John Cage

D’Arcy Philip Gray brings authoritative performances of Cage’s works for solo percussionist. He worked with Cage in 1992 and extensively with David Tudor between 1995-96. Gray was also a musician in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (1993-95).

Child of Tree (1975) and Branches (1976) are two versions of (more or less) the same piece. The main difference between the two works is that Child of Tree is scored as a solo while Branches as a solo or ensemble piece, the latter was often performed by Cage at “Events” with Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Both pieces ask the performer to assemble a collection of instruments from the plant world and improvise on them with the help of amplification.

c/Composed Improvisation (1990): All three versions of this piece, each for a specific performer and instrument (or set of instruments), are presented here. Alternate takes of the three versions were combined in the studio to make what we refer to as the “Power Trio” version. The result was surprising to us and we decided to include two realizations here as well.

In One⁴ (1990), for solo drummer, Cage asks the performer to pick a collection of instruments, number them and then follow his dual columns of start/stop timings to execute the performance. In the context of this recording, this is by far the most restrictive score, the “least improvised”, but still leaves a lot of freedom such as timbre, dynamic, and length of note.

Informative and personal liner notes by D’Arcy Philip Gray.

c/Composed Improvisation (1990) for bass guitar, snare drum and one-sided drum, two trio versions, 8:13 / 8:14
Child of Tree (1975) for amplified plant materials, 8:11
One⁴ (1990) for solo drummer, 6:56
c/Composed Improvisation (1990), solo versions: for snare drum alone (8:12), for Steinberger bass guitar (8:12), for one-sided drums with or without jangles (8:03)
Branches (1976) for amplified plant materials, 16:12

D’Arcy Philip Gray, percussion and bass guitar