Happy April 1st 2025 which is a totally normal day with no holiday associated with it!!
So thrilled to celebrate April 1st 2025 with all of you with a swingin' Big Band Jazz arrangement of the legendary musical composition 4'33" by the prolific and visionary composer John Cage.
This arrangement was one of the most fiendishly difficult things the band has ever had to perform, and the most challenging melodies I've had to arrange to date. I hope you enjoy my interpretation of this timeless piece of modernist classical music, as I put my own Big Band style onto it while trying to honor the ideas and motifs of the original. The orchestra sounds truly spectacular on this tune (can you believe they were sight reading it??) so I hope you enjoy listening!!
If you have absolutely NO IDEA what the hell is going on or why 40 people are sitting in a recording studio in New York not playing their instruments and wasting tons of money on studio time, then this paragraph is for you:
4′33″ is a modernist composition by American experimental composer John Cage. It was composed in 1952 for any instrument or combination of instruments; the score instructs performers not to play their instruments throughout the three movements. It is divided into three movements, lasting 30 seconds, 2:23 seconds, 1:40 seconds, respectively. The idea behind this composition is that the ambient sound that occurs spontaneously between the on stage performers and the audience in the room is "the music".
All confused kidding aside, it's a very easy thing to laugh at until you actually are in attendance of a "performance" of this piece (or conducting an orchestra playing it like I did) and then you kinda realize once you're immersed in the energy of the experience of a collection of people basically doing a mindfulness music exercise that there actually is something kind of profound to the experience itself.
The 8-Bit Big Band
Happy April 1st 2025 which is a totally normal day with no holiday associated with it!!
So thrilled to celebrate April 1st 2025 with all of you with a swingin' Big Band Jazz arrangement of the legendary musical composition 4'33" by the prolific and visionary composer John Cage.
This arrangement was one of the most fiendishly difficult things the band has ever had to perform, and the most challenging melodies I've had to arrange to date. I hope you enjoy my interpretation of this timeless piece of modernist classical music, as I put my own Big Band style onto it while trying to honor the ideas and motifs of the original. The orchestra sounds truly spectacular on this tune (can you believe they were sight reading it??) so I hope you enjoy listening!!
If you have absolutely NO IDEA what the hell is going on or why 40 people are sitting in a recording studio in New York not playing their instruments and wasting tons of money on studio time, then this paragraph is for you:
4′33″ is a modernist composition by American experimental composer John Cage. It was composed in 1952 for any instrument or combination of instruments; the score instructs performers not to play their instruments throughout the three movements. It is divided into three movements, lasting 30 seconds, 2:23 seconds, 1:40 seconds, respectively. The idea behind this composition is that the ambient sound that occurs spontaneously between the on stage performers and the audience in the room is "the music".
All confused kidding aside, it's a very easy thing to laugh at until you actually are in attendance of a "performance" of this piece (or conducting an orchestra playing it like I did) and then you kinda realize once you're immersed in the energy of the experience of a collection of people basically doing a mindfulness music exercise that there actually is something kind of profound to the experience itself.
3 weeks ago | [YT] | 218