Happy Birthday, John Cage!
Celebrate with the Goat Farm’s “Ten Thousand Things”
- http://clatl.com/atlanta/ImageArchives?by=1223504
- WELCOME TO HIS DAY: The Goat Farm Arts Center will honor John Cage’s 100th birthday with a four-day series of events beginning Thursday evening.
American composer, artist, and writer John Cage was born on this day 100 years ago. Although Cage died in August of 1992, he remains a palpable, and ever more so, worldwide presence. The centenary has certainly whipped all of us arts journalists into a frenzy as we search for adequate words to describe the great man’s significance.
The New Yorker has officially named the past 100 years “the John Cage century,” and LA Times music critic Mark Swed, observing how much the artist’s work has been programmed in Berlin this year, is apparently ready to declare that Germany is now John Cage’s country (Take that, Angela Merkel!). A writer at the Brooklyn Rail placed Cage as one of “the most important figures in the history of art since civilization began,” and a music critic for the New York Times even noted that John Cage’s 4’33” can essentially be heard every single moment of every single day, no matter where you are or what you’re doing... As excessive as all the praise may sound, we don’t disagree.