The Boston Modern Orchestra Project has released its latest recording, John Cage: Sixteen Dances, the first of nine releases that the ensemble plans to release on its own BMOP/sound label during the 2009-10 season. Sixteen Dances—a work that marked a turning point in the composer’s career as his first use of chance operations and incorporates predefined collections of sounds—was created with the late Merce Cunningham, Cage’s closest artistic collaborator, for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. The work is being released in a SACD surround-sound edition and is scored for flute, trumpet, four percussion, piano, violin, and cello and has nine movements and seven related interludes, with individual sequences, length of time, and directions in space determined by tossing coins. Other upcoming BMOP recordings include Alan Hovhaness’s Exile Symphony, Dominick Argento’s Jonah and the Whale, and Ken Ueno’s Talus.
Posted October 1, 2009
