"All Things Cage" is a weekly program featuring conversations between Laura Kuhn, Director of the John Cage Trust, and Cage experts and enthusiasts from around the world. If youd like to propose a guest or a topic for a future program, write directly to Laura at lkuhn@johncage.org.Laura Kuhn presents the first recording of John Cages Europera 5, preceded by her reading Recollections of the Premiere Performance by Yvar Mikhashoff. This recording of Europera 5 was produced by Brian Brandt and released on the Mode Records label as Mode 36 in 1995, with performers Yvar Mikhashoff, Martha Herr, Gary Burgess, Jan Williams, and Don Metz. Europera 5 is the last and most diminutive of Cages operas " preceded by Europeras 1 & 2 (1984-1987) and Europeras 3 & 4 (1991) " and was instigated by pianist Yvar Mikashoffs desire for a small, more practical and portable, and more easily performed work in the series, which had its premiere in Buffalo at the North American New Musical Festival on April 12, 1991.
This weeks program brings back Paul B. Franklin, an independent scholar and a leading expert on Marcel Duchamp based in Paris and Cret who graced us with his presence last week on All Things Cage. As we learned, from 2000 to 2016, Paul was the editor in chief of the annual, bi-lingual scholarly journal Etant donne Marcel Duchamp, one of the most highly regarded publications devoted to the artist and his work; Vol. 6 from the series is devoted to Duchamp and Cage, and an image of it graces this weeks show page. Paul also worked with Duchamps heirs for many years, managing the artists estate. Ive brought Paul back simply because there was so much more to talk about relative to our respective lives that might be of interest to others " the career paths weve taken in particular, but really much more, having to do with our respective families and the relationships weve forged out of the colorful lives weve had the good fortune to live. And, as luck would have it, Paul felt the same. This weeks program is far more personal than the last, very much about creating a life, and with it a career, and thus may be of particular interest to young artists just starting out, or those with lots of experience who are contemplating a change. And, as were reprising Pauls visit, well also be reprising Margaret Leng Tans beautiful recording of Cages 1947 Music for Marcel Duchamp, heard courtesy of Mode Records, from MODE 106, John Cage Volume 25, The Piano Works 4, dating from 2002.
The late Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Kenneth Silverman once described his "Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage" (Knopf, 2012) as the hardest book hed ever written. This was because, as he put it, pick up any rock and theres John Cage! Indeed, Cage was not only a world-renowned composer, numbering among his compositions the still notoriously tacet 433, but a ground-breaking poet, a philosopher, a chess master who studied with Marcel Duchamp, a macrobiotic chef, a devotee of Zen Buddhism, a prolific visual artist, and an avid and pioneering mycologist. He was also life partner to the celebrated American choreographer, Merce Cunningham, for nearly half a century, and thus well known in the world of modern dance. Episode 099. EVERGREEN
Paul B. Franklin, Part II
Weekly program featuring conversations between Laura Kuhn, Director of the John Cage Trust, and Cage experts and enthusiasts from around the world.
00:57:34
1
Dec. 15, 2022
Produced for Wave Farm in the Hudson Valley in New York.
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