Two4 (For Violin and Shō)

A 1 track ambient album (29m 55s) — released July 7th 2017 on SN Variations

Aisha Orazbayeva and Naomi Sato link up for this richly textured reading of John Cage´s Two4, a late work from the composer's series of Number Pieces. The release follows recent records from SN Variations featuring music by Giacinto Scelsi, Adrian Corker and Chris Watson among others.

Steady, crystalline tones emanate from Naomi Sato's shō - a Japanese wind instrument associated with gagaku court music, and one of the few non-Western instruments that Cage wrote explicitly for. In contrast, Orazbayeva brings out the violin's fragile grain with the soft scraping of horsehair and the interplay of upper partials.

Like all of Cage´s work from the early 1950s onwards, the Number Pieces were composed using chance procedures, in an attempt to free music from the composerly impulse to order and fixity.

The Number Pieces occupied Cage throughout the last six years of his life, and are marked by the use of time brackets: simple fragments of music with timings indicating when, in the overall composition, they should begin and end. In Two4 (as in the majority of the series) these timings are flexible, to be determined by the musician either in performance or, again, through chance procedures.

In Two4, the fragments are often no more than a single note. The interaction of sounds becomes highly unpredictable: at some points violin and shō mesh in a kind of brief unity, while elsewhere they seem to drift serenely past, or through, each other. Throughout, sounds spill out like ink on blotting paper, surrounded by pregnant silence.

Other recent projects from Aisha Orazbayeva include performances at Oslo's Only Connect (with Tim Etchells) and Copenhagen's Klang festival (with Plus Minus) as well as recording Morton Feldman's Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello for forthcoming release on Another Timbre.

Recorded and produced by Peiman Khosravi. Cover design by Chris Bigg.

"this interpretation is exceptionally good..something enigmatic" The Wire

"A bit of mysticism and ritual.a lot of unpredictable beauty" Fluid Radio

  • Kudos happily ship all items worldwide.
  • Shipping costs and delivery times are available here.
  • UK items are sent tracked as standard at no extra cost.
  • We aim to dispatch orders placed before 2pm on the same day.
  • We are unable to ship orders on weekends or Bank Holidays.
  • If you purchase a pre-order item amongst an order of in-stock releases, we will typically hold your order until all items are in ready to send.
  • Although we use all reasonable means to ensure that your order is delivered within a specified time, we cannot accept any responsibility for late deliveries due to circumstances outside of our control. We will do our best to inform you of any unexpected delay.