30 March 2012, 6:30 p.m.
John Cage: number pieces
Ensemble Garage

John Cage's late works, the "number pieces," constitute a series that Cage composed in the last six years of his life from 1987 to 1992, the titles referring to the respective number of players. One is, for example, a piece for a soloist, One4 is the fourth piece for a soloist, and 101 designates a piece for an orchestra with 101 musicians. The Ensemble Garage is presenting five number pieces: One4, Two, Four6, Five, and Seven. Some of the pieces, such as four6 or five do not restrict the number of players or type of instruments, others are for a set number and call for specific instruments. All five number pieces take recourse to the time-brackets principle that Cage often used. Each player pursues a performance in an individually determined amount of time, which is coordinated by means of stopwatches. Within a certain period of time, the noted performances are sounded, most of them only prescribing a few of the parameters of pitch, length, dynamics, sound characteristic or sequence. Each piece thus develops its own sculpture of sound that undergoes continuous transformation. And each piece sounds different with every performance. Umberto Eco considered Cage's oeuvre as an open work of art applied to music, characterized here by the freedom of choice of the individual. The transparent structure of the number pieces demands musically a ritual for each note, for each sound, for stillness. "If you celebrate it, it's art, if you don't, it isn't"- this famous quote by Cage forms the prerequisite for the realization of his compositional ideas in the number pieces.

Ensemble Garage was founded at the beginning of 2009 by composter Brigitta Muntendorf. The ensemble, which consists of graduates of the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne creates a platform for musicians, composers, and other artists in order to be able to perform new ideas, works, and concepts. Ensemble Garage focuses on works by young composers and on joint rehearsals with them. For each concert, an overall concept is designed, in which the work, content and performance situation are placed in relationship to each other in the form of a so-called staged concert. The ensemble seeks answers to questions such as who and where our generation really is, what it thinks and what moves them, what it uses and how it goes about it. And of course, what it listens to and what it wants to write.

Flute: Liz Hirst; Clarinet: Richard Haynes; Saxophone: Frank Riedel; Percussion: Rie Watanabe; Violin: Maximilian Haft; Viola: Annegret Mayer-Lindenberg; Cello: Eva Boesch

Admission: € 8. / Reduced 5.

Art museum of the
Archdiocese of Cologne