John Cage Trust

ONE WEEK FROM TODAY Chance Encounters with John Cage: ED McKEON on CURATORIAL COMPOSING Join us for a free Zoom discussion on "curatorial composing," focusing on works by John Cage, Heiner Goebbels, Pauline Oliveros, and others. Register in the Linktree in our bio! “Curatorial composing” is curatorial producer and researcher Ed McKeon’s term for the way John Cage shifts attention from musical works to musical encounters, and the consequences that follow. Rather than follow the hierarchical flow of composer, then performer, then listener, curatorial composition distributes the responsibility from that model to a situation in which all are equally present and responsible for the meaning of an encounter. This means that these compositions are neither anchored in historical time nor suited to “Historically Informed Performance” in the sense of a reconstruction. These pieces (and we as listener-observers) are always undergoing change. Curatorial composing is post-canonic. It invites us to experience and understand historical time and historical significance differently. Exemplified in many ways by Cage, this approach means that musical composition need no longer be limited to organizing sound, but can extend to text, typography, movement, visual elements ,etc. Contrary to visual art histories in which visual art loses its “medium specificity” to become “post-conceptual,” Cage shows that music can occur in and across any medium. ______________ Ed McKeon is a curatorial producer and researcher concerned with rewiring relations between gallery arts and post-experimental musics. His work addresses the meaningful articulation of time in artistic practice and production, and how musical and more-than-musical practices create time-bound public spheres or communities of relative strangers. He operates in the zone where music indisciplines others—theatre, book, installation, or performance—collaborating with artists from Pauline Oliveros to Tin Men and the Telephone, and Elaine Mitchener to Brian Eno. [Pictured L to R, Ed McKeon, Louis Andriessen's "Die Materie," and Heiner Goebbels' stagings of Cage's "Europeras" and ]

A table covered with cards representing items from 22 different collections at Bard College, with a sampling about to be selected through Cagean Chance procedures toward the CAGECIRCLE exhibition coming this June 27th for Upside Art Weekend!

TODAY 12–2pm ET at BARD COLLEGE STEVENSON LIBRARY, first floor Cagecircle: Open Curatorial Workshop Join us to learn how to use Cagean chance procedures as we select the items that will make up the Cagecircle exhibition opening here the last weekend of June. Pictured here, a tiny sampling of the items we will select from using chance. The items come from 23 different collections at Bard!

TODAY! Join us today at Bard College's Stevenson Library from 12-2pm to select objects from collections across the Bard Network using John Cage's chance procedures to be shown in CAGECIRCLE: COMPOSITION FOR AN EXHIBITION, showing at Stevenson Library (1 Library Rd, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY) for Upstate Art Weekend 2026 (June 25–28). A special opening performance will take place on Saturday, June 27th at 1pm. We are thrilled to be partnering with Bard’s Stevenson Library for this project. Learn Cage's chance procedures and be the first to know what objects will actually appear in the show!

Alys Moody's class on "The Literary Archive" spent time with us at the John Cage Trust, looking at some of our literary archive holdings and chatting about using chance as a tool for curation. Thank you, Alys and students!

TODAY! Wednesday, April 22nd, 3–4pm ET on Zoom. For this Poetry Month edition of CHANCE ENCOUNTERS WITH JOHN CAGE, we look at the work of poet Jackson Mac Low and his relationship with John Cage. Poets Anne Tardos, Charles Bernstein, and Craig Dworkin discuss Cage and Mac Low, their mutual influences, and read from Mac Low's work. This FREE virtual event is hosted by the John Cage Trust. Join us on Zoom for this incredible conversation by registering from the Linktree in our bio or through Eventbrite! ✨🔗

THIS THURSDAY! Join us this Thursday at Bard College's Stevenson Library from 12-2pm to select objects from collections across the Bard Network using John Cage's chance procedures to be shown in CAGECIRCLE: COMPOSITION FOR AN EXHIBITION, showing at Stevenson Library (1 Library Rd, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY) for Upstate Art Weekend 2026 (June 25–28). A special opening performance will take place on Saturday, June 27th at 1pm. We are thrilled to be partnering with Bard’s Stevenson Library for this project. Learn Cage's chance procedures and be the first to know what objects will actually appear in the show!

THIS WEDNESDAY! Wednesday, April 22nd, 3–4pm ET on Zoom. For this Poetry Month edition of CHANCE ENCOUNTERS WITH JOHN CAGE, we look at the work of poet Jackson Mac Low and his relationship with John Cage. Poets Anne Tardos, Charles Bernstein, and Craig Dworkin discuss Cage and Mac Low, their mutual influences, and read from Mac Low's work. This FREE virtual event is hosted by the John Cage Trust. Join us on Zoom for this incredible conversation by registering from the Linktree in our bio or through Eventbrite! ✨🔗

ONE WEEK FROM TODAY! Join us next Thursday at Bard College's Stevenson Library from 12-2pm to select objects from collections across the Bard Network using John Cage's chance procedures to be shown in CAGECIRCLE: COMPOSITION FOR AN EXHIBITION, showing at Stevenson Library (1 Library Rd, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY) for Upstate Art Weekend 2026, June 25–28. A special opening performance will take place on Saturday, June 27th at 1pm. We are thrilled to be partnering with Bard’s Stevenson Library for this project. Learn Cage's chance procedures and be the first to know what objects will actually appear in the show!

ONE WEEK FROM TODAY! Wednesday, April 22nd, 3–4pm ET on Zoom. For this Poetry Month edition of CHANCE ENCOUNTERS WITH JOHN CAGE, we look at the work of poet Jackson Mac Low and his relationship with John Cage. Poets Anne Tardos, Charles Bernstein, and Craig Dworkin discuss Cage and Mac Low, their mutual influences, and read from Mac Low's work. This FREE virtual event is hosted by the John Cage Trust. Join us on Zoom for this incredible conversation by registering from the Linktree in our bio or through Eventbrite! ✨🔗

The students of Jana Mader's "The Courage to Be: Artistic Encounters with Nature" class visited us at the John Cage Trust at Bard College today for a tour and discussion of Cage's environmentally engaged thoughts and works. A few of them can even been seen here trying their hand at performing a mini version of Cage's "Inlets," performing here with some of Cage's very own conch shells!

Seen in the parking lot @bardcollege !