NEXUS had crossed paths with John Cage directly and indirectly before 1987. We had already performed the “Third Construction” many times, and in Toronto in 1982 Cage was in the audience. We had just missed him in Viitisarri, Finland in 1984 on our NEXUS world tour. During our brief visit to Viitisarri, we were shown a video of Cage’s activities as the honored guest artist for the city’s music festival. Apparently, the organizers of the festival wanted an internationally-known composer and John Cage’s name rose to the top of their list. The video showed Cage performing “Branches” to a disbelieving audience. The festival eventually sank into bedlam as roving bands of town youths on the backs of flatbed trucks drove around Viitisarri making all sorts of sounds and calling it music in the spirit of their concept of Cage’s message. The story of Cage’s visit ended with the entire planning board being relieved of their duties. It was just another instance of the pandemonium that typically surrounded John Cage and his ideas about music, to which Cage was blissfully indifferent.
1987 saw the occasion of Cage’s 70th birthday, and in September a celebration event was held in his honor at the Embassy Theatre in Los Angeles. The event was a 3-hour “happening” titled, “MUSICIRCUS.” There were 90 performances, live and recorded, and Cage himself was one of the many performers. NEXUS was to perform “Third Construction” four times during the event - at 12″50′, 8″20′, 23″00′ and 39″05′.
I was also to perform with Cage in his piece “Inlets” in an ensemble consisting of several conch shells. Cage had an enormous conch shell - about 24-inches long - into which water was added. A contact mic amplified the sounds of the water flowing between the inner chambers of the shell producing deep gurgles and bubbly high sounds. I was to play a conch trumpet in the ensemble “at some time after the halfway point of each” of the three performances. All the while there were numerous other performances of other works being performed at their assigned times along with readings and narration. The event took place in a large open room and the audience was free to move around among the performers.
While the effect was seemingly random, the entire sequence of performances was entirely worked-out in a single page score (shown above). The chance entrances of Cage’s amplified gurgling sounds were absolutely hilarious, and on several occasions I laughed so hard I could hardly breath. The gurgles served as musical exclamation points, emphatically confirming a spoken word here, or a musical phrase there.
As for John Cage’s reaction . . . once more (as I interpreted it) a kind of blissful indifference.