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Friday, October 5 and Saturday, October 6, 8:00 pm Littlefield Concert Hall
PAULINE OLIVEROS’ 80TH AND JOHN CAGE’S 100TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION WITH MERCE CUNNINGHAM’S EVENT WITH CANFIELD
Friday October 5–MUSIC AND DANCE PERFORMANCE
Sixteen Dances (Cage), performed in the Littlefield Concert Hall
Intermission–Rock Piece (Oliveros), audience invited to walk across the lawn
Event with Canfield (Oliveros/Cunningham/Morris), performed in the Haas Pavilion
Saturday October 6–MUSIC AND DANCE PERFORMANCE
Cistern Simulation (Jonas Braasch/Oliveros), performed in the Littlefield Concert Hall
Variations IV (Cage)
Intermission–audience invited to walk across the lawn
Event with Canfield(Oliveros/Cunningham/Morris), performed in the Haas Pavilion
The Fine Arts Division of Mills College celebrates Pauline Oliveros’s 80th birthday and the John Cage Centennial with two evenings of dance, music, and art on October 5 and 6, 2012 in Haas Pavilion and the Littlefield Concert Hall. Both evenings will feature Event with Canfield, especially configured for the Mills Repertory Dance Company by Visiting Artist Holley Farmer from segments of Merce Cunningham’s choreography for Canfield with the musical score by Oliveros (performed by music faculty John Bischoff, Chris Brown, James Fei, and Maggi Payne) combined with other Cunningham repertory sequences arranged into an Event. The Mills College Art Museum and sculptor Ethan Worden will recreate the column of lights from drawings for the original lighting décor designed by Robert Morris for the premiere in 1969. Event with Canfield comes full circle from the initial event performed by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at the opening of the Haas Pavilion in January 1971.
Works in the programs will interact with the space in and around the Concert Hall. Cage’s Variations IV (1963) uses chance to determine where “any number of players, any number of sounds, with or without other activities or combinations of sounds produced by any means” at locations in and outside of the Music Building. Oliveros with trombonist Stuart Dempster and saxophonist Jonas Braasch will use newly developed software to import the acoustical environment of the birthplace of Oliveros’s Deep Listening Band, a massive cistern 14 feet below the ground in Ft Wood Washington, into the Concert Hall. Audience members will be invited to participate in Oliveros’s Rock Piece, one of the composer’s Sonic Meditations as they walk across the lawn from Haas to Littlefield.
Members of the Mills Performing Group and guest artists will perform Cage’s Sixteen Dances (1951), a chamber work for flute, trumpet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion written for a dance by Merce Cunningham (Soloist and Company of Three) at a crucial time in Cage’s musical career just before he began composing with chance operations. Following Cunningham’s choreography Cage’s score portrays the nine permanent emotions, or rasas of East Indian aesthetics, four light and four dark, all of which have a tendency towards tranquility.
The Fine Arts Division is inspired and honored to present the work of Oliveros, Cage, Cunningham and Morris.
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