SATIEFACTION

“It’s not a question of Satie’s relevance. He’s indispensable.” – John Cage

Margaret presents a multimedia evening of Satie and Satie-inspired music from John Cage, Toby Twining and Federico Mompou performed on piano and toy piano.

Satie, the iconoclastic eccentric Frenchman, a precursor of Debussy and Ravel, had a huge influence on John Cage. Cage was profoundly impressed by Satie’s disregard for the rule-book, his embrace of the absurd and the surreal, his unaffected blurring of high and low art. Fittingly Cage’s text on Satie will be performed, along with excerpts from Satie’s writings narrated by actor Daniel Jenkins.

Programme Highlights

Satie’s Sports et Divertissements (Sports and Pastimes), a cycle of 21 short piano pieces composed in 1914, will be heard along with Satie’s accompanying texts and projections of Charles Martin’s original illustrations.

Tan will perform Cage’s Satie-influenced Dream and In a Landscape to images from her Erik Satie theatrical collaboration with Great Small Works. She will also present one of Cage’s last compositions, his Extended Lullaby for twelve music-boxes, in her own multiple-toy piano arrangement.

Toby Twining’s hauntingly melancholic Satie Blues for toy piano and piano, and Cançó i Dansa No. 1 by the Spanish miniaturist Federico Mompou (1893 –1987) deservedly round out SATIEfaction.