GRAPEFRUITS
Performance Works by Yoko Ono and the Fluxus Moment a benefit for the Capitol Hill Arts Center's Community Development Program performed by Seattle School

ACT I

UNITY PIECE: MONOCHROME FOR YVES KLEIN (1963) - Ben Vautier

1. PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2 FOR PAIK (1965) - Ben Vautier

2. ORCHESTRA PIECE NO. 4 (1965) - Ben Vautier

3. TACTICAL PIECES FOR ORCHESTRA NO. 1 (1963) - Anthony Cox

4. CURTAIN II (1963) - Ben Vautier (arranged for French Doors by Ben Houge)

5. PUSH (1963) - Ben Vautier

6. DUET FOR PERFORMER AND AUDIENCE (1961) - Emmett Williams

-Intermission-

ACT II

UNITY PIECE: CUT PIECE (1961) - Yoko Ono
(featuring YOKO ONO MASK by George Maciunas - 1971)

1. EXCERPT FROM "12! BIG NAMES!" (1975) - George Maciunas

2. BAG PIECE (1964) - Yoko Ono

3. VOICE PIECE FOR SOPRANO (1961) - Yoko Ono (arranged for tenor by Mike Min)

4. THE PULSE FOR CHAMBER MUSIC (1962) - Yoko Ono (arranged by Korby and Kelton Sears)

5. DANCE PIECE FOR STAGE PERFORMANCE (1961) - Yoko Ono

6. SKY PIECE FOR JESUS CHRIST (1965) - Yoko Ono

7. PAINTING TO SHAKE HANDS (painting for cowards) (1961) - Yoko Ono

8. DANCE PIECE (1962) - Yoko Ono

9. AUDIENCE PIECE (1962) - Yoko Ono

Directed by - Korby Sears
Lighting and Sound Tech - Erik Whitaker

ABOUT THE COMPOSERS

Anthony Cox was a New York City artist and musician who was an early admirer of Yoko Ono's work, and helped produce many of her early shows in Tokyo, London and New York. He eventually married Yoko, who bore his daughter, Kyoko Chan Cox, in 1963.

George Maciunas coined the phrase "Fluxus" - alluding to change, fluidity, and flushing of bodily waste - in reference to a loose group of composers and artists in the late 50s and early 60s for whom he saw a similar spirit of Zen Buddism, John Cage-inspired ephemeralism, and a general attitude of anti-commercialism toward their art. Maciunas claimed that the Fluxus movement was "the fusion of Spike Jones, Vaudeville, gag, children¹s games and Duchamp." After attending several concerts at Yoko¹s Chambers Street loft in New York, which were organized and curated by her and composer La Monte Young, Maciunas organized Yoko¹s first public exhibition in 1961, entitled Paintings and Drawings by Yoko Ono at the AG Gallery.

Ben Vautier owned a bookstore in Nice, France and made drawings to entertain himself until ³action painter² Yves Klein came into his shop one day in 1958. Energized by the radical ideas of Klein, Vautier¹s store became a meeting place for many like-minded artists. When George Maciunas met him in 1962, he asked Vautier to join the Fluxus movement. Ben accepted and flourished, becoming something of a European ambassador for the movement, organizing concerts to debut compositions by Nam June Paik and Ben Patterson. Vautier remains active to this day, prolifically producing drawings (many of which appear in major galleries nationwide), writing social and political commentary, and maintaining a rather colorful website at www.ben-vautier.com.

Emmett Williams served in the U.S. Army during the final years of World War II. In the late 40s up to the early 60s, he was a member of several theater and poetry groups in France, Germany and Switzerland. He joined the International Fluxus Movement in 1962. Since the 70s, he has received many artist residencies, solo and group art exhibitions, and guest professor positions throughout Europe. He currently resides and works in Berlin.

Program Notes for GRAPEFRUITS

"Yoko is the world¹s most famous unknown artist. Everyone knows who she is, but no one knows what she does." - John Lennon

Let me be blunt: Yoko Ono is a bad-ass.

Yoko Ono¹s staggering body of work in film, music, sculpture, performance, writings and paintings have always had a higher purpose: to promote the laudable universal goals of Love and Peace. What is often forgotten is that Yoko is acutely aware of the realistic amount of dirt, grime, blood, sweat and pain that must be dealt with to get there. ³I am interested in the Truth,² she has said, ³whatever that may be.²  But the Truth can be ugly, painful, uncertain.

Still, Yoko has never backed down from the Truth¹s unstable underbelly. Much of her performance works involve the use of concentration, confrontation, endurance, humiliation, and surprise revelations of emotions that the audience didn't realize they harbored. Rarely is the audience left to the mere role of passer-by. These same themes and techniques often arise in the compositions and performance works of Seattle School, especially in our first full-length show, Fear, Karaoke, Discipline and Paintball. We feel a kinship to Yoko in this respect.

Yoko¹s performance works rose out of the atmosphere of the mid-50s and 60s, in which the Zen influence of her native Japan was being felt in the Western art and music world. John Cage¹s landmark Zen composition 4¹ 33² - in which the piano score called for four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence - brought the radical idea that music is all around you: traffic sounds, chance conversations, birds chirping, planes overhead. The Fluxus movement, founded by George Macinuas and in which Yoko was originally a participant, took Cage¹s ideas and ran with it. Suddenly, any loosely scripted concept became conceived as a piece of music, with the instructions referred to as a ³score².

It is debatable as to whether tonight¹s performance is a musical concert or performance art. And that¹s a good thing. We in Seattle School are composers, and see ourselves as such. However, from the dawn of time, music was always a part of a bigger whole, evolving out of shared communal rituals such as religious worship, marriage ceremonies, age rites, theater of cultural myths, and seasonal celebrations.

The idea of concert music - isolated music removed from any larger event, performed in indoor concert halls, with the audience constrained by repressive Protestant mannerisms of silence, sitting in straight-backed chairs, no coughing, no talking - is a very recent development, only about 250 years old. The drop in concert music attendance in the 20th and 21st century is not society going to hell in a handbasket. It is society proclaiming that the modern sterile concert music experience is lacking the holistic human element that was always present in music tied to the illuminations of ritual and theater.

The most time-honored composers and successful musical performers - from Duke Ellington, to Charles Ives, to vital local chamber groups Quake and the Degenerate Art Ensemble - have always understood the inherent theater and physicality in music. Composers and musicians who do not are often the ones complaining about low attendance at their shows.

Yoko¹s performance works are also worth studying by musicians and theater professionals because of their ability to achieve such explosive results with little to no resources. Yoko is a technical genius. Many of the pieces tonight have no props other than the human body. Two of the works really can¹t be rehearsed - and weren¹t. In addition, we chose to not rehearse one piece so the human reaction to it would be sincere.  To those with the inability to conceive of their creative visions without the need for pricey large scale productions and virtuoso musicians: let the elegance of Yoko¹s hyper-imagination serve as example.

Finally, it must be said: Yoko Ono is damn funny. It is time that she is recognized as the Master Comedienne that she is. Even at her most confrontational, there is always a Zen vaudeville humor throughout Yoko¹s works that never fails to lead to haunting moments of lucidity after the guaranteed belly laugh. If this soft-spoken, female Japanese vegetarian and peace icon from the 60s can bring fitful tears of laughter to someone like myself - a Texas born-and-raised, NFL-lovin¹, steak-eatin¹, near-alcoholic Western male - then obviously this is a woman who has mastered the complex and evasive art of Communication.

-KORBY SEARS