Completely Unnecessary

I’m not supposed to double post from my the Melbourne Metblog, but I’m too excited - loosely-based internet rules be damned!

John Cage is one of my favorite 20th century composers. His most famous piece is ‘4:33′, in which no actual notes are played. That’s interesting and all, but I’m in love with his prepared piano stuff. His technique included shoving (very carefully) a bunch of stuff (frequently everyday, junk objects) into pianos and composing around that. Some of it’s really amazing.

Well, I’ve just spent 15 minutes failing to make the audio player work, so that’s thrilling. I’m sure I’ll think about this time when I’m whining over my 12,000 words due in about three weeks. Here’s a youtube clip instead (there’s a bunch of lead up, so I’d start watching from 5:00, the piece starts just before 6:00):

Here’s another. This is actually from the Prepared Piano set I wanted to play, though not the one I wanted. It’s pretty neat:

Anyway, this Friday the Melbourne Arts Festival is running John Cage’s Musicircus. It goes from dusk (5:48pm) to dawn the next morning. There’s all sorts of music, art, dance, theatre, etc. The lineup looks amazing, though there are literally so many acts I didn’t even get to look at them all properly.

So excited for this. It’s going to be 25 degrees as well, but, being Melbourne, the low is going to be 9. Sigh.

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