Mr. Ichiyanagi and Mr. Cage toured together, sometimes with Ms. Ono, and Mr. Ichiyanagi was instrumental in bringing Mr. Cage to Japan in 1962, introducing his music there. In the same period, Ms. Ono and Mr. Ichiyanagi hosted performances at their loft in TriBeCa that included music, dance and poetry. (“THE PURPOSE OF THIS SERIES IS NOT ENTERTAINMENT,” an announcement for one program said.)
The marriage lasted until 1962, and Ms. Ono later married John Lennon of the Beatles.
In the early years of his career, Mr. Ichiyanagi staked out his claim as one of the most adventurous composers and performers of the day.
In May 1961 he played a recital at Carnegie Hall. His program included works by Mr. Cage, Morton Feldman and others, as well as one of his own pieces. Eric Salzman, describing Mr. Ichiyanagi’s performance of his work in a review for The New York Times, wrote that “a high, distant, cold glissando rubbed somehow out of the innards of the piano and a furious rumble of elbows and fists on the keyboard.”
He was gaining attention beyond New York as well.
“Tokyo music circles are buzzing about a recent concert which featured Toshi Ichiyanagi’s ‘IBM,’” The Star Tribune of Minneapolis reported in February 1962, “an electronic composition which had several novelties: a boy striking matches and dropping them into a bowl which he proceeded to smash with a hammer, a man kicking a chair and scraping it on the floor, and finally another man stringing paper tape about the stage and into the audience, making a giant spider web.”
Later that year, The Honolulu Star-Bulletin covered his performance at the University of Hawaii.
“Toshi Ichiyanagi’s ‘Music for Piano No. 4’ explored the harmonics of hand-stroked piano strings,” the report said, “and apparently, though frequently inaudible, the sounds to be derived from thrumming on the instrument’s wooden framework.”
