S.E.M. Ensemble would like you to remember: John Cage was born 100 years ago
What good are anniversaries?
It gives one incentive to look back with a vision for the future.
John Cage a Petr Kotík, 5. srpna 1992
John Cage has been associated with the S.E.M. Ensemble since the start of the group in 1970. Petr Kotik, the founder and artistic director of SEM met Cage for the first time in Vienna in 1964 (Kotik was 18 then). They performed together with the Cunningham Dance Company. When another such performance was arranged in Prague and Warsaw later the same year, Cage asked Kotik to organize other musicians to perform with them. The program included the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, David Tudor at the piano, Cage conducting. This was the third time ever that Cage had a full orchestra for the performance of the Piano Concert.
Kotik and Cage collaborated on many projects and performances since 1970. Their last collaboration was to prepare the complete Atlas Eclipticalis for October 1992, a performance Cage didn’t live to see.
You can hear The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble, Joseph Kubera on piano, Petr Kotik conducting, in a 1992 recording of Concert for Piano and Orchestra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z5EpvdtmB4
The same year, the SEM Orchestra performed the first complete (86 musicians) Atlas Eclipticalis at Carnegie Hall, David Tudor performing Winter Music simultaneously. This performance was repeated in Berlin’s Konzerthaus in May, 1993, recorded and released on the Asphodel label.
You can hear Atlas Eclipticalis and Winter Music on Bandcamp together with 103, Kotik conducting the Janacek Philharmonic:
https://semensemble.bandcamp.com/album/john-cage-atlas-eclipticalis-winter-music-103
You can also see S.E.M. Ensemble performance of Song Books I, II here: https://youtu.be/PNiMTVHdIrI
It is a 90-minue live performance at the festival of new opera NODO in 2018 on YouTube.
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