John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer and music theorist. 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 (1940), created for a performance in a Seattle venue that lacked sufficient space for a percussion ensemble. Cage has cited Henry Cowell as an inspiration for developing piano extended techniques, involving strings within a piano being manipulated instead of the keyboard. 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.
Christian G. Wolff is an American composer of experimental classical music and classicist.
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.
4′33″ is a modernist composition by American experimental composer John Cage. It was composed in 1952 for any instrument or combination of instruments; the score instructs performers not to play their instruments throughout the three movements. It is divided into three movements, lasting 30 seconds, two minutes and 23 seconds, and one minute and 40 seconds, respectively, although Cage later stated that the movements' durations can be determined by the musician. As indicated by the title, the composition lasts four minutes and 33 seconds and is marked by a period of silence, although ambient sounds contribute to the performance.
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.
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)
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.
Brooklyn Rider is an American string quartet, based in Brooklyn, New York City, United States, whose members include violinists Johnny Gandelsman and Colin Jacobsen, violist Nicholas Cords and cellist Michael Nicolas. They are mainly known for playing unusual and contemporary repertoire, and for collaborating with musicians from outside the classical music sphere. The quartet has founded the Stillwater Music Festival in 2006 to serve as a place to unveil new repertory and collaborations; the festival's last concerts were held in 2015. Brooklyn Rider also spends time teaching, including past residencies at Denison University, Dartmouth College, Williams College, MacPhail Center for the Arts, Texas A&M University and University of North Carolina.
Heiner Stadler was a jazz composer, record producer, pianist and arranger whose work has traversed genres including jazz, blues and country, baroque, classical, romantic and contemporary classical music. He was also the founder and CEO of Labor Records, distributed by Naxos Records.
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.
