Cage: Concert for Piano & Orchestra - Wolff: Resistance Apartment House & Philip Thomas

• John Cage (1912 - 1992):
• 1 Concert for Piano & Orchestra 53:08
• Christian Wolff (1934):
• 2 Resistance 44:30
• Total Runtime 01:37:38

Info for Cage: Concert for Piano & Orchestra - Wolff: Resistance

Sixty years after John Cage began composing his most extensive and ambitious compendium of indeterminate and graphic notations, the Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957-58) remains something of a mystery. Often discussed for its stunning array of unusual and elaborate notations, it is all too rarely performed. As this recording testifies, it is a rich, dazzling and mesmerising work; carnivalesque, a 20th-century masterpiece.

As a companion work to the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, celebrated American composer Christian Wolff - a close associate of Cage and fellow member of the ‘New York School’ - was commissioned to write a new work for Apartment House. The result, Resistance, was premiered in July 2017. Both works celebrate performance as a unique event, and the openness of the scores produces music which resists repetition. Both works question the nature of an ensemble, how musicians and sounds relate to one another, and the functions of musical form in ways that, like Wolff’s title, seem vital to contemporary life. This recording by Apartment House with Philip Thomas (piano) marks a long and rich engagement with the music of both Cage - in particular the Concert for Piano and Orchestra - and Wolff, whose music they have enjoyed performing for 15 years.

Apartment House
Philip Thomas, piano
Jack Sheen, conductor

Philip Thomas
(b.1972, North Devon) specialises in performing new and experimental music, including both notated and improvised music. He places much emphasis on each concert being a unique event, designing imaginative programmes that provoke and suggest connections.

He is particularly drawn to the experimental music of John Cage, Morton Feldman and Christian Wolff, and composers who broadly work within a post-Cageian aesthetic. In recent years he has been particularly associated with the music of Christian Wolff, giving the world premiere of his Sailing By in 2014 and Small Preludes in 2009, the UK premiere of Long Piano (Peace March 11), having co-edited and contributed to the first major study of Wolff's music, Changing the System: the Music of Christian Wolff, published by Ashgate Publications in 2010, and currently recording all of Wolff's solo piano music for sub rosa. He is an experienced performer of John Cage's music, having performed the Concert for piano and orchestra with both Apartment House and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as well as most of the solo piano and prepared piano music, including a unique 12-hour performance of Electronic Music for piano

He has commissioned new works from a number of British composers whose ideas, language and aesthetic have been informed in some ways by the aforementioned American composers, such as Stephen Chase, Laurence Crane, Richard Emsley, Christopher Fox, Bryn Harrison, John Lely, Tim Parkinson, Michael Parsons, and James Saunders.

In recent years Philip has pursued a passion for freely improvised music, after significant encounters with the music of AMM and Sheffield-based musicians Martin Archer, Mick Beck and John Jasnoch. He has worked with improvisers in a variety of contexts and recently devised a programme of composed music by musicians more normally known as improvisers as well as others who have been influenced by improvisation in some form. This led to a CD release, Comprovisation, which featured newly commissioned works by Mick Beck, Chris Burn and Simon H Fell. Other CD releases include music by Martin Arnold, Laurence Crane, Christopher Fox, Jürg Frey, Bryn Harrison, Tim Parkinson, Michael Pisaro, James Saunders, Christian Wolff, as well as with improvisers Chris Burn and Simon H Fell.

Philip is a regular pianist with leading experimental music group Apartment House, with whom he has performed in festivals across the UK and Europe. He has also performed with the Quatuor Bozzini, and in duos with Mark Knoop, Ian Pace and John Tilbury (piano duet and two pianos) and James Saunders (electronics).

In 1998 Philip was awarded a PhD from Sheffield University in the performance practice of contemporary piano music. Between 2000 and 2005, he was Head of the Sheffield Music School whilst pursuing an active performing and teaching career. He joined the staff team at the University of Huddersfield in 2005, and became Professor of Performance in 2015. Philip is one of the Directors of CeReNeM, the University's Centre for Research in New Music. He continues to live in Sheffield, where he premieres the majority of his programmes, with his wife Tiffany and children Naomi and Jack.

Apartment House
For over 20 years Apartment House has been captivating audiences with its performances of experimental and contemporary music. The group has performed all over Europe, from Oslo to Rome and from Barcelona to Vilnius, and is a firm feature on the British concert scene, with regular performances at Café Oto and a residency at the Wigmore Hall. Apartment House is the most frequently featured UK ensemble in the history of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and its John Cage portrait concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, won the group a Royal Philharmonic Society Award for outstanding contribution to Chamber Music and Song.

Jack Sheen
(b. 1993) is a conductor and composer from Manchester.

In 2017 at the age of 23 he became the RNCM's youngest ever Junior Fellow in Conducting appointed by Sir Mark Elder, through which he enjoys a close relationship with the BBC Philharmonic, Manchester Camerata, and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Since 2014 Jack has conducted at international festivals and venues including the Barbican, Lucerne Festival Academy, Dartington International Summer School, Royaumont, Wigmore Hall, LSO St Luke's, Cheltenham Festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Cafe OTO, and St John at Hackey, and has appeared numerous times on BBC Radio 3, Reform Radio, and NTS. His time as assistant to Ilan Volkov and Richard Baker has led to work with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Bit20 Ensemble (Norway) and Orchestre Philharmonique de Luxembourg.

Jack's music has been performed by orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Aurora Orchestra and Manchester Camerata, ensembles including Apartment House, EXAUDI, Plus Minus Ensemble, and Psappha, and commissioned by organisations such as London Contemporary Music Festival, Aldeburgh Festival and BBC Young Artists Day.

Awards include a Royal Philharmonic Prize for Composition (2016), an RNCM Gold Medal (2012) and BBC Young Composer of the Year (2011). Between 2016-17 he held an Artist Fellowship at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.

He is the founder and Director of An assembly, a group dedicated to contemporary and experimental music, installation, and performance.

Booklet for Cage: Concert for Piano & Orchestra - Wolff: Resistance