Gary Verkade - John Cage: The Works for Organ (2013)

This release is the first complete recording of all of Cage’s works for organ.
The organ is ideally suited to Cage’s aesthetic — its multitude of stops make it the ultimate prepared instrument. The fact that sound emanates from a number of pipes placed at discrete locations in space nicely accords with Cage’s idea of the separation of sounds in space. And it represents vast possibilities that could be released as sound through the use of chance operations. For this reason Cage’s organ music occupies a small but quite important place within his output.
For Some of 'The Harmony of Maine' Cage selected 18th-century American hymns by Billings, Law, and Belcher and altered them by extending certain tones and removing others through chance operations so as to attenuate the functional harmony underlying them. Here and there, melodic fragments from the original hymns remain. The 1978 and 1987 works were written for the German organist Gerd Zacher, an important champion of new music.
American organist Gary Verkade, a student of Gerd Zacher, is on the faculty of the Musikhögskola in Piteå, Sweden. He has appeared at major festivals and concerts throughout Europe and the USA. Verkade was one of the registrants in the first German performance of Some of 'The Harmony of Maine'. The DVD allows the listener to enjoy the sounds of the spectacular organ and its acoustic in surround sound while viewing Tim Chu’s painterly films of the organist with the up to six registrants needed for some of the pieces.