Fads and Fancies in the Academy

  • Location:
    Mills College Art Museum , 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland , California, 94613, US

Monday, December 2, 2013 | 7:00 pm
Mills College Art Museum

Join MCAM and the Mills Music Department for the exciting presentation of Fads and Fancies in the Academy, a work composed by John Cage in 1940 for a dance choreographed by Marian Van Tuyl. Originally considered lost, the score was re-discovered when Cage presented it to Don Gillespie at C.F. Peters in 1992, a few months before his death. Written during the legendary 1940 Mills College Summer Session, Fads and Fancies in the Academy was the result of a six-week collaboration between Cage and Van Tuyl. The piece was first performed at Mills in Lisser Hall on January 10, 1941.

The musical component of Fads and Fancies in the Academy with its parodies of popular music and children’s songs illustrates a whimsical, playful side of Cage’s artistic personality and looks forward to his better-known percussion work Credo in US (1942).

The performance will also include a screening of an archival film of Fads and Fancies in the Academy as well as a performance of Dream (1948), a wistful piece by John Cage in the style of Erik Satie, originally written for piano for a dance by Merce Cunningham.

For more information please visit www.mcam.edu

This event is presented in conjunction with Experiments in the Fault Zone on view at MCAM through December 8, 2013.