A sort of seasonal addendum to his Lupercalia album (Brumalia being the Roman festival of winter), this seven-track EP takes that album's homesick plea for fellowship, "Together", and gives it a festive slant by following it with "Time of Year", a like-minded song for absent friends at Christmas, especially the military.

A collection celebrating the work of avant-garde spectacular John Cage goes on display on Saturday.

Despite the title, this 43rd volume of Mode's John Cage Edition focuses more on his early experiments with radios, tape and turntables.

The solo piano piece Music of Changes is one of John Cage's most exacting works, for performer and listener alike.

Burps, sighs and coughs. Hisses, purrs and groans. Giggles, barks, polyglot whispers and the chaste-sexy shreds of madrigals and motets cast a spell in Theatre of Voices's performance of "A-ronne".

In Stories, Paul Hillier leads the vocal ensemble Theatre Of Voices through a challenging series of pieces by composers such as Luciano Berio, John Cage and Sheldon Frank that push the notion of narrative into more abstract realms.

A sparkling display of the family jewels

This compilation of various John Cage pieces from the mid-20th century demonstrates just how restrictive broadcast experimentation has become: who now would countenance The City Wears A Slouch Hat, a Kenneth Patchen surreal radio play with accompanying musique concrète score by Cage, broadcast in the US in in 1942?

John Cage's spoken-word pieces are not to everyone's taste, and the two-and-a-half-hour works featured here illustrate why.

A professional musician friend of mine, who is given to describing most avant-garde music as sounding like "a fire in a pet shop", gleefully relates the following story, which he assures me is not apocryphal.

So far Laurie Anderson has avoided doing an acoustic album, for obvious reasons (given her dependence on electronic gadgetry, Laurie Anderson Unplugged would have about the same entertainment value as a television unplugged). In Speed of Darkness, however, she gets about as far back to basics as she's ever likely to go. For this latest performance, unveiled on Monday night at the Royal Festival Hall, she has abandoned all the elaborate visual paraphernalia she's known for. Instead, she appears alone in front of a blank black wall, standing among a relatively impoverished collection of electronic gizmos.

MAY I be allowed briefly to add to the four-part obituary of John Cage (by Paul Driver, David Revill, Professor Eric Mottram and Tom Phillips, 14 August)? writes Keith Potter.

Sir: I was saddened to read of the death of John Cage, but feel that the reference in your report (13 August) to 4'33' does not do full justice to the composition or its composer.