Conor Hanick

THE COMPOSITION

Sonatas and Interludes is written for a piano punctuated by floating screws. It is a contradiction. It asks, How does a piano choked with mutes render music of infinite resonance? In this way, Cage’s masterpiece possesses the seemingly impossible ability to express two truths simultaneously—muted resonance, intimate grandness, rigorous indeterminacy. The work derives its expressive power from these contradictions, bifurcating its modes of expression into real and imaginary voices, mixing and diverting, music suspended in air.

THE ALBUM

CAGE will showcase these impossible dichotomies. It will allow the prepared and un-prepared sound worlds of the Sonatas and Interludes to speak with vivid clarity, bringing to the foreground one of the work’s central questions: how do these timbral modes relate, interact, contend, and reconcile? The two-part album will also be “split” into audio and video objects: a full, high definition audio performance of the work, and a corresponding collection of video projects that highlight different aspects of the work, including visual art, dance, and live performance.. www,conorhanick.com