Playlist

Recorded

9/26
Library of Congress Recordings third disk: Woody Guthrie
9/27
I'm Confessin': with Lil Armstrong, Jonah Jones, J.C. Higginbotham;
Move Members Move: Rosie Hibler & Family
San Francisco: Harry Partch
Out of the Cradle: Paul Creston
Imaginary Landscape #4: John Cage
Two Madrigals from the Triumphs of Thusnelda: Peter Schickele
9/28
Still Crazy After All These Years: Paul Simon
Los Angeles: X
9/29
Theme (Update)/Three Sides to This Story: Young Fresh Fellows
Banned Rehearsal #202: Banned Rehearsal
O for piano: Benjamin Boretz
9/30
String Quartet: Benjamin Boretz

Live

10/1

Seattle Percussion Collective
Presents the Music of John Cage
at Gallery 1412

Child of Tree
Composed Improvisation for Frame Drum and Composed Improvisation for Snare Drum (performed simultaneously)
Five
A Flower
51'15.657" for a speaking percussionist


The last, performed by Bonnie Whiting-Smith, is a combination of 27'10.554" for a percussionist and 45' for a speaker, from The Ten Thousand Things. This was the most thought-provoking work of the evening, in part because it plays out an underlying difficulty of Cage's work and thought in general. The text falls into a peculiar interstice between fragmentation and comprehensibility. I hear a desire to sever the connection and the inimical influence that verbal thought has upon musical perception. But my hearing has its own desire when faced with text, which is to comprehend the sense, or the intended sense, of it, even though I understand that this attempt may be exactly what the sense of what I am hearing is trying to tell me not to do. In the end it was very lively. Bonnie is a fabulous performer and always a pleasure to hear.

Kudos to the SPC and their intrepid performers. Becca Baggenstoss dismantled vegetables to lovely sonic effect in Child of Tree, and the rest of the crew: Greg Campbell, Paul Kikuchi, Dale Speicher, Denali Williams, and guest Sarah Bassingthwaighte all did their duly well throughout. A lovely evening.