n October 1962 John Cage and his great interpreter/co-visionary David Tudor visited Japan, performing seven concerts and exposing listeners to new musical worlds. This legendary "John Cage Shock", as it was dubbed by the critic Hidekazu Yoshida, is the source of this series of releases, three CDs and a "best hits" double LP compilation. Recorded primarily at the Sogetsu Art Center in Tokyo on October 24, 1962 (with two performances from October 17 at Mido-Kaikan in Osaka), all recordings in this series are previously unreleased. A major historical trove, unearthed.

The performances on this tour featured Cage and Tudor with some noteworthy Japanese musicians playing pieces by Cage and a number of other composers. Volume 2 lifts off with a fiery example of Tudor's piano virtuosity, his mastery of dynamics well evident in a performance of "Klavierstück X" (1961) by Karlheinz Stockhausen. The titular shock of this series is delivered even more forcefully with the next piece, Cage's "Aria and Solo for Piano with Fontana Mix" (1957-58/62), which was first performed the year before in Darmstadt by Tudor and Kobayashi, a combination of two of Cage's solo pieces. The performance here, from Osaka, has a slightly altered title and the composition becomes a seismic quartet with the addition of Toshi Ichiyanagi and Yoko Ono, with the four performers providing acutely-angled blasts of sound.