ONE hundred years ago today, a child was born in Los Angeles who would go on to… well, what exactly was Cage’s impact anyway? I’ve been trying to figure that out since I studied experimental music at Wesleyan two decades ago.
Whatever it is, part of what interests me about Cage is how his influence — ideas like indeterminacy, his reworking of certain Asian ideas including the Tao, prepared instruments that extended the innovations of Henry Cowell — reached outside classical or experimental music. He even inspired, albeit briefly, the Beatles.
In this story, from Sunday’s LA Times, I speak to a wide range of artists, including Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields and Mac from Superchunk, about the composer’s long reach.
Here’s what performance artist Rachel Rosenthal, who knew Cage a bit in New York in the ’50s, told me about him:
I think with the right amount of content and well written content you can make it happen.