Petr Kotik, seen here with John Cage in August 1992, will lead the Cage centennial celebration October 22 – November 7 (photo by John Maggiotto)
CAGE AT 100 / MUSIC AT 2012
Multiple venues
October 22 – November 7, free – $25, passes $50-$250
718-488-7659
www.semensemble.org
Minimalist maestro John Cage would have turned one hundred last month — he died in August 1992 at the age of seventy-nine — and his centennial is being honored by the nonprofit S.E.M. Ensemble through a series of special events taking place at several venues October 22 through November 9. Founded in 1970 by Petr Kotik, who collaborated with Cage, the Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble will kick off the “Beyond Cage” festival on October 22 with a simultaneous performance of the avant-garde theorist, composer, and musician’s “Atlas Eclipticalis” and “Winter Music,” followed by Christian Marclay’s “Shuffle,” at Carnegie Hall, featuring Joseph Kubera and Ursula Oppens on piano, with Kotik conducting. On October 26, Kotik, Kubera, composer Joel Chadabe, author Richard Kostelanetz, and Christian Wolff, Cage’s only student, will gather for the panel discussion “John Cage’s Musical Legacy” at the CUNY Graduate Center. On October 27, the FLUX Quartet will perform works by Cage, Kotik, Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, Alvin Lucier, and Luigi Nono at the Paula Cooper Gallery, followed the next night by “New Works by Emerging Composers” at the Willow Place Auditorium in Brooklyn. On October 30, Kotik will conduct Ostravská banda & Talujon Percussion, featuring mezzo soprano Katalin Károlyi, in a program at the Bohemian National Hall that includes three works by Cage as well as Karlheinz Stockhausen, James Tenney, and Salvatore Sciarrino. On November 2, the S.E.M. Ensemble will play Kotik’s “Many Many Women,” with text by Gertrude Stein, at Paula Cooper. On November 4 at Roulette, “Cage & Kubera: Grand Piano Solos” consists of pieces by Kotik, Cage, and Roscoe Mitchell performed by Ostravská banda, Kubrera, violinist Conrad Harris, saxophonist Mitchell, and flutist and conductor Kotik. On November 5, Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava will be at Alice Tully Hall for “Morton Feldman: Major Orchestral Works.” The following night, Peter Graham will present the talk “Cage, Cunningham & Rauschenberg in Prague & Ostrava (1964)” at the Bohemian National Hall, where the festival concludes November 7 with “Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava: Cage, Wolff, and Vítková,” which includes the New York premiere of Cage’s “103.”