Music & Performance

Cage at UCLA

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A Celebration of the 100th Anniversary of John Cage’s Birth

Co-presented by The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music

John Cage taught and composed at UCLA in the 1930s. On Sunday, December 2, 2012, current faculty, UCLA students, and a few guests from the Los Angeles area, will gather to perform a selection of his works, remember his life and work at UCLA and in Los Angeles, and reflect on his legacy in the fields of music, dance, theater, literature, and media arts.

Full Program

10:00am – 10:30am: 
John Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts performed by the LaMi String Quartet, a graduate-student group from the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music 

10:30am – 11:30am:
Thomas Hines, UCLA Professor of History and Architecture, “Becoming Cage: The Los Angeles Years, 1912-1938”

11:30am – 12:15pm: 
Sue Ellen Case, UCLA Professor of Theater, “Cage, Cunningham, and the Closet” 

12:15pm – 1:00pm:
Susan Leigh Foster, UCLA Professor of Dance, “John Cage’s Dance Legacy” 

1:00pm – 2:00pm:
Performance of John Cage’s Song Books by Nina Eidsheim, UCLA musicology professor, and CalArts faculty members Jacqueline Bobak and Paul Berkolds in the courtyard of the Hammer Museum. 

2:00pm – 3:00pm:
Marjorie Perloff, Stanford and USC Professor, “Cage, the Conceptual Poet” 

3:00pm – 4:00pm:
Erkki Huhtamo, UCLA Professor of Design | Media Arts, “Random Access? John Cage and Media Arts” 

4:15pm – 5:30pm:
“John Cage’s Legacy in Music,” a panel discussion with UCLA musicologists Robert FinkTamara LevitzMitchell Morris, and Timothy D. Taylor

5:30pm – 6:00pm:
Reception

6:00pm – 7:30pm:
"Two Sides of the Coin," a performance in the Hammer Annex by UCLA professor Gloria Cheng of Cage’s “UCLA, December 2, 2012” (1952) and his complete “Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano” (1946-1948); Q & A with Gloria and Nancy Perloff, Getty Research Institute curator, between the first work and the piano pieces.

All Hammer public programs are free and made possible by a major gift from the Dream Fund at UCLA.

Generous support is also provided by Susan Bay Nimoy and Leonard Nimoy, the Simms/Mann Family Foundation, The Brotman Foundation of California, Good Works Foundation and Laura Donnelley, and all Hammer members.