalog #:	MODE 174DVD

"John Cage has always linked various media and tried out new techniques in his work -- in addition to music he was a writer, artist, painter, philosopher and more. He never lost the will to try out new experiments: 'I am quite old now, and so when I have the opportunity to do something I take it immediately, rather than hesitating, as I don't have much time left.' Cage said this about his first and only film -- One11 --produced in the year he died. He started to address the perception of emptiness and at the same time the random quality of what happens in a prescribed space as early as 1952 in his piece '4:33,' which consisted entirely of silence. Forty years later he said: 'Of course the film will be about the effect of light in an empty space. But no space is actually empty and the light will show what is in it. And all this space and all this light will be controlled by random operations.' This simple concept was implemented professionally and with a great deal of technical input in a Munich television studio under the direction of Henning Lohner. The film One11 and the musical piece ('soundtrack') 103 run in parallel, without relating directly to each other, but each has 17 parts. Each of the parts is based on approx. 1200 random operations devised by a computer and determining how the lighting is controlled and the movements of a crane-mounted camera. The result, aided by the distinguished cameraman Van Theodore Carlson, is a film entirely without plot or actors, which Cage hopes will enable viewers to find themselves. New high-resolution digital transfer from the original film print." One11 (1992) -- a film without subject by John Cage, produced and directed by Henning Lohner with 103 for large orchestra (1992) -- the WDR Sinfonieorchester Koln. Additional features include: a choice of two orchestral soundtracks; The Making of One11: 1 43-minute documentary on the creative process and realization of the film made for television by Henning Lohner at that time -- with new narration by Joan La Barbara; Interview with Van Carlson & Henning Lohner discussing their work with Cage and the film, the technical challenges, and more. Filmed for this DVD in 2006 (33 minutes). Region 0, NTSC; Total running time: 2 hrs 46 mins; 2.0 24-bit PCM stereo; aspect ratio: standard; subtitles: English, German, French.

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Complete Short Works For Prepared Piano
Label:	MODE
Format:	2CD
Price:	$33.00
Catalog #:	MODE 180/81CD

Performed by Philipp Vandr�, recorded 2001/2. "The complete short prepared piano works collected on two CDs. John Cage's works for prepared piano expose his earliest experimentations in finding new and exotic sounds. Brief and attractive, they are among his most accessible work. This release marks the first time all of his short works for prepared piano have been made available in one set. All the prepared piano works are included aside from the magnum opus, 'Sonatas and Interludes.' Pianist Philipp Vandr� has recorded 'Sonatas and Interludes' for Mode to great critical acclaim, including the recommended performance of the piece from Gramophone Magazine. Liner notes by Cage scholar James Pritchett." Volume 37 in Mode's Complete John Cage Edition.

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	The Number Pieces 4
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 186CD

Performed by Trio Dolce (on 3 recorders), recorded 1998. "The first recording of Cage's large scale composition for 3 recorder players. The Trio Dolce wrote Cage for permission to perform 'Solo with Obbligato Accompaniment' on three alto recorders, one octave higher than the prescribed range. In a letter from March 1987, Cage replied: 'Of course you may use the 3 alto recorders. I am glad that you are playing that piece.' They performed it on July 1988 with Cage in attendance. Cage's enthusiastic reaction to this performance encouraged Trio Dolce to ask Cage if he would consider writing a work for them which 'could take into account the ranges of the recorders' the Trio then owned. Upon meeting the members of the Trio during his residency at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague in November 1988, Cage agreed to write a work for the Trio. 'Three' was completed in July 1989 and dedicated to Trio Dolce, who premiered it in July 1990 in the presence of the composer during a concert at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music. The performance instructions state that the indication 'as legato as possible.' It requires great virtuosity and breath control, while at the same time changing recorders and maintaining a continuous legato, resulting in a sometimes fragile balance between the durations and dynamics." Volume 38 in Mode's Complete John Cage Edition.

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	The Number Pieces 5
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 193CD

"Two2" (1989) for two pianos; performed by Rob Haskins and Laurel Karlik Sheehan, pianos. "Laurel Karlik Sheehan gave the Canadian premiere of 'Two' with Jack Behrens in 1990. Rob Haskins is a respected Cage expert and scholar. Together they bring an authority and expertise to this performance of 'Two.' In most of the Number Pieces, all the performers have some freedom through Cage's use of time brackets, and flexible measures that show a range of possible starting and ending times. The time bracket system of notation used in these works allow a certain amount of flexibility in the performance: individual notes or chords may always occur in the same general time frame, but their specific order and duration varies slightly and unpredictably from performance to performance. In this way, Cage could create a new kind of harmony of '...several sounds... being noticed at the same time.' Cage based 'Two' on renga, a Japanese poetic design of five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables expressed at least 36 times. Each line of music is divided into five measures, just like the five lines of the poetry. The first measure contains five separate musical events -- chords or single tones, usually shared between the two pianists -- which correspond to the five syllables of the first line; the second meas�ure has seven events, and so on. There are a total of 36 such five-measure sections in the piece. While the pianists can take any amount of time to perform each measure, each pianist must wait until both have finished the same measure before proceed�ing to the next. Given this flexibility, Haskins and Karlik Sheehan's performance is the longest of the recordings to date -- emphasizing the sense of spaciousness and interest in harmony that marks many of Cage's late pieces. Liner notes by Rob Haskins. 96khz, 24-bit high definition recording."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Music For Piano 1-84
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$42.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10703/4CD

Performed by Sabine Liebner, piano; recorded Oct., 2003. "Cage had discovered small irregularities, elevated points, or tiny spots on the surface structure of the paper, distributed completely irregularly. Within a predetermined interval of time he marked with ink as many of these irregularities as he could find. Thus he obtained an absolutely random constellation of a field of points. Then he placed a sheet of transparent music paper over it to convert the dots into exact pitches by means of the key signature and ledger lines. Using chance procedures, each of the notes determined in this way was assigned a dynamic value between pianissimo and fortissimo as well as, in some cases, a sharp or flat. 'Music for Piano 1' was produced in this way in 1952 and choreographed by Jo Anne Melcher as was 'Music for Piano 2' of the following year, for the dancer Louise Lippold. As a balance to his incessant efforts as an artist to make chance graspable in new ways in the points of coincidence and intersection of series of events that occur independently of one another, in 1954/55 he became increasingly at home in the universe of mycology. Perhaps he was haunted by another metaphysics of finding? Wherever he found an opportunity to find and identify mushrooms, Cage pursued this passion with professional depth -- in part, as he explained with a smile, because the word 'mushroom' immediately precedes 'music' in many dictionaries. Over the years he became an expert on mushrooms. He wrote a book on mushrooms with illustrations covered with Japanese silk paper; on an Italian television quiz show he won a lot of money with his expert knowledge. He meditated on the mysterious subterranean grow of mycelia, lichen, and carpophores in Japanese Zen gardens or American forests, and he could enthuse and sympathize with the horizons of sound and silence of this or that mushroom, whether they grew alone or in collections, or in bundles of five to six individual growths, saying that a such a spot of earth is precious."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Seven/Quartets I-VIII
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 10720CD

"Seven" (for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, viola and violoncello; 1988); "Quartets I-VIII" (for 24 instruments, 1976). Performed by: Orchester Jakobsplatz M�nchen, conducted by Daniel Grossmann. "John Cage's Quartets I-VIII is one of the most unusual and sophisticated orchestral works I know. It was written for the bicentennial of the United States of America. Cage used eight old American chorales, which he then reformed into an entirely new work with the help of the Chinese oracular work, the I Ching. The basic idea is to have just four instruments of the orchestra playing together at any time. As a result, new groups are constantly forming into variously composed quartets. Cage used the I Ching to determine which notes are played by a given instrument. The piece seems very simple from looking at the score. But in fact the fragmentary character of the instrumentation makes it a great challenge to perform. Every musician has to count precisely so as not to miss his or her entry. But the most difficult requirement is fitting the few notes to be played into the overall structure such that meaningful phrases ultimately result. Only by carefully listening to and following the music can players cause the piece to resound." --Daniel Grossmann

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Daughters Of the Lonesome Isle
Label:	NEW ALBION
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	NA 070CD

Works for conventional, prepared, string, bowed and toy piano, written over the a 13 year period (1940-953) that encapsulates the evolution of Cage's asthetic (beginnings of prepared piano through chance-derived abstraction). Performed with intensity and pure intuition by my favorite Cage performer, Margaret Leng Tan. Includes "In A Landscape" & "Dream" ("By sustaining the damper pedal throughout these works, modal melodic tones fuse and fade into harmonic resonances. Both works are early examples of ambient music, while their non-directional non-emotive meanderings and repetitions anticipate minimal music"), "In The Name Of The Holocaust" ("an uncompromising dramatic testament with its haunting pizzicato of muted strings shattered by the brutal jangling of loose screws and its culmination, a cataclysm of massive forearm clusters") & more. A glowing and beautiful Cage document; a good introductory piece for those that have been unsure about Cage recordings, or absolutely necessary for the developed follower of his music.

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Music For Keyboard 1935-1948
Label:	SONY (JAPAN)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$43.00
Catalog #:	SICC 076/77CD

A series of Japanese-only reissues from 2003 by Sony of John Cage-related documents, rescuing these historic recordings back to the public view after decades of exclusion. Music For Keyboard is THE famous double LP of Cage's early piano music (including his first prepared piano works), originally issued by Columbia in 1970. Produced by David Behrman, performed by Jeanne Kirstein (prepared piano, piano, toy piano). Recorded 1969; reproduction of the original Richard Kostelanetz liner notes included. Features: "Two Pieces" (1938); "Metamorphosis" (1938); "Bacchanale" (1938), "The Perilous Night" (1944); "Tossed As It Is Untroubled" (1943), "A Valentine Out of Season" (1944), "Root of an Unfocus" (1944); "Two Pieces" (1946); "Prelude for Meditation" (1944); "Music for Marcel Duchamp" (1947); "Suite For Toy Piano" (1948); "Dream" (1948). From Richard Kostelanetz's liner notes: "...their distinctive rhythms and unusual tonalities make these pieces as instantly recognizable as Cage's own face and voice; for the paradox is that although many of his compositional constraints function to deny both personal habit and tasteful choice, they also create a particular style of sound in time that is unmistakably Cagean." This was a Japanese-only CD for a long time, but just recently issued in the U.S. on the New World Records label...

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Sonatas & Interludes For Prepared Piano
Label:	WERGO (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$22.00
Catalog #:	WER 60156

Written in 1946-48 for prepared piano, recorded in 1975 by Joshua Pierce. "...represents the culmination of his work with the solo prepared piano, which had been his musical invention a decade before. Essentially, into the bed of piano strings he put such objects as large wooden screws, bolts of various sizes, pieces of plastic and rubber -- in short, a panoply of devices that transformed the sound of the piano strings... it, more than anything he had done to that time, showed his colleagues that Cage should be considered an important composer." --Richard Kostelanetz