John Cage News

A coalition of national arts grantmakers, consisting of Academy of American Poets, Artadia, Creative Capital, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, MAP Fund, National YoungArts Foundation, and United States Artists, has announced the launch of Artist Relief, which will provide rapid, unrestricted $5,000 relief grants to assist artists.

A coalition of national arts grantmakers, consisting of Academy of American Poets, Artadia, Creative Capital, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, MAP Fund, National YoungArts Foundation, and United States Artists, announces the launch of Artist Relief, which will provide rapid, unrestricted $5,000 relief grants.

92Y's highly popular online concerts a?" experienced by more than half a million viewers worldwide a?" continue in April with five live streams and three recitals from 92Y's archives. Additional programs are planned through the end of the month and beyond. All of the content is free.

It was a misty, later rainy night, but that didn't dampen the enthusiasm of the audience at Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater watching DEMO: Now 2020. They greeted the musicians and dancers, directed and curated by Damian Woetzel, with standing ovations and loud, prolonged applause.

Acclaimed songwriter, singer, film & television composer and Shudder To Think frontman Craig Wedren has added another title to his already expanded resume: podcast creator. Today he releases the first episode of his Sabbath Sessions podcast -- a collection of musical meditations that he has been crafting since 2014. This new podcast represents his first explorations of ambient choral music, where Wedren developed his technique of sampling and looping his famously elastic voice resulting in a unique kind of sound bath. Sabbath Sessions was born out of the introspection of Wedren's longtime mindfulness and wellness practices, embracing everything from Transcendental Meditation to yoga. He sees the experimental, inclusive bent of Sabbath Sessions as uniting many different strands of his varied musical aptitudes. “Think of it as Smile-era Brian Wilson singing ambient Brian Eno—who is a huge influence--from Music for Airports to his fondness for feather boas; or shoegaze 'Bohemian Rhapsody,'” he notes. “My love of John Cage and Steve Reich is in there, too.”

Tippet Rise Art Center today announced the full details of its fifth annual concert season, expanded this year to encompass two dozen wide-ranging programs from July 10 through August 29, 2020. Located on a 12,000-acre working ranch nestled at the foot of Montana's Beartooth Mountains, the art center celebrates the union of music, land, art, and architecture with large-scale sculptures and innovative architectural structures sited across its hills and rolling meadows and seven weeks of concerts performed in the acoustically enveloping Olivier Music Barn and outdoors under the big sky.

On Thursday, February 13, 2020, the New York-based ensemble Sandbox Percussion releases Andy Akiho's Haiku 2 as a music video and single from its debut album, And That One Too (Coviello Classics).

Trisha Brown Dance Company will celebrate its 50th anniversary at The Joyce Theater (April 21-26) with an historical season commemorating Brown's extraordinary partnership with visual artist Robert Rauschenberg. Over the course of five decades, Brown and Rauschenberg maintained a remarkable creative dialogue, drawing inspiration from each other while investigating the visual and the kinetic. The Joyce program features two pivotal works: Foray Forêt, with original costumes by Rauschenberg, and Astral Converted, featuring Rauschenberg's costumes and mobile set of lighting towers. 

Human Potential, the solo project of composer/musician/producer/filmmaker Andrew Becker (former drummer of Dischord Records' Medications and Brooklyn experimental outfit Screens), has released I'm Glad You're Alive today via on Becker's own, What Delicate Recordings.

Valley of the Moon Music Festival (VMMF) today announced the program for its sixth season, The Obsession: Beethoven's Influence 1770 - 2020. In celebration of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth, VMMF returns to the Hanna Center in Sonoma for three consecutive weekends, July 18 a?" August 2, with eight concerts featuring world-class musicians performing on historic instruments. Audiences will experience Beethoven's chamber music alongside works that inspired him and works that grapple with his legacy a?" evincing a mix of awe, anxiety and aversion.

Acclaimed songwriter, singer, film & television composer and Shudder To Think frontman Craig Wedren is adding another title to his already expanded resume: podcast creator. On February 19, he will release the first episode of his Sabbath Sessions podcast -- a collection of musical meditations that he has been crafting since 2014. This new podcast will represent his first explorations of ambient choral music, where Wedren developed his technique of sampling and looping his famously elastic voice resulting in a unique kind of sound bath. Listen to a sample of the music found on the podcast below.

La MaMa in association with Allied Productions Inc. presents GENERATOR: Pestilence Part 1, the first of a three-part cycle and the most ambitious live art creation in the 35-year partnership of Jack Waters and Peter Cramer. Known for their challenging and innovative interventions in art and politics, GENERATOR is a homecoming, a return to Waters' and Cramer's theatrical roots at La MaMa where two of their earliest performance works premiered in 1987.

Glasgow International has announced details of its ninth edition, the second of Director Richard Parry. Comprising 54 exhibitions and 82 events, performances and talks at over 50 spaces across the city and showcasing work by 160 artists; the theme of the 2020 festival is Attention: asking us to consider how, where and in whom our attention is placed at a time of seemingly constant distraction. Scotland's biennial festival of contemporary art further highlights Glasgow as one of the world's most important and exciting centres for visual art.

REDCAT, CalArts' downtown center for contemporary arts, will present the world premiere of Dada Divas, an experimental opera by Jacqueline Bobak.

As one of the leading voices of his generation, composer Dai Fujikura's signature writing will be exhibited in a Miller Theatre Composer Portrait on Thursday, March 5, 2020 at 8:00pm, performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), longtime champions of and collaborators with Fujikura.

Human Potential, the solo project of composer/musician/producer/filmmaker Andrew Becker (former drummer of Dischord Records' Medications and Brooklyn experimental outfit Screens), has released its latest track “Fast Trash” today via Brooklyn Vegan.  The song appears on the forthcoming album I'm Glad You're Alive, out February 7, 2020 via on Becker's own, What Delicate Recordings. Listen to “Fast Trash” below!

Asia TOPA is particularly excited to be presenting a mammoth program of contemporary music offerings in the 2020 festival. See below.

Performing arts non-profit FirstWorks launches its 2020 programming with Rhode Island's own world-class performance collaborative, Aurea Ensemble. A public concert on January 26 of the ensemble's newest work, featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning works by American composers and writers, will be followed by a conversation with the artists. Community engagement programming in Providence schools takes place the following day.

The Society of Fellows of the American Academy in Rome presents SALONE!, a multimedia/live performance event showcasing the work of world-renown choreographers, artists, composers, actors, and artisans who have each been awarded the prestigious Rome Prize. The premiere event will take place on March 24, 2020, at Roulette in Brooklyn, within a vibrant theater-in-the-round atmosphere welcoming the full engagement of attendees.

Martha Graham Dance Company's Studio Series continues with CunningGraham, a Merce Cunningham and Martha Graham technique comparison and discussion featuring Graham 2 and Cunningham Workshop participants, on Tuesday and Wednesday, February 4–5, at 7pm, at the Martha Graham Studio Theater.