FOUR minutes and 33 seconds of silence, more or less, will be the centrepiece of an imaginative concert in Leominster on April 30.

The Birmingham Contemporary Music Group is playing John Cage's 4'33" at the Lion Ballroom Arts Centre.

Cage was one of the 20th century's most innovative and iconoclastic composers. Perhaps his most famous piece, 4'33" consists of 273 seconds, in which the musician makes no sound. The work consists entirely of whatever other sounds there are around, either in the concert hall or from outside.

At the first performance, at the appropriately named Maverick Hall in New York State, the performer David Tudor sat at the piano. He lowered the lid and raised it again 30 seconds later. That was the end of the first movement. Much the same happened at longer intervals twice more. The result was uproar and 4'33" has been a musical legend ever since.

Cage believed there was no such thing as silence. He once went into a soundless chamber to try to experience silence. Instead he heard the noise of his nervous system and his blood circulating.

The rare chance to experience, rather than hear, 4'33" is in a concert that also includes Cage's Clarinet Sonata as well as Howard Skempton's Clarinet Quintet and Stravinsky's Three Pieces for String Quartet.

The group features players from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Tickets are free. The concert starts at 7pm and lasts about an hour, with a chance to meet the performers.

The same programme plays on Sunday, May 1, at 7pm at Titley Village Hall, near Kington (01544 231579). Tickets for the Lion Ballroom are available on 01568 611232.

BCMG also appears at the JHMS Performing Arts College in Ledbury on May 15 at 7pm with more Stravinsky and Skempton plus two works by Judith Weir. Admission is by free ticket, in advance from BCMG's office on 0121 6162616.