Last week, the largest festival-conference for the centenary of John Cage’s birth took place in York: Getting Nowhere, an international festival organised by staff and students from the University of York, through the first year’s Practical Project. Among the many events taking place was a late night promenade concert of simultaneous performances of Cage’s Winter Music, Atlas Eclipticalis and Solos for voice 45 and 48, around the University of York Music Department; a ‘moveable feast’ entitled ‘Music and Mushrooms’; talks galore by Peter Dickinson and other international Cage experts.
Performance highlights were many, but the most moving was undoubtedly Nicky Losseff’s charismatic, subtle and ultimately tranquil interpretation of Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (1946-8). You can read a review of her performance here. Again, personally, the stand-out concert event was the sight of a multitude of nearly 100 students and guest performers, all wearing the self-effacing, clock-faced black T-shirt citing the ‘Getting Nowhere’ status quo, scattered across all levels and corners of the Ron Cooke Hub on the Heslington East campus, performing the entire Songbooks (1970), with all kinds of diverting, curious and inexplicable, yet marvellously engaging actions.
But I have not yet mentioned the four wonderfully playful interpretations of Cage’s Aria heard earlier that night, by Kerry Andrew, Sarah Dacey and Anna Snow of Juice Vocal Ensemble, all with an absurd mix of children’s toys, and a gripping dramatic turn by Mirjam Frank. These were all sung against the Concert for Piano and orchestra (1957-8) with soloist Joseph Houston, who also appeared in the gradual, intimate unravelling of one of Cage’s late number pieces, Fourteen (1990).
I was fortunate to be involved in two performances. The first was to conduct a sinfonietta of players from the Getting Nowhere Ensemble, comprising mainly first years on the Practical Project. We performed Earle Brown’s Available Forms I (1961), which can be experienced in one form here. The conductor’s role is to cue pages and events, listening to the spontaneous interactions between the 18 players to mould the piece in the moment.
The following night I played cello in Henry Cowell’s 26 Simultaneous Mosaics (1963) with Patrick Burnett (clarinet), Zoe Craven (percussion), Christopher Leedham (piano), and Sophie Simpson (violin). Similarly open form, we each could play any mosaic (or movement) when we liked, no more than once, and stop and start within it as we pleased (though always moving linearly forward through the music).