JOHN CAGE 2012:
Atlas Eclipticalis, Variations IV, 0'00"
Southwest Chamber Music, Jeff von der Schmidt, Artistic Director
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Pasadena Art Center College of Design

John Schneider presents the Thursday morning Global Village music show on KPFK in Los Angeles, and probably does the best job of playing new and avant-garde music to radio audiences in southern California. Last Thursday, the 8th of March, he had Jeff von der Schmidt, director of Southwest Chamber Music on as a guest, and they talked about this year's 100th birthday celebration of John Cage's life and music, significant to LA because Mr. Cage was born and lived here until he was 18. Though he eventually moved to New York, Los Angeles is John Cage's hometown. Southwest Chamber Music is presenting a series of Cage concerts this year; along with a group of artist/musicians at Cal Arts, they have staked out an eventful year of surprises dedicated to Cage's music and memory. Mr. von der Schmidt did a nice job of describing Cage's importance as he promoted the concert on Saturday, featuring the significant ensemble piece Atlas Eclipticalis. I was fortunate, as a listener-member of KPFK, to call and win a pair of tickets to the concert.

Jeff Plansker accompanied me to the show and he told me about the Art Center's remarkable bridge building, designed by Craig Ellwood, which we drove under as we came in to park. The concert was presented in the Williamson Gallery, where a set of historical space photographs are on display. The gallery was split into 3 rooms by large wall divisions and framed photographs were displayed on all the walls on the interior and also on the exterior walls of the gallery. About 50 chairs were placed in sidelong rows in each third of the gallery and maybe 7 chairs with music stands were in each gallery for performers. (There were a total of 22 performers.) Mr. von der Schmidt made some opening remarks, inviting us to "make our choices" as to where we sat for the first piece and explaining that after that we were welcome to move around, as would the performers. The show was designed as a trio of pieces composed between 1961 and 1963 which Cage had spoken of as a trio which could represent Nirvana (Bliss), Samsara (Chaos) and Individual Action. We sat in front of violinist Shalini Vijayan in a chamber that included bassoon, baritone sax, trumpet, trombone, flute and double bass. At a certain start sound, Ms. Vijayan started the stopwatch on her iPhone, and for the next 42 minutes, Southwest Chamber Music, along with 15 players from the Hamilton Arts Academy intoned the tidal variations of Atlas Eclipticalis. Mr. von der Schmidt did tell us that this piece could be played for 5 hours, but that tonight they would give us a digestible chunk. He never explained that the score was created by tracing star charts onto music paper, although the space photographs were a reasonable approach to that information. Cage's minimal ensemble music is difficult. There's not a lot of form to grasp onto. It can seem like a lot of orchestral tuning up. And I find that it takes some time to get pulled into the feel of the music, which involves somewhat random super-impositions of parts being played in sequences or patterns rather like small sound events in the natural world. Or city sounds heard from an open window many floors up. There is no heavy human hand. It is some of the first "ambient" music perhaps, a field of shifting sounds that can be taken as a background for thought. Cage believed in giving certain freedoms to his players; while he clearly sketched the rules for a piece in performance there were often also choices for the performer to make as to how long to play a note or section. Maybe this is a kind of jettison of the role of the single concert master or conductor over an ensemble. There were several nice moments to Atlas Eclipticalis, when sounds made in adjoining rooms imposed themselves on the closer instruments of our own chamber and made for surround or elsewhere effects. The freedom that Cage was already promoting by 1961 is incredible; the baritone sax player was often stamping his feet as part of the score and other unorthodox techniques were inserted. I wish I hadn't heard the somewhat cliche sounds of the flexatone and whistle tube, both thrown into the mix like a couple of kitchen sinks. But the 42 minutes of Atlas Eclipticalis went by all too fast. I had just begun to get into its metre. And although there were no revelations in the music, no tone clusters that struck unheard-of chords or patterns landing like new fallen snow, it was nice to hear this music presented in a concert setting. Variations IV followed, which involved the players moving freely about the space and playing just about anything they wanted to. The audience also mulled around the space, looking at space photographs or stepping out for free beer. To close, Jeff von der Schmidt performed his version of 0'00" which involved reading a long passage about meditation, I assume written by Mr. Cage. It was a bit pedagogic and we grew tired and departed. Our 2 person concensus found that the music may have been better served if presented in a more formal listening situation, like a concert hall. Experimental music presented experimentally can become a double overkill. While the space photo gallery was a nice idea, the program in general did not advance the music particularly. Perhaps a marathon of Atlas Eclipticalis would have worked better in that space, although again I think I would have preferred it in a hall. This music is not presented frontally often enough and it is worthy of that attention. There's no reason this can't be concert music. The art school environment is great for students new to the music, and it was presented in a fun, inviting way, but for us olde fartes a more austere and intense program is preferable. Of course Cage's work benefits sometimes from presentations akin to Fluxus festivals (like the Songbooks presentation at Cal Arts in February, which I missed), where the border between "performance art" and music is blurred or gone. But after the circus, some of us just want to hear sounds being put together in new ways, which is what Cage was drawing maps to get to. Art circuses lend themselves towards repetition, they arrive at the same station. And the action is largely external. Maybe we're best off with a good stereo system and the silence in between a few good John Cage recordings. The music can then work on you internally, go inside and change something. I do hope to see more of Southwest Chamber Music's presentations during this Year of Cage. Their love and appreciation for his work, their desire to present it in exciting ways, does not go unheard.