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PrintCage match: BPAC celebrates the local legacy of an avant-garde giant
Music
If there’s one thing the average person has heard about John Cage (1912–1992), it’s the pioneering composer’s fondness for randomness, whether expressed in his most notorious work, 4’33 (four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence), or in his use of “chance operations” like consulting the I Ching. So it makes sense that an upcoming tribute to the influential artist would come together largely by accident.
That’s the way the Burchfield Penney’s Don Metz describes the origins of Lecture on the Weather: John Cage in Buffalo. Around the time unforeseen schedule changes left the east gallery empty in mid-winter, Metz had a chance conversation with UB music professor emeritus Jan Williams about one of Cage’s large-scale works. Problem solved!
Lecture on the Weather, a collaboration with filmmaker Luis Frangella and audio artist Maryanne Amacher, was originally commissioned as a radio piece for the Bicentennial and incorporated texts and drawings by Henry David Thoreau and recordings of storms. The BPAC version will exist as both a stand-alone installation and the site of four live performances of the composition.
The museum’s mission of showcasing artists with a link to WNY proved simple to fulfill: not only did the composer visit Buffalo over thirty times between 1960 and 1991, he spent a summer at the Hotel Lenox writing his 1973 book Notations. Once the local connection was established, it was even easier to think of Buffalonians who had been influenced by (or worked with) Cage, and in no time Metz had a festival on his hands—one true to the master trickster’s anarchic spirit.
The schedule and artist roster were still being finalized at presstime, but the lineup will feature additional Cage pieces as well as original works by current and former Buffalo residents. Several generations of experimental musicians, writers, and media artists are involved, among them John Toth, Andrew Deutsch, Elliot Caplan, David Felder, J. T. Rinker, Bill Sack, Brian Milbrand and Kyle Price, Tom Kostusiak, David Lampe, Peter Ramos, Joan Retallack, John Bacon, the Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo, the Buffalo State College Percussion Ensemble, Michael Basinski, Bufffluxus, and players associated with Charles Haupt’s acclaimed concert series A Musical Feast.
In a final touch of Cagean whimsy, documentation of everything in the series will be entered into a computer program and—you guessed it—randomized.
Associate editor Ron Ehmke is a Buffalo-based writer/performer. Lecture on the Weather: John Cage in Buffalo takes place January 22–February 14. For up-to-date info, visit yournewburchfieldpenney.com or call 878-6011.
