John Cage's epic presentation of the Satie Vexations took place fifty years ago today. To review some old posts: the lineup of the 1963 event, a Joshua Rifkin footnote, my 1993 Times review of Vexations at Roulette, and pictures and video of the Make Music vibraphone rendition last year (whence the video above). A search of Google News suggests that the only organization to mark the anniversary is the Musikschule Winsen, which deployed a forty-member piano team last Friday. A footnote to the original marathon: in the audience for part of the time was Andy Warhol, who, at the time, was working on his film Sleep. Warhol may have been emboldened by Cage's experiment.
