[silence] Cage and Jazz

[Phil Gentry]

Jean Erdman, who choreographed the dance Imaginary Landscape No. 5 was  
written for, pressured (in a friendly way!) Cage into using jazz  
records for the work, and I believe he used records from her  
collection. Incidentally, Rebecca Kim recently wrote a dissertation on  
post-war indeterminacy at Columbia, and has a chapter on Cage's  
relationship with jazz. I recommend it highly; among other things she  
discusses his collaborations with AACM musicians in the 1960s. There  
is also, incidentally, a funny anecdote in Carolyn Brown's recent  
memoirs, about all of the dancers in the Cunningham company aching to  
dance to jazz. They get rather mutinous at one point.

When I was an undergraduate, in one of my composition courses we had  
to make a realization of Imaginary Landscape No. 5 using a computer.  
It actually worked better than you'd think; unlike Williams Mix, which  
is somewhat "about" the physical process of obsessively slicing and  
dicing magnetic tape, I think the aesthetic approach of good ol' #5 is  
fine with a cleaner sound--it lets you focus less on scotch tape, and  
more on figuring out what "mobility to immobility" could possibly mean.

But I'd also love to hear the original--I think Rebecca talks about  
its whereabouts in her dissertation, but I don't recall the answer.

phil

----------
Phil Gentry
pgentry@me.com


On Oct 9, 2008, at 5:12 PM, Thomas Gaudynski wrote:

> Re: this thread
>
> When I made my "realization" of Imaginary Landscape No. 5 circa 1976  
> (and determined to use only Cage phonograph records instead of jazz  
> phonograph records), I did a bit of research and seem to recollect,  
> that because Cage's "tape music" explorations of the time were  
> financed by Paul Williams (i.e., Williams Mix, et al), and besides  
> the stated goal of using jazz recordings which he disliked (like the  
> radio, consequently No. 4 and Radio Music, etc.), I imagined the  
> recordings came from William's collection. What jazz recordings  
> would a young hip architect from Black Mountain College have had  
> available in 1952? Or were sitting around in Louis and Bebe Baron's  
> NYC studio, which is where I imagine the piece was created. Parker,  
> Mingus, Roach, Baker, Mulligan, MJQ, Getz, Gillespie, et al? And  
> speaking of which, has anyone ever heard the resulting recording?
>
> The Hat Art recording of No. 5 using Anthony Braxton's work (I  
> assume for copyright reasons) doesn't seem to follow the score  
> correctly, and being done digitally, seems like the wrong approach  
> for this clearly analog piece.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Thomas Gaudynski
>
> Necessary Arts LLC
> www.myspace.com/thomasgaudynski
>
>
>
>
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