88 players, one piano.

Japanese noise royalty Keiji Haino will debut Miracle, his first proper composition, at the Sound Live Tokyo festival in October. The piece has been planned by Haino for 40 years and is described as “the final response” to John Cage’s epochal 4′33″.

Composed and conducted by Haino and directed by Noriyuki Kiguchi, Miracle will see 88 performers each play one note out of the 88 keys on a single piano, at the same time – an action predicted to have a 50% success rate.

“This completely specific instruction, which reflects Haino’s idea of ‘one note’ that expresses the principle of his music, obviously involves physical complication,” the festival organisers point out.

“How can 88 people get together around the keyboards, of which width is just about 120 centimeters? What does the act of exhausting the finiteness of the 88 keys of the piano and what the 88 bodies are likely to be subjected to — accumulation, twists, pressure, cramps and hanging — mean? How does the sound, played by 88 fingers at once, resonate?”

The answers to these questions will be presented at Tokyo’s famous Sogetsu Hall on October 2. The Sound Live Tokyo programme also includes works by musicians, sound artists and filmmakers including Ken Jacobs, Takako Minekawa, Jim O’Rourke and Terre Thaemlitz. [via The Wire]