Unlike the 1958 premiere, this 1964 performance of David Tudor’s first realization of John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra features an all-star cast of seasoned experimentalists. Pauline Oliveros organized the concerts at Mills College in honor of Tudor and played horn and tuba. Morton Subotnick, a cofounder with Oliveros of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, played the clarinet part. Tudor performs many of his virtuosic graph realizations, and in a context in which the accompanying instruments give him plenty of space to be heard. In a way that would challenge all who might claim Tudor did not improvise, comparison between this performance and the Town Hall premiere illustrates how flexible Tudor’s performances of his own realizations can be; the timing and rhythm of any performance of the same realization sheet can vary quite significantly.
Concert for Piano and Orchestra by John Cage © 1960 by Henmar Press Inc. Permission by C.F. Peters Corporation. All rights reserved.
