The music and art scenes in 1960’s New York were deeply connected. The lives of composers such as John Cage, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff were interwoven with the lives of the artists around them, and new ideas flowed freely between disciplines. At the center of this was Cage, whose relationships with Merce Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg made him a nexus between many different scenes in New York. “John Cage knew everybody” said the younger Morton Feldman, and he introduced Feldman to many of the artists who would become his closest friends and collaborators.
Towards the end of his life, Feldman wrote several “tribute” pieces to people who had been important to him among them, For John Cage (1982), and it has become one of Feldman’s most well-known pieces. For John Cage will be performed by Karl Larson on piano and Erica Dicker, violin in conjunction with the exhibition New York: 1962-1964.