Sonatas
and Interludes. 2006
Two channel video to accompany live performance of John Cage's Sonatas
and Interludes
Photo courtesy of Richard Termine for The New York Times
Emily Manzo performing John Cage’s “Sonatas and Interludes”
(1948) for prepared piano with live visual accompaniment on video screens.
The Stone, New York City, July 2006.
In
approaching the challenge of providing images to accompany such subtle
and complex music, we found ourselves exploring these concepts of rasa,
or fixed emotional states, as Cage did. These ideas of emotional permanency
provided us with an opportunity to bring many elements together, all
of which for us have resonance here; the fixed energy levels of electrons,
the flicking of a switch, the still image, emotional and artificial
intelligence, the specific functionality of technology. And coupled
with these ideas of the static, ideas of growth and change, the move
towards tranquility.

Music
Review
John Cage Wrote an Earful, and It’s Served With an Eyeful
By STEVE SMITH
Published: August 1, 2006. The New York Times.
Practically
any concert of John Cage’s music involves some degree of chance:
indeterminacy was at the heart of the composer’s philosophy. Still,
some performances are more unpredictable than others. In the recital
presented Sunday by the pianist Emily Manzo at the Stone, a tiny performing
arts space on the Lower East Side, the uncertainty had less to do with
the music than with the two video screens that surrounded her.
The “Sonatas and Interludes” for prepared piano, composed
in 1948, is one of Cage’s signature creations: a set of 16 brief
pieces punctuated by four slightly longer ones, performed on a piano
with metal bolts, rubber erasers and other implements wedged into its
strings. Ms. Manzo’s attention to detail was exceptional; clearly,
she had the composer’s notes under her fingers and his particular
timbres committed to memory. She found a natural shape and flow for
each movement, digging beneath its clangorous surface to reveal a playful
dance or tender lullaby.
Flanking Ms. Manzo, the video artists David Phillips and Paul Rowley
used tiny two-octave keyboards to manipulate digital images on laptop
computers, projecting the results on two screens facing the pianist
and audience. Both artists independently wielded a shared visual vocabulary;
on one screen, a particular image might hold steady, while on the other
the same pattern might be shifting, dancing or shattering into dozens
of fragments.
Apart from the liquid blobs that splashed in time with Ms. Manzo’s
opening notes, Mr. Phillips and Mr. Rowley rarely tried to illustrate
Cage’s notes literally. Instead, they projected images of clocks
and carousels, electronic schematics and the occasional grainy home-movie
snippet to suggest qualities of restlessness, energy, impermanence and
tranquillity found in Cage’s music. Occasionally, the video was
a colorful distraction; at its best moments, it functioned as a sort
of Kirlian photography, rendering visible the music’s characteristic
aura.
The intersection of sound and vision became especially effective in
the program’s final stretch. In the Sonata XIV, balls of light
flitted about like insects skimming the surface of a pond, just as untreated
notes similarly rang out over a steady ripple of prepared tones. Midway
through the movement, Mr. Rowley’s system failed. Mr. Phillips
continued to the end of the next section, then dimmed his projector
as well. Whether by design or sheer chance, Ms. Manzo ended the performance
alone, her gentle notes ringing at length in the dark..