John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, artist, and philosopher. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives.
A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sounds temporarily altered by placing bolts, screws, mutes, rubber erasers, and/or other objects on or between the strings. Its invention is usually traced to John Cage's dance music for Bacchanale, created without room for a percussion orchestra. Typical of Cage's practice as summed up in the Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48) is that each key of the piano has its own characteristic timbre, and that the original pitch of the string will not necessarily be recognizable. Further variety is available with use of the una corda pedal.
The Arditti Quartet is a string quartet founded in 1974 and led by the British violinist Irvine Arditti. The quartet is a globally recognized promoter of contemporary classical music and has a reputation for having a very wide repertoire. They first became known taking into their repertoire technically challenging pieces. Over the years, there have been personnel changes but Irvine Arditti is still at the helm, leading the group. The repertoire of the group is mostly music from the last 50 years with a strong emphasis on living composers. Their aim from the beginning has been to collaborate with composers during the rehearsal process. However, unlike some other groups, it is loyal to music of a classical vein and avoids cross-genre music. The Quartet has performed in major concert halls and cultural festivals all over the world and has the longest discography of any group of its type. In 1999, it won the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize for lifetime achievement, being the first and only group to date to receive this award.
Christian G. Wolff is an American composer of experimental classical music.
James Tenney was an American composer and music theorist. He made significant early musical contributions to plunderphonics, sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, process music, spectral music, microtonal music, and tuning systems including extended just intonation. His theoretical writings variously concern musical form, texture, timbre, consonance and dissonance, and harmonic perception.
Margaret Leng Tan is a classical music artist known for her work as a professional toy pianist, performing in major cities around the world on her 51 cm-high toy pianos. She is also known to be a classical music performer using unconventional instruments like toy drums, soy sauce dishes, and cat-food cans.
Joan Linda La Barbara is an American vocalist and composer known for her explorations of non-conventional or "extended" vocal techniques. Considered to be a vocal virtuoso in the field of contemporary music, she is credited with advancing a new vocabulary of vocal sounds including trills, whispers, cries, sighs, inhaled tones, and multiphonics.
Europeras is a series of five operas by the composer John Cage. Cage explained the punning title thus: "For two hundred years the Europeans have been sending us their operas. Now I'm sending them back."
The London Sinfonietta is an English contemporary chamber orchestra founded in 1968 and based in London.
Frank Scheffer is a Dutch cinematographer and producer of documentary film, mostly known for his work Conducting Mahler (1996) on the 1995 Mahler Festival in Amsterdam with Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Chailly, Riccardo Muti and Simon Rattle.
Sub Rosa is a record label based in Brussels specializing in avant-garde music, electronic music, world music and noise music. Directed by Guy-Marc Hinant and Frédéric Walheer, Sub Rosa has released over 250 titles of experimental, drone music, noise music, Musique concrète, ritual music and film music. The label has released archival material related to prominent twentieth-century avant-garde figures such as Marcel Duchamp, William S. Burroughs, James Joyce, and Kurt Schwitters. Sub Rosa also releases material from a number of important electronic music composers, such as ; and traditional music from around the world in anthologies of Inuit sound, the Master Musicians of Joujouka, Tibetan music and Bhutanese music, recorded by John Levy)
Bucks Music Group, founded in 1967, is an independent, international music publisher. The company has worked with many music artists, including Black Sabbath, David Bowie, The Move, Procol Harum, The Rolling Stones, and T. Rex.
WERGO is a German record label focusing on contemporary classical music. It was founded in 1962 by German art historian and music publisher Werner Goldschmidt (1903–1975) and the musicologist Helmut Kirchmeyer. Their first release, filed under "WER 60001", was Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire, conducted by Pierre Boulez. The record company is owned by Schott Music, both based in Mainz, Germany.
Sonatas and Interludes is a cycle of twenty pieces for prepared piano by American avant-garde composer John Cage (1912–1992). It was composed in 1946–48, shortly after Cage's introduction to Indian philosophy and the teachings of art historian Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, both of which became major influences on the composer's later work. Significantly more complex than his other works for prepared piano, Sonatas and Interludes is generally recognized as one of Cage's finest achievements.
Capstone Records is an American classical music record label focusing particularly on contemporary classical music. It was established by Richard Brooks in 1986 and was based in Brooklyn, New York. The label has hundreds of releases featuring a wide range of composers from William Albright, Milton Babbitt, Robert Baksa, and John Cage to Mary Jeanne van Appledorn, Rodney Waschka II, Iannis Xenakis, and Chen Yi. Performers represented on the label include such groups as the California EAR Unit, the Nevsky String Quartet, Steven Graff, and the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 2009, the company was acquired by Parma Recordings of Hampton, New Hampshire. In the spring of 2009 it was announced Capstone would be run as an imprint.
Ulrich Krieger is a German contemporary composer, performer, improviser and experimental rock musician based in Los Angeles.
Imaginary Landscape No. 3 is a composition for six percussionists by American composer John Cage and the third in the series of Imaginary Landscapes. It is the last Imaginary Landscape to feature percussion instruments and, therefore, the last one to be considered a chamber piece. It was composed in 1942.
Imaginary Landscape No. 2 is a composition for five percussionists by American composer John Cage and the second in the series of Imaginary Landscapes. It was also the first march in the set, the second being Imaginary Landscape No. 4 . It was composed in 1942.
Imaginary Landscape No. 4 is a composition for 24 performers on 12 radios and conductor by American composer John Cage and the fourth in the series of Imaginary Landscapes. It is the first installment not to include any percussion instrument at all and Cage's first composition to be based fully on chance operations. It is also the second march in the set of Imaginary Landscapes, after Imaginary Landscape No. 2 . It was composed in 1951.
Imaginary Landscape No. 5 is a composition by American composer John Cage and the fifth and final installment in the series of Imaginary Landscapes. It was composed in 1952.
