John Cage

John Cage, founding music director, (Los Angeles, CA; 1912­1992) studied with Richard Buhlig, Henry Cowell, Adolph Weiss, and Arnold Schoenberg. In 1952 at Black Mountain College, he presented a theatrical event considered by many to be the first “Happening.” He was associated with Merce Cunningham from the early 1940s and was the company’s music director until his death in 1992.

Cage and Cunningham were responsible for a number of radical innovations in music and choreography, such as the use of chance operations and the independence of dance and music. His last work for MCDC was FOUR3, the score for Beach Birds, presented at the James Joyce/John Cage Festival in Zurich (1991). He wrote many books, among them Silence (1961), A Year from Monday (1968), M (1973), Empty Words (1979), and X (1983), all published by Wesleyan University Press. I-VI (the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures delivered at Harvard University, 1988­89) was published by Harvard University Press in 1990. Cage’s music is published by the Henmar Press of C. F. Peters Corporation and has been recorded on many labels.

Learn More:
www.johncage.info
An Autobiographical Statement