ensemBle baBel presents John Cage’s One4

Join us at AUX Performance Space as experimental Swiss septet ensemBle baBel presents John Cage’s One4. This event is free and open to the public. Throughout his career John Cage paid particular attention to percussion instruments. Early on he was interested in the length of notes, rests, and timber rather than pitch and harmony. These explorations thrived in Cage’s work with choreographer Merce Cunningham. In 1990, two years before the death of John Cage, Fritz Hauser, a young Swiss percussionist discovering New York, asked the composer if he would write a piece for solo percussion. After careful consideration, Cage wrote a score for Hauser called One4 and gave the young performer freedom to take the composition as his own: “Now Fritz it is your piece!” For this performance, Hauser will lead ensemBle baBel in a series of solo and group variations of the work, combining collage, layering, improvisation and dialogue to construct a complex and indeterminate ‘musical mobile’. Made possible through the generous support of The Knight Foundation and Pro Helvetia.