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All Things Cage: Laura Kuhn with Russell Hartenberger and Garry Kvistad (Audio)
Russell Hartenberger and Garry Kvistad are long-time members of NEXUS, a quartet of master percussionists internationally revered for virtuosity and innovation and for making extraordinary music with the broadest array of percussion instruments imaginable. The ensemble is recognized quite simply as one of the most influential percussion ensembles to have emerged in the post-war period. NEXUS has participated in several Cage programs at Bard College since the John Cage Trust joined its ranks in 2007: the first “John Cage at Bard College Symposium” in 2009, where they were joined by Jason Treuting of So Percussion and Bard College’s own Frank Corliss, and again in 2012, Cage’s Centennial Year, when they performed in an amazing staged performance of the John Cage/Kenneth Patchen 1942 CBS radio play, The City Wears a Slouch Hat, in a program entitled “John Cage: On & Off the Air.” And in 2014, Garry Kvistad, a long-time resident of New York’s Hudson Valley, graced us with a stunning solo performance of Cage’s 27’ 10.554 for a percussionist (1956), appearing within a chance-determined musical collage of five related works Cage composed between 1953 and 1956, in a program entitled “The Ten Thousand Things.”