Okay, this is a weird one, even for me.

In 1952 John Cage composed his most famous piece, 4'33", which is nothing but four-and-a-half minutes of rests. The piano player－or any instrument, or combination of instruments－is supposed to sit on stage, counting out the time, and at the end of the piece, stand up and take a bow.

It was a weird Dada-esque piece meant to reverse the roles of the performer and audience. The sounds of the uncomfortable audience－shuffling, coughing, giggling－become the focus of the performance while the musician(s) on stage listen. It was revolutionary 69 years ago, and it's still revolutionary.

There are, of course, a lot of jokes about it. "How long did you rehearse?" "Do you still get paid?" "Does Cage get royalties on the spaces between the tracks?" Many versions are posted on YouTube by pianists and orchestras and wind quartets and percussion ensembles. There's even a couple by death metal bands.

But most of them miss the point. The piece has to be performed live, and the audience has to unwittingly participate. A lot of people think it's funny to simply post 4:33 of silence, or a studio recording with no audience. They're about as interesting to listen to as you'd expect.

I decided to put together a CD of legitimate versions, with audiences coughing, babies crying, piano benches squeaking, trucks driving by outside the hall. One version I found is a "pandemic version" where the Hartwick Wind Ensemble had to miss their Carnegie Hall debut in April 2020 due to COVID, so the director had all the ensemble members record their own versions of 4'33" then mixed them together into a pandemic soundscape of everybody's home life. Dogs bark. Birds tweet. Noises are heard in the background.

This CD includes applause before & after most tracks, and the silences in between are populated with a lot of subtle sounds, just as John Cage would have liked. Each is very different from the others... if you listen closely.

It makes for a weird CD. I hope my heirs get a chuckle out of it when cleaning out my worldly goods. I know Nimbu would.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjj9VBcLQJ8

"There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.” - John Cage

"There isn't enough silence in music." - me