the roots of this cd date back to 2011 when the assembled musicians started to think about a possible contribution for the upcoming centennial of john cage’s birth. we soon came to the conclusion that we were more interested in searching for relevant traits of his experimental thought amongst younger composers rather than perform anything by cage himself.
in 2007, during a teaching stint at the california institute of the arts, i encountered an active scene of young composers in los angeles (cage’s birthplace after all) who subscribed to an experimental approach to music. the presence of james tenney (until his death in 2006) and michael pisaro, both of whom were teaching at calarts, was certainly seminal for the creation of this scene. almost all of the composers presented herein have studied with either one or, in certain cases, both of them. they form a loose group with varying interests, maintaining an online publication called “the experimental music yearbook”, which is a billboard for relevant information as well as a repository for scores. often they flock to “the wulf.”, a venue for experimental music run by some of those represented on this cd.
their musical interests range from the exploration of tuning (lamb), to complex mathematical graphs and game theory (winter), the use of dry ice to sound triangles (mooney) and to the radio-receiver as a sole sound source (anderson).
accentuating the tonal content of field recordings forms the core of wada’s piece, while kallmyer invites the performers to follow the course of a river as a score. steenberge takes us through a twisted waltz, closer to satie’s paris than strauss’s vienna and tolimieri constructs a trio from melodic fragments and heterophonic ambiguities. cazan’s conceptual strategy employs a computer, gradually reducing available pitches by filtering out ones that have been heard, and so asks that the musicians gently play “independently, alongside a spoken reading of the poem”. the pieces by tenney and pisaro are classics in their genre and have been covered elsewhere already; however, i hear aspects of them resonating through some of the other pieces.
