CAGE & FRIENDS
Thursday, September 6, 8:00 PM
First Presbyterian/Santa Monica; general admission: $25

John Cage
  Living Room Music (1940)
John Cage/Lou Harrison
  Double Music (1941)
Conlon Nancarrow
  Sonatine (1941)
John Cage
  4’ 33” piano (1952)
James Tenney
  Spectral Canon for Conlon Nancarrow for player piano (1976)
John Cage
  Second Construction (1940)

Henry Cowell
  Five Encores to Dynamic Motion: “Antinomy” (1917)
William Billings
  Jargon (1778)
Supply Belcher
  Creation & Transfiguration, two shape note hymns (1794)
John Cage
  Some of the Harmony of Maine: Creation; Transfiguration (1978)
John Cage
  String Quartet in Four Parts (1949-50)        

Lyris Quartet
Mark Robson, piano
Mark Alan Hilt, organ
Jacaranda Chamber Singers
Jacaranda Percussion Ensemble

This introduction to Cage emphasizes his early artistic friendships with a variety of short works for percussion ensemble and solo piano. Excerpts from an organ work using six assistants to pull stops will be presented in context with Cage’s interest in 18th century American Music. For good measure, the first piece of American experimental music is included. The evening concludes with a classic of the mid-century string quartet repertoire.

SATIE’S VEXATIONS – 24 hours
Friday, September 7, 7:00 PM to Saturday, September 8, 7:00 PM
Miles Playhouse in Reed Park; no admission charge
Reservations highly recommended:
http://jacaranda-satie-marathon.eventbrite.com/

Erik Satie
  Vexations (1893)

First published by Cage in 1949, this work was long considered a joke until Cage organized the first performance in 1963. Eric Satie, a composer Cage idolized, asked that three bars of music – less than a page – be repeated 840 times. Jacaranda’s rare complete performance will employ 32 pianists playing successively without pause. The audience is free to come and go as space permits and are encouraged to bring cushions for casual seating.

THE 10,000 THINGS
Saturday 8:00 PM, September 8
Santa Monica Bay Woman’s Club; General admission: $25

Eric Smigel
  Spoken presentation covering Cage’s life and work until 1960 including his
  invention of the prepared piano, and his famous 4’33”
John Cage
  The Perilous Night (1944)
John Cage
  The Ten Thousand Things:
  45’ (1954)
  34' 46.776'' (1954)
  31' 57.9864'' (1954)
  26' 1.1499'' (1955)
  27' 10.554'' (1956)

Aron Kallay, prepared piano
John Schneider, speaker
Tom Peters, double bass
Vicki Ray, prepared piano
William Winant, percussion

Eric Smigel, Associate Professor of Music and Coordinator of the Musicology Program at San Diego State University, is a pre-concert lecturer for La Jolla Music Society. His interest in music of the 20th century, and its relation to other arts, is expressed in a SDSU course in psychedelic rock of the 1960s, as well as research and publications about such American experimental composers as David Tudor, James Tenney and John Cage. Written in 1944 during WWII, Cage’s The Perilous Night is the composer’s last composition to intentionally express his feelings. The evening’s first public performance of The Ten Thousand Things is the simultaneous performing of five solos from the series of works known only by their duration in minutes and seconds.

CLASSIC CAGE
Sunday 4:30 p.m. September 9, 2012
Annenberg Beach House; no admission charge
RSVP required: http://www.eventbrite.com/org/199463539

John Cage
  Sonatas & Interludes (1946-48)

Adam Tendler, prepared piano

This collection of interrelated works represents the pinnacle of Cage’s music written for prepared piano. The piano is elaborately altered according to a prescribed plan using a variety of hardware, and pieces of rubber and plastic to give the instrument an otherworldly sound. Cage wrote it after studying with Ananda Coomaraswamy, the Indian art historian who was in particular interested in the eight states of rasa: love, mirth, fury, tragedy, aversion, terror, heroism, wonder. These emotions and their associations with Indian deities and specific colors are fundamental to Indian art and philosophy. With his 13 short sonatas and 11 interludes, Cage set out to explore these states in one work, which many consider among his finest achievements.