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All Things Cage: John Cage and Yvar Mikhashoff Perform Cage's Empty Words with Music for Piano and One7 (Audio)

Feb 04, 2023
Hosted by Laura Kuhn, Executive Director of the John Cage Trust.

Tonight’s program features a wonderful performance by John Cage and Yvar Mikhashoff of Cage’s Empty Words (1973-1974) with excerpts from Music for Piano, a series begun some 40 years earlier, as well as Cage performing One⁷ (1990), both produced and captured by Mode Records for its Mode Records 200 CD, John Cage Edition 41, released in 2009. This performance took place in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1991, coinciding with the premiere performance of Cage’s Europera 5 at the North American New Music Festival, in which Mikhashoff also performed. Mikhashoff instigated Cage’s composition of Europera 5, and he was among Cage’s favorite musicians; his death at the lamentably young age of 52 was mourned by virtually everyone who had the privilege to work with him.