Ryoan-ji, el jardí japonès de John Cage i Frederic Amat

Cage and Amat converse at the Liceu with Ryoan-ji, a meditation on sound, silence and matter.

John Cage's piece takes as its starting point the stone garden of Kyoto, a place of stillness that serves as an image for music that does not move in a straight line. Cage arranges scattered, almost mineral sounds that seem to rise from the air and that the listener discovers at their own pace. It is a proposal for unhurried listening, rather than for following a narrative thread.

In this presentation at the Liceu, the music is accompanied by the intervention of Frederic Amat, an artist who works from the poetic substance of colour and form. His contribution does not illustrate the Zen landscape literally: it proposes textures reminiscent of sediment, pigments that seem to emerge from a background and lines that share the restraint of the music. On stage, figures and elements move across a visual space in which each gesture takes on its own weight.

In the work, the instruments trace circles and irregular trajectories, a sonic calligraphy that finds its counterpart in Amat's visual work, where the roughness of matter coexists with a subtle movement of light. Cage offers one way of listening and Amat adds another way of looking, so that both languages complete each other in a single performance.