Search - Joshua Pierce (piano & prepared piano), Robert White (tenor), American Festival of Microtonal Music Ensemble :: JOHN CAGE: A TRIBUTE (Special 2-CD Commemorative Edition)

Can you name the major keyboard composers of the twentieth century, composers who created a large, significant and original body of work for the piano, comparable to that of the great composer-pianists of earlier centuries? What about Debussy, Ravel, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Bartok, and John Cage. John Cage? Cage wrote for keyboards throughout most of his life. He was famous for inventing the prepared piano, but he also wrote for traditional piano in both standard and unconventional ways. His later piano works employed an almost ferocious complexity and virtuosity that reached the limit of pianists' technical abilities. His earlier works made complex use of electronic extensions, chance and performer collaboration. He wrote his early keyboard music for himself, and much of it was meant as accompaniment for dance performances. Cage's piano music for prepared and traditional piano was the orchestra for a whole genre of solo dance performance by some of the greatest figures in modern American dance. John Cage was born in Los Angeles in 1912. He studied in Los Angeles and New York with Robert Buhlig, Adolph Weiss, Henry Cowell, and Schoenberg himself. Weiss was Schoenberg's first American follower, and Cowell was a major innovator in his own right. In 1938, Cage was hired by the Cornish School in Seattle, where he began collaborating as pianist and composer with dancers. He also organized one of the first percussion ensembles and did pioneering work with them. All of these interests came together in Bacchanale, his first prepared piano work, which he wrote for the dancer-choreographer Syvilla Fort. Cage's idea was to put metallic and other objects into the piano strings in order to turn the keyboard into a one-man percussion band. The inspiration for the prepared piano came from African and African-American music, and from Cage's collaboration with Afro- American dancers, starting with Syvilla Fort. Joshua Pierce is considered one of the most uniquely gifted and compelling virtuosos of our time. His highly expressive and rhythmic approach to the music of John Cage is a result of his 30-year association with Cage's music, an approach that has been heralded world-wide. Pierce has played Cage's works in venues around the world, and has recorded his cycle of Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano for Public Radio International in the United States, and on the Sony Classical, Wergo, ANTS and SoLyd Records labels. On the Wergo label, Pierce can be heard in a highly regarded 4-volume CD series, John Cage: Works for Piano and Prepared Piano, which contains major compositions from the 1940's and 50's, many receiving their first recording. Pierce was awarded the coveted Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik for Volume III of that series. A prolific recording artist in all genres, Pierce has recorded nearly 200 works on more than 50 discs, including the complete piano concertos of Beethoven and Brahms, and all the major works for piano and orchestra by Gershwin and Liszt. His recordings can be heard on such labels as MSR Classics, EMI Classics, Sony Classical, Koch International, Pro Arte, Varese Sarabande, Vox, and many others.