做厙輦⑹

First-year students��� class project included in New York Public Library exhibition

by MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson

A video created by first-year students is gaining  as part of a New York Public Library about American composer John Cage.

���It's a huge honor for all of us,��� said Alex Kasznel ���15, who created the video along with classmates Matt Schwartzman, Jennifer Azarow and Christina Errico. ���This was definitely one of the most rewarding projects I've ever done.���

Developed as an assignment for a first-year music-history seminar taught by Associate Professor of Music Amy Wlodarski, the video chronicles two moments of Dickinson���s engagement with the legendary composer: April 8, 1970, when Cage visited campus to accept the college���s Arts Award; and November 12, 2011, when visiting musicians Third Coast Percussion marked Cage���s 100th birthday by performing his works on campus.

Students in Wlodarski���s music-history seminar and students in Associate Professor of Music Jennifer Blyth���s music-performance seminar studied Cage throughout the fall semester. The performance students played Cage���s ���Radio Music������which uses radios, tuned to different stations, in place of traditional instruments���as part of the November concert, and the music-history students captured reactions to the work on video. Wlodarski���s students also filmed interviews with Dickinsonians who had attended Cage���s 1970 performance on campus: President William G. Durden ���71; former music major Joe Sobel ���70, who had delighted Cage with a handmade instrument made from car horns; A. Pierce Bounds ���71, who photographed the concert; and music professors emeriti Beth and Truman Bullard.

���The whole production went perfectly, and I was floored by the work that they put into it,��� said Multimedia Programmer Brenda Landis, who, with Multimedia Special Instructor Andy Petrus, taught the students to record and edit the video.

With permission from its creators, Wlodarski submitted the video, ���,��� for inclusion in the New York Public Library���s ���John Cage Unbound: A Living Archive.��� The digital collection includes manuscripts, texts, photos and videos of musicians, students and performers interpreting Cage���s music.

���The head of that archive noted not only the high quality of the submission, but also that it was the first student submission to the Web site,��� Wlodarski said.

Published May 7, 2012