Hear this

In New Yorker staff writer Alex Ross’ recent feature on John Cage, he describes in pin-drop detail two performances of Cage’s “4’33”,” a piano “performance” of eponymous length where the “performers” sat silently for nearly five minutes. At a performance in 1952 in New York, near Woodstock, audiences grumbled and left by the third “movement.” At another rendition this past July, Ross describes how he “might not have been the only listener who wished that the music of the forest had gone on a little longer.”

It’s a great piece on the power of silence in the modern world, and not unlike the many other stories Ross has penned for The New Yorker since 1993.

This Monday, Ross will deliver a lecture in Sacramento titled “Chacona, Lamento, Walking Blues”—which is based on the second chapter of his recent book, Listen to This—where he will trace bass lines and music motifs through nearly 1,000 years of music history. Think Bach to Mary Poppins to Led Zeppelin. Ramble on!