Mewantemooseicday 2019
Mewantemooseicday 2019 is a day-long, city-wide celebration of John Cage and Merce Cunningham at venues across Glasgow. Inspired by and marking the 50th anniversary of Cage’s Mewantemooseicday at the University of California at Davis, the collaborative project forms part of the 2019 Merce Cunningham Centennial Celebration.
College of Arts School of Culture & Creative Arts: Material/Immaterial
Date: Friday 01 November 2019
Time: 08:00 - 00:00
Venue: Various Venues
Category: Concerts and music, Films and theatre, Social events, Student events
Mewantemooseicday 2019 events at the University of Glasgow are FREE but some may be ticketed. All welcome!
Tickets for the events listed below are available at mewantemooseicday2019-uofg.eventbrite.co.uk
University of Glasgow Programme
08:00 - 08:30 | Meditation
University of Glasgow Concert Hall Foyer - Drop in
08:30 - 20:30 | Vexations Reimagined
University of Glasgow Concert Hall Foyer - Drop in any time!
Echoing John Cage's “The Pocket Theatre Piano Relay Team” from the 1963 performance of Erik Satie's Vexations, we are putting together our own team of musicians for a day long performance of Vexations Reimagined, a 21st century take on Satie's notorious 840 repetition, multi-hour piece. Our team will peform reimagined repetitions of the half-page score, including but not limited to, live coding, improvisation, and arrangements, interspersed with the more traditional piano interpretations.
09:00 - 21:00 | Reading Finnegans Wake
Upper Seminar Room, 4 The Square - Drop in any time!
A continuous, 12-hour reading of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.
13:00 – 13:10 | Two Etudes (Wendy Kirkup & Mieko Kanno)
University of Glasgow Concert Hall - Free but ticketed
The third in a trilogy of short films made by artist/filmmaker Wendy Kirkup, all of which take a musical performance as their starting point. Two Etudes explores aspects of John Cage’s composition Freeman Etudes, a long-term project for Japanese violinist Mieko Kanno whose performance of two of the works forms the basis of the film. This is the first screening of what is imagined to be an ongoing reshaping of the work.
13:30 – 14:15 | Chance Box I
University of Glasgow Concert Hall - Free but ticketed
"One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds."
John Cage, Experimental Music
Students in Experimental Music Practice present a newly devised piece, performed in collaboration with members of Glasgow Improvisors Orchestra. This short project explores the use of chance operations and indeterminacy in composition and performance, as means of activating dynamic relations between sounds, bodies and spaces.
16:00 - Midnight | Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)
Club Room, Centre for Contemporary Arts - Drop in
Readings of all eight parts of John Cage’s Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) (1965-1982) - the first four of which were also performed in 1969 - will be performed every hour on the hour from 4pm to midnight in the Club Room of the CCA. Readers include Laura Kuhn, the Director of the John Cage Trust, Dr Jane Goldman and Dr Colin Herd of the University of Glasgow, Lauren Dyer Amazeen, John Maxwell Hobbs, Keith Bruce of The Glasgow Herald, and Eddie McGuire of The Whistlebinkies.
The day concludes with the final reading of Diary between 11pm and 11.45pm, which will be followed by a celebration to which the audience is invited to make and bring Cage’s macrobiotic cookies to share. The recipe is available online along with full listings and ticket details: mewantemooseicdayglasgow.com
16:30 - 18:30 | Hunterian Dance
The Hunterian Art Gallery - Free but ticketed
Excerpts from Merce Cunningham’s dance Second Hand (1970) staged by the award-winning dancer and choreographer, Julie Cunningham, and performed by students from Dance Studio Scotland at Glasgow Clyde College. Second Hand is accompanied by John Cage’s Satie-inspired composition, Cheap Imitation (1970) performed by Professor Björn Heile. The students will also perform new choreography, Classic Dancefloor Mash-Up (2019) by Maxine Railton and At First Hand (2019) by Matthew Hawkins of Dance Studio Scotland, and Julie Cunningham will present three new duets, Gertrude (2018), my/ny (2018), and Buttons (2019), performed by Cunningham and Eleanor Perry.
19:00 – 20:00 | The Erik Satie Cabaret Club
University of Glasgow Concert Hall - Free but ticketed
Join us as the Concert Hall transforms into a Parisian cabaret club from the belle époque for a relaxed evening of Erik Satie's cabaret songs, instrumental salon music, and some of his more surprising dramatic works.
Full, city-wide Mewantemooseicday 2019 listings are available at mewantemooseicdayglasgow.com
Mewantemooseicday 2019 was initiated and developed by Victoria Miguel, in collaboration with: the departments of Music, English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow: the departments of Sculpture and Environmental Art and Art Writing at The Glasgow School of Art; and Dance Studio Scotland at Glasgow Clyde College. It is presented as part of the Merce Cunningham Centennial Celebration.
We wish to thank the Merce Cunningham Trust for their support of the development of Mewantemooseicday 2019 and the teaching of the Cunningham technique, the University of Glasgow’s Chancellor’s Fund, the Production Fund of Dance Studio Scotland at Glasgow Clyde College and The Glasgow School of Art’s Sustainability Fund and Fine Art Friday Lecture Series as well as the Chris Stewart Group and Innis and Gunn for their support. We would also like to thank the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews. Events at the University of Glasgow are presented as part of the School of Culture and Creative Arts’ 2019/20 season on the theme ‘Material/Immaterial’. We are enormously grateful for the continued support of Laura Kuhn and the John Cage Trust throughout this project.
