FIFA: John Cage - Journeys in Sound, with Extended Introduction and Q&A with Susan Stenger

John Cage - Journeys in Sound combines rare archival footage and concert excerpts with a series of short accounts by Cage associates and contemporary artists, playfully revealing the many different facets of one of the twentieth century's most revolutionary artists.

This screening includes an extended introduction and a Q&A with composer and performer Susan Stenger. 

Susan Stenger was born in Buffalo, NY. After intensive flute studies in Prague and New York, she joined Petr Kotik's highly respected Brooklyn-based SEM Ensemble, performing their post-war experimental repertoire at art and music venues throughout the US and Europe. With John Cage's blessing and close consultation, SEM celebrated Cage's 70th birthday in 1982 with acclaimed presentations of his complete Song Books and Concert For Piano and Orchestra at New York's Whitney Museum and major European venues. Stenger also played in the autumn 1992 debut of the Orchestra of the SEM Ensemble in Carnegie Hall; this landmark event - a full realisation of Atlas Eclipticalis and Winter Music with the peerless David Tudor in a rare return to the piano - was meant to celebrate Cage's 80th birthday, but sadly became a memorial due to his sudden death some weeks before.

Stenger was a founder of seminal drone-rock guitar group Band Of Susans and all-bass band Big Bottom and has collaborated with an eclectic range of artists, including dancer/choreographer Michael Clark, fashion designer Hussein Chalayan, writers Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore, and scrap-metal percussionist FM Einheit. She has created new work for MOCA Lyon, Aldeburgh's Faster Than Sound series and Newcastle's AV Festival, as well as several film soundtracks, and was recently granted an Appalachian Sound Archive Fellowship for research toward completion of a piece for the Kronos Quartet. She has continued to perform the music of John Cage, most recently as part of the Dancing Around Duchamp series during The Bride and The Bachelors exhibit at the Barbican Gallery.