2011-2012 Southwest Chamber Music

 Celebrates John Cage Centennial 

Background information: 

Concert 1:

The programs begin March 3 and 4 at the Japanese-American National Museum in Little Tokyo with a rare performance of One 6 and One 10 which Cage composed around two audio-kinetic sculptures by artist Mineko Grimmer designed as a duet with the violin, which will be performed by Southwest violinist Shalini Vijayan.  The performances are repeated at the museum on March 4.

Concert 2:

On March 10, in the Williamson Gallery at Art Center College of Design, Cage's Atlas Eclipticalis, Variations IV, and 4'33" (no. 2) (0'00") are performed together for the first time ever, though originally intended by Cage to be performed this way. Students from the Hamilton Academy of Music join musicians of Southwest for the concert. The three works represent various states of being: Nirvana (Atlas), Samsara (Variations IV), and Individual Action (0'0"), which is appropriate to the exhibit in the Gallery curated by Jay Belloli.   

The exhibit, "The History of Space Photography," premieres in the Williamson Gallery at Art Center College of Design Friday, February 24, 2012, where it will be on view through May 6.  The exhibition presents the extraordinary variety of astronomical photographs that have been created since the development of the photography in the early 19th century through some of the most recent images received from space.  The exhibition includes photographs of the Earth from space, the solar system, and the universe beyond.

Concert 3:

The Pacific Asia Museum hosts the concert on March 11 which focuses on Cage's use of percussion in many guises, and it is performed this evening by Southwest percussionist Lynn Vartan. In Branches the percussionist uses amplified pods, cacti and other plant materials and I-ching chance operations. Music for Carillon #5 is written on an old board, following the grain structure of the wood as music staff lines. 

Radio Music is a work composed using chance operations. The 8 parts indicate between 26 (part E) and 64 (parts C and G) different frequencies between 55 and 156 kHz, notated using numbers not conventional staves.  Lines indicate silences, "expressed by maximum amplitude." The number of silences varies between parts and are to be programmed by the player.

In Etudes Boreales I - IV, for cello and percussion, Cage used the star-charts of the Atlas Borealis to compose this work. In the cello part, pitch, duration, articulation, color and dynamics are notated precisely for every sound. The piano part is written for a percussionist. Peter Jacobson, cellist at Southwest, joins Vartan in this work.

The Pacific Asia Museum was once the Pasadena Art Museum where in 1965 John Cage was interviewed by David Tudor at the groundbreaking "Encounters Series," a collaboration of the Coleman Chamber Music Association, the museum, and CalTech from 1964 to 1973. 

John Cage score Photo: Shalini Vijayan

Concert 4:

The concert on March 24, in Zipper Concert Hall at The Colburn School, is a celebration of Henry David Thoreau, a major influence on Cage. The program consists of two works engaging Thoreau's words and drawings.  Lecture on the Weather (with film), was commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Company and composed in collaboration with a filmmaker and a recording engineer.  It is prefaced with an essay by Cage, read live, and followed by fragments of Thoreau's "Walden," his Journal, and "Lecture on Civil Disobediance," selected in chance operations.  It is to be performed, according to Cage, by 12 men, "preferably American men who have become Canadian citizens."

Helping make up the 12 men of "Lecture" will be Terrence Roberts, a member of the Little Rock 9 which de-segregated Central High School in Little Rock in 1954 during the Civil Rights Movement;  E. Randol Schoenberg, grandson of the composer Arnold Schoenberg; Michael Alexander, Executive Director of "Grand Performances" in Los Angeles; Thor Steingraber, Vice President of Programming for the Music Center; John Schneider, host of "Global Village" on KPFK-FM; and Charles Dillingham, former Managing Director of the Center Theater Group. 

Score (40 Drawings by Thoreau) & 23 Parts: Twelve Haiku followed by a Recording of the Dawn at Stony Point, New York, August 6, 1974 (full title), was composed by means of the Thoreau drawings upon twelve lines of music staves which serve as graphic notation for the musicians.  The drawings upon each line are arranged in the 5-7-5 structure of a Haiku poem, and each line is a Haiku.  Finally, the musicians stop and a tape of the dawn at Stony Point invites the world into the concert hall.  

The concert is performed with a cast of 12 guest speakers and 23 musicians.

Cage 2012 is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts American Masters program, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and E. Randol and Pamela Schoenberg.

Programs will include world premieres of commissioned works by

Unsuk Chin (Homage to Gyorgy Ligeti), Anne LeBaron, Vu Nhat Tan (The Song of Napalm), Hyo-shin Na (Morning Study), Gabriela Ortiz (De animos y quebrantos) and others to be announced. National and international co-commissioners include the Nieuw Ensemble in Amsterdam, the Tanglewood Music Center of the Boston Symphony, members of the New York Philharmonic, FONCA in Mexico City, and the Vietnam National Academy of Music in Hanoi, Vietnam. The final schedule and programs will be announced in March 2012.

Commissions for the 25th Anniversary of Southwest Chamber Music are supported by the James Irvine Foundation, Meet the Composer, Sue Bienkowski and Wang Chung Lee, and the Schoenberg Family Charitable Foundation.