From the late 1940s until his death in 1992, John Cage was a central figure in the American avant-garde, and he collaborated with Abstract Expressionist painters and the artists Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns.
Cage invented his Musicircus in 1967 for performance in the Stock Pavilion at the University of Illinois in Champagne, Urbana. This three-hour performance is based on compositions principally by Cage and features live and pre-recorded electronics, as well as traditional instruments.
The performers range from live electronic composer/performers, including Scanner and Robert Worby, to renowned new-music specialists, among them soprano Linda Hurst and the Kreutzer String Quartet. Young ensembles from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and Goldsmiths College, and Marina Rosenfeld – leading her infamous electric-guitar ensemble, the Sheer Frost Orchestra – also perform.
Gramophone Award-winning conductor Richard Bernas curates and co-ordinates the performance. Bernas closely collaborated with Cage, performing many world and European premieres with him. Bernas has previously curated site-specific music events with Tate Modern for exhibitions such as Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962–1972, Surrealism: Desire Unbound, Constantin Brancusi and Open Systems. He also commissioned Rebecca Saunders's Chroma for the Turbine Hall.
Participant biographies:
Richard Benjafield trained at RNCM and University of Ghana. He performs internationally as a soloist and in contemporary ensembles, such as London Sinfonietta, Nash Ensemble and Three Strange Angels. He is on the staff of Guildhall School of Music.
The Kreutzer String Quartet (Peter Sheppard Skærved, Mihajlo Trandafilovski, Morgan Goff, Neil Heyde) has won an international reputation for groundbreaking performances and pioneering recordings. This includes cycles of quartets by Gerhard, Tippett, Coates, to name a but a few, and countless world premieres of works dedicated to them by composers. Shortly they will be embarking on a major research project in collaboration with Wolverhampton University.
The two Brass Quartets are formed from members of the London Kensington Sinfonia. Established in 2002, the LKS is one of London’s newest orchestras, which aims to present diverse concert programmes alongside innovative education projects.
Robin Rimbaud, aka Scanner, is one of the leading artists in electronic music media. His work crosses terrain between sound, space, image and form, involving concerts, installations and many recordings. He has collaborated with Bryan Ferry, Radiohead, Laurie Anderson, The Royal Ballet, Mike Kelley and Douglas Gordon. Scanner's performance of Fontana Mix is made in direct response to Tate Modern's Collection re-hang. The sources of the sound are sampled from popular music of the particular years relating to the artist's favourite works in the collection and as such, bear a direct correlation with the Collection in a timeline of contemporary culture.
The Langham Research Centre with Robert Worby use tape recorders. They formed in 2003 with the intention of keeping alive the art of musique concrète. Robert Worby made his first realisation of Fontana Mix in 1987, much to the astonishment of John Cage.
Curator biography:
Gramophone Award-winning conductor Richard Bernas is also Music Consultant at Tate Modern. The events he has developed there are without equivalent in European museums, gallery rather than concert based. They have included performing Feldman's Rothko Chapel and Tallis' Lamentations in Tate's Rothko Room, commissioning Rebecca Saunders' Chroma for the large Turbine Hall, performing music during such exhibitions as Arte povera and Brancusi, and collaborations with BBC Radio 3, the Almeida Festival and Roland Berger Strategy Consultants.
As well as conducting many of the BBC Orchestras and performing extensively in Europe, he has worked with many of today's leading composers. World premieres have varied from Maw's Odyssey at the Festival Hall to Stockhausen's Sternklang in the Berliner Tiergarten, including James Dillon’s Oceanos for the BBC Proms and a number of ballets for The Royal Ballet at Covent Garden, where he has been a guest for a dozen years.
Highlights of his theatre work include Mozart's Idomeneo for the Theatre du Capitole, Toulouse, the Ravel Operas for Opera Zuid, Holland, Britten's Prince of the Pagodas at Covent Garden and the MET and most recently Will Tuckett's full staging of Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale at ROH2. His recording of Turnage's Greek has recently been re-issued (Decca) and NMC will re-issue his Virgin recording of Casken's Golem.
In April 2005 he returned to Covent Garden for Henze’s Ondine and in October he conducted the Royal Opera House premiere of Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire.
