Saturday 11 March 2006

Black Mountain College

Fascinating exhibition at the Kettles Yard Gallery Cambridge about Black Mountain College (BMC), where the teachers and students formed a collective of composers, artists, poets, and craftspeople, who all shared the work at the college, grew their own vegetables, and cross-fertilised their ideas.

Concerts of pieces composed and developed at BMC were performed. John Cage's 45' for speaker was read by composer Christopher Fox, whilst 31'57.964" for prepared piano and 26'1.1499" for cello were both performed at the same time, but independently.

Cage makes some provocative assertions - There is no such thing as absolute silence - All noise is music - All music is theatre - Theatre is when there are simultaneous audible and visible events. This feels liberating and explodes the boundaries of what I thought of as 'music-theatre'!


62 mesostics Re Merce Cunningham was performed by Phil Minton, an extraordinary vocal gymnast. For 25minutes I thought he was possessed by the devil.

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