John Cage Concert

[ben m.]

mark jason and I went to a "Santa Fe New Music" John Cage concert last night.  i found it to be a good time, not all super quiet meditative frog gurglings -- only half!  quite alot of tonal, easily accesible stuff as well.  well, accesible but eclectic.  it got my brain thinking about alot of things during those few hours.  Bravo!

[Sudara]

Definitely good to hear Cage live. I've read a lot about (and from) him, but have never sat in an audience and listened. That man had a lot of humour. I think it also sank in how much his playing with sound sources throughout his life has somehow trickled down all the way to my friends and myself. If it wasn't for him going overboard in the 50s, would everday sound be non-existent in todays music?

His early tonal stuff (piano, percussion, whistling, singing) seemed to me to be a jab in the B Ribs. The compositions seemed to oscillate between making fun of tonal music  and being bored with tonal music. I think the main tonal piece we heard ("Fads and Fancies in the Academy", 1940) was pre-aleatoric Cage . Regardless, it was clear that this man needed to go somewhere beyond tonal music.

-mark