BtB: Avant-Garde Composition
The avant-garde neither started nor finished with John Cage; while much of the art world are familiar with bits and bobs of his, there’s somewhat of a question mark-shaped chasm in terms of what came next. Bangthebore.org don’t purport to remedy that, but for this programme of events we’ll be reporting back on what we’ve found on our travels into the blurrier edges of avant-garde composition.
What’s up then? We’ll have a couple of pieces by Cage himself – pieces that are lesser-known than the notorious 4’33”, pieces that show off the strange and magical world he created. We’ll have a wee bit of early-ish Steve Reich, showing that there’s more to minimalism than maximum repitition. From the forensics of sound-art we’ll bring a solo for triangle from Alvin Lucier (someone had to write it, and we’re bally well going to play it). Getting into the stuff that’s maybe less well-known (but definitely should be better known), we’ll be teasing and gently tinting the soundscape with the Wandelweiser-associated composer Sam Sfirri and we’ll be performing an intensive listening (and intensively quiet) piece by Charlie Sdraulig.
Your ears will love you for it, promise.