MUSIC REVIEWS : Repercussion Unit Pays Homage to Cage

The sly and sublime spirit of the late John Cage has been hovering over Los Angeles of late as a result of the ambitious Cage-related exhibition “Rolywholyover A Circus,” organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Monday night, that spirit touched down at the L.A. County Museum of Art, where the Repercussion Unit devoted a Monday Evening Concert to the L.A.-born composer as part of the citywide “Citycircus” addendum to the MOCA show. In a mostly meditative and sometimes delightfully absurd presentation, the group paid tribute to Cage with a fittingly rambling sampler of his percussion works from a nearly 50-year span.

The Repercussion Unit may, in fact, qualify as this iconoclastic exhibit’s house band. It opened the MOCA show in September, amid the outdoor elements and the landscaping.

At LACMA, it imported the fauna into the controlled concert setting. Initially startling and dryly comical, the stage set turned out to be a suitable foil for music often about the tender anarchies of nature. The plant life was put to good musical use in the concert’s climactic, gently absurdist piece closing the first half, “But What About the Noise . . . ,” as branches were rattled impressionistically.

In the second half, works by Unit members Larry Stein and John Bergamo established a more organized rhythmic agenda, along more intricate, interactive and ethnic lines than the Cage pieces.

It wasn’t until late in the program that the Unit broke out Cage’s “4’33’.” Despite the notoriety of this 1951 piece, which requires any number of musicians to refrain from playing music for a given time, Cage’s most famous work will never be dubbed an oft-heard concert bonbon.

At various points, tapes of Cage’s genteel voice could be heard narrating texts of various origins. In the music, too, Cage’s artistic voice carried on, a ghostly, subliminal voice in the non-linear mix.