John Cage Memorial

The Kiyosato Museum of Contemporary Art was located in Kiyosato, Yamanashi prefecture from 1990 to 2014. It was a private art museum with a permanent exhibit based on a collection of unrivalled scale. The museum also collected and mounted exhibitions on the work of radical contemporary composers, including John Cage. The museum’s primary informant on music was sound designer Yutaka Hirose, one of the pioneers of Japan’s environmental music (kankyō ongaku) movement in the 1980s. 
In 1992, the museum mounted a John Cage Memorial exhibition, and this release showcases Hirose’s work on the overall exhibition design and the creation of the sounds that were played in the museum during the exhibition, through a re-edit and reissue of the sound materials.

The sound materials that Hirose created for the exhibition environment were only ever distributed on CDr to members of the curatorial team so this is their first formal release. Hirose’s work for the exhibition was radical in its use of musique concrète and collages of noise and everyday sounds, and in his homage to Cage’s methods, these pieces represent a distinct departure from his normal approach at the time.

The A4 booklet includes texts about the exhibition by members of the team, Hirose’s own description of the pieces, and photographs of the exhibition. (Text in Japanese and English). Remastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. The vinyl comes with DL code that has all CD tracks.

NB: the content of the LP and CD versions is not identical.
The LP includes four pieces: three selected from the original exhibition pieces by Art into Life, and one new piece (“Dialogue”) by Hirose that was not included in the exhibition. “Dialogue” only appears on this LP version.
The CD includes all of the original pieces from the exhibition.

[LP – Tracklist]
A1: Operation
A2: Dialogue
B1: Feature
B2: Beginning

[CD – Tracklist]
1: Beginning
2: Story
3: Posture
4: Operation
5: Feature
6: ……..