Sunday 11th March 2012
Door Times : 7.30pm
Tickets : £5 adv / £6 on the door
Scratch Orchestra members disembowel Cage's magnum opus with a sharp younger generation of performers.
'Song Books' is one of Cage's most ambitious works. It comprises over 48 actual songs and 42 instructions for 'theatre' (Fluxus-like 'actions' for the most part) which are performed at random start times within a set period. The scores are very diverse and cover almost every approach to experimenting with notation that Cage used: from conventional music to the most abstract. The libretto is also very varied and covers most of Cage's interests from mushrooms to anarchy. Each 'song' is designated to be either with or without electronics. Each one is also to be cognisant of 'the space between Satie and Thoreau' or not, which I think defines Cage's notion of the avant garde in a nutshell.
The intention of this project is to raise the question of the place of visual performance within experimental musics. The older core performers were in the Scratch Orchestra which was deeply imbued with a visual dimension going back to Cardew's earlier composition 'Treatise' and brought to the fore in Scratch performances by the activities of the Slippery Merchants.
It is also an attempt to bring Scratch experience into a critical collision with a contemporaneous John Cage in collaboration with a younger generation of performers and composers.
"Cage achieved mythical status but Cardew was a legend" - John Tilbury
Performers will include former Scratch Orchestra members Stefan Szczelkun, Peter Ellison, Carole Finer, Linn D and John Tilbury alongside Eve Libertine, Geri McEwan, Ali Warner, Renate Biruls, Portia Winters, special guest Jane Alden from the USA, and Robbie Lockwood working with Lucy Galland and his self-education group. Grundig Kasyansky will be playing electronics.
A transcript of an interview on Cage with John Tilbury will be available on the night.
Seed funded by University of Westminster, IMCC.
|
