Merce Cunningham Dance Company

Experiments in the Studio:

an MCDC new music series

Building off of a successful first season, Experiments in the Studio returns this fall for a second series of concerts, featuring an exciting new slate of musicians.

November 17 – An Evening with Joan La Barbara

December 1 – Curtis Bahn, Keiko Uenishi, Alex Waterman

Spring 2009 dates will be announced shortly.

Experiments in the Studio celebrates Merce Cunningham’s commitment to commissioning more new music by American composers than any other single choreographer, and the historic relationship between Merce Cunningham and John Cage, Founding Music Director of MCDC.

All concerts in the series are FREE and will take place in the

Merce Cunningham Studio at 55 Bethune Street on Monday nights at 8:30 PM. No reservations required; call 212.255.8240 x19 for more information.

Experiments in the Studio is made possible by a generous grant from The New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropic Advisors, the American Music Center: Live Music for Dance program, and through public support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Concert Calendar

Stay tuned for information and concert calendar for the second season of Experiments in the Studio, starting in the Fall 2008.

Past Performances

June 23, 2008

An Evening of solo and group improvisation with

Newton Armstrong, David Linton, Maria Chavez, Stephan Moore

May 5, 2008

Richard Teitelbaum Piano Tree (World Premiere)

Marina Rosenfeld mirror mirror (World Premiere)

David Behrman Freeze Dip (2008)

Miguel Frasconi These Intertwined Portraits (World Premiere)

Performers: Robert Black, Hiroko Sakurazawa, J.G.Thirlwell

March 31, 2008

An Evening with Takehisa Kosugi

Differentiation (2008), Night Music (2008), Multiplex (2008)

Performers: Takehisa Kosugi

February 4, 2008

An Evening with Christian Wolff

Exercises 1 and 10 (1974), Exercise 18 (1975), Grete (2007) New York premiere, Jasper (1991), Duo 7 (2007) World premiere

Performers: Robert Black (contrabass), Timothy Fain (violin), Larry Polansky (electric guitar), Robyn Schulkowsky (percussion), Christian Wolff (piano, melodica).

January 7, 2008

George Lewis Artificial Life 2007 (NYC Premiere)

Fast Forward 44 instructions (World Premiere)

Zeena Parkins Opus Araneum(World Premiere)

John King Triple Unity (World Premiere)

Performers: Jenny Lin (piano) and Charlotte Dobbs (soprano).

November 19, 2007

An Evening with Gordon Mumma, performed by composer Gordon Mumma (piano and live electronics), Jenny Lin (piano), and Conrad Harris (violin and electronic soundscape).

Sixpac Sonatas (1980s) NYC Premiere

seven Dedications (1990s) NYC Premiere

Gambreled Tapestry (2007) World Premiere

Etude on Oxford Changes (1957–60) NYC Premiere

Yawawot (2003)

Rendition Series (2006) NYC Premiere

September 17, 2007

Featuring composer/performers David Behrman, John King, and Stephan Moore. Behrman's Long Throw (2006 MCDC commission), King's Quadrilogic Unity, Moore's Deck, and Christian Wolff’s Or 4 People

Repertory Composers

Maryanne Amacher, Robert Ashley, Larry Austin, David Behrman, Pierre Boulez, Paul Bowles, Earle Brown, Gavin Bryars, John Cage, Andrew Culver, Stuart Dempster, Baby Dodds, John Driscoll, Brian Eno, Morton Feldman, Serge Garrant, Jon Gibson, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Alexei Haieff, Josef Matthias Hauer, Pierre Henry, Lou Harrison, Alan Hovhaness, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Ben Johnston, Norman Lloyd, Annea Lockwood, Alvin Lucier, Martin Kalve, John King, Takehisa Kosugi, Gordon Mumma, Conlon Nancarrow, Bo Nilsson, Pauline Oliveros, Emanuel Dimas di Melo Pimenta, Maxwell Powers, Michael Pugliese, Radiohead, Pat Richter, Erik Satie, Pierre Schaffer, Sigur Ros, Mikel Rouse, Igor Stravinsky, Ivan Tcherpnin, Yasunao Tone, Gregory Tucker, David Tudor, Ben Weber, Chou Wen-Chung, Christian Wolff, La Monte Young, and Walter Zimmermann.

TAKEHISA KOSUGI, Music Director, was born in Tokyo in 1938. His multi-media music has been presented at international festivals during the past two decades and sound installations have been exhibited in Europe, the United States and Japan. He studied musicology at Tokyo University of Arts where he graduated in 1962. His event pieces of 1960s were introduced by Fluxus to the world. During the 1960s in Japan he cofounded the Group Ongaku, the first Japanese group for free improvisation and event, and the Taj Mahal Travellers, an electro-acoustic/multi media band for free music in various environments. Kosugi came to the U.S. in 1977 in order to compose and perform for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and has been associated with the company since that time. He has been a DAAD artist in Berlin and a guest lecturer at the Hochschule Bildende Kunste in Hamburg. His music has been recorded on the Lovely Music Label.

JOHN CAGE, (1912-1992) Founding Music Director, studied with Richard Buhlig, Henry Cowell, Adolph Weiss, and Arnold Schoenberg. In 1951 he organized a group of musicians and engineers to make music on magnetic tape. In 1952, at Black Mountain College, he presented a theatrical event considered by many to be the first Happening. He was associated with Merce Cunningham from the early 1940's, and was Musical Advisor for Merce Cunningham Dance Company until his death in 1992. Cage and Cunningham were responsible for a number of radical innovations in musical and choreographic composition, such as the use of chance operations and the independence of dance and music.

Cage was the recipient of many awards and honors, beginning in 1949 with a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Award from the National Academy of Arts and Letters for having extended the boundaries of music through his work with percussion orchestra and his invention in 1940 of the prepared piano. Cage was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1968, to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1978, and was inducted into the 50-member American Academy of Arts and Letters in May 1989. He was named Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture in 1982, and received an Honorary Doctorate of Performing Arts from the California Institute of the Arts in 1986. Cage was Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University for the 1988-1989 academic year. He was a laureate of the 1989 Kyoto Prize given by the Inamori Foundation.

In 1987 he wrote, designed, and directed Europeras 1 & 2, with the assistance of Andrew Culver, for the Frankfurt Opera. 101 (1989) was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University. Europeras 3 & 4 was commissioned by the Almeida Music Festival and Modus Vivendi Foundation in 1990. The 1991 Z?rich June Festival was devoted to the work of John Cage and James Joyce.

Cage was the author of many books, among them Silence (1961), A Year from Monday (1968), M (1973), Empty Words (1979), and X (1983), all published by Wesleyan University Press. I - VI (the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures delivered at Harvard in 1988-89) was published by the Harvard University Press in spring 1990. This book includes transcripts of the question and answer periods that followed each lecture, and an audiocassette of Cage reading one of the six lectures. Conversing with Cage, a book length composition of excerpts from interviews, by Richard Kostelanetz, was published in 1988 by Limelight Editions. Cage's music is published by the Henmar Press of C.F. Peters Corporation and has been recorded on many labels.

Since 1958, many of Cage's scores have been exhibited in galleries and museums. A series of fifty-two watercolors, the New River Watercolors, executed by Cage at the Miles C. Horton Center at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University was shown at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC in April/May 1990. In 1991, the Cunningham Dance Foundation produced Cage/Cunningham, a documentary film on the collaboration of Merce Cunningham and John Cage, partly funded by PBS, under the direction of Elliot Caplan. John Cage died in New York City on August 12, 1992.

Music Committee

David Behrman John King

johnkingmusic.com

Stephan Moore Christian Wolff

oddnoise.com