John Cage Essentials

When you write a so-called “silent” piece like "4'33”," you might expect most people to remember you for that and only that. But there's so much more to Cage's radical (and very musical) output: his piano writings alone include the gorgeous “In a Landscape,” the jazzy “Ad Lib,” and the random-chance operations of the Music of Changes. The composer's writings on indeterminacy give today's interpreters license to plays works in a variety of ways, but sometimes the old-school Cage strategies work best—as with Third Coast Percussion's use of turntables during “Credo in US.”