Concert: Reclaimed

Philip Thomas curates and performs in this extended concert at the 2008 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
In 1958, artists Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Emile de Antonio arranged for a retrospective concert of John Cage’s music in New York Town Hall. The concert covered a span of 25 years of compositions, from the early Six short inventions (written around the time Cage was studying with Schoenberg) and culminating in the premiere performance of the Concert for piano and orchestra. This event recreates that concert with some differences: the innovative tape piece Williams Mix will be performed in a cleaned up and extended version by Larry Austin; instead of extracts from the Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano, six composers from across the globe have been invited to compose responses to that work; and the Concert for piano and orchestra will be performed in an extended version with complete instrumentation – and with considerably more devotion to the music than that shown by the original musicians, who deliberately wrecked the first performance!