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Tonight’s program features a recorded program that was created for the Galerie Thaddeus Ropac in London, Salzburg, and Paris, which was heard successively from November 28, 2018 to November 16, 2019 to accompany a showing of John Cage’s “Ryoanji” drawings, graphite pencil rock tracing works on handwoven paper that date from the early 1980s and that collectively speak to the artist’s devotion to the famous Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto. The recording we’ll hear is a composite looping of portions of Cage’s various musical works entitled Ryoanji: Solos for Oboe, Flute, Contrabass, Voice, Trombone with Percussion or Orchestral Obbligato (1983-85) which were drawn from 15 different recordings involving performers from all over the world. Cage dedicated each of his five distinct scores to the premiere performers of the works: Joélle Léandre (double bass), Robert Aitkin (flute), James Fulkerson (trombone), Isabelle Ganz (voice), and Michael Pugliese (percussion), all of whom are heard in the present mix. The Galerie Thaddeus Ropac exhibition was simple and beautiful, the Ely House in London perhaps the most perfect place I’d ever visited wherein Cage’s exquisite and peaceful drawings were shown. The exhibition was curated by Julia Peyton-Jones, and the design of the audio portion was overseen by Victoria Miguel. Also noteworthy is the elegant little exhibition booklet, compiled and written in the main by James Pritchett.