Softday Celebrating Cage 100
To celebrate one of our favourites, the American composer, musician, musical philosopher and artist John Cage, who was born on the 5th of September 1912, Softday performed one of Cage's most famous works 4'33" live, played on Irish Bodhrans, on Cruises Street in Limerick City in Ireland. The performance started at 16: 33 (or, as you may write it 4:33 pm).
The general public actively participated in this World Premiere and celebration!
Recording of this event is courtesy of MoloneyMedia
Some background notes on the production of this performance
In a number of discussions (in our secret laboratories) we found that Cage's work 4'33" could be performed with a number of particular links in a Limerick City context.
For many years, a Mr. Frank Hogan have been showing a large yellow sign with "John 3:7" in the audience area of large sporting arenas in Ireland. While Hogan's reference is to a biblical verse, we see John Cage as one of the world's most leading musical thinkers, hence the coincidence of the name JOHN followed by two numbers pointed us towards 4'33". We had our sign made by the same company that made Hogan's original sign.
To our knowledge, 4'33" has never before been performed on traditional Irish Bodhrans. This is one of our favourite musical instruments.
For the venue, we selected Quimper Square, which is the crossing of two pedestrian streets Cruises Street and Todd's Bow. At this location there is a statue of a female figure playing a bodhran-like instrument (The Singer from Quimper, by Rowan Gillespie, 1992).
Trivia
In Cage's book Silence (1961), on page 4, the 33rd word is "sound".