John Cage's crazy creativity

Crazy wisdom, as exemplified by the celebrated but controversial Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, is wisdom gone wild. It is wisdom expanded beyond conventional intelligence and beyond the concept of ordinary people. Similarly, crazy creativity is creativity gone wild, and the importance of the threatened art of crazy creativity is seriously underestimated in today's algorithmically flattened culture. 

Social psychologist and scholar Donald T. Campbell  has proposed that dependence on random mutation does not just apply to human evolution, but also to creative evolution. So no random mutation in the creative process means no development. All creativity depends on taking old ideas and combining them in new, unusual, and sometime wrong ways. Without this vital mutation there would be no variability, meaning all art would become nothing more than a replica of the preceding art. 


John Cage's pioneering work is one outstanding example of crazy creativity combining old and unusual ideas in new and unusual ways. Back in 2020 I published here a short reminiscence by Royal Scottish Orchestra's then CEO Christopher Bishop of John Cage's 1990 visit to Glasgow. Now a major new documentary project has emerged linked to that visit when Cage was a featured composer at the Musica Nova Festival.

John Cage's 1990 Glasgow residency originated from a 1984 reception when his graphic art was featured at Edinburgh's Fruitmarket Gallery. At this reception Scottish folk band The Whistlebinkies were invited to perform. Formed in the late 1960s in Glasgow, The Whistlebinkies made, and continue to make, an important contribution to the development of Scottish traditional music. The band's many achievements include in 1991 becoming the first Scottish ensemble to tour China and in 1995 being featured as BBC Radio 3 Artists of the Week. 

At the 1984 reception composer and Whistlebinkie flautist Eddie McGuire suggested to John Cage that he wrote a piece for The Whistlebinkies. The result was Scottish Circus composed for the 1990 Musica Nova Festival. In the photo above Eddie McGuire is seen with the composer, below are The Whistlebinkies with the composer.

Scottish Circus is part of a loosely-defined lineage of John Cage's 'circus' projects. These stretch back to an untitled 1952 event at Black Mountain College, with participants including Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, and David Tudor. Elsewhere in the lineage are Roaratorio, An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake (1979), and Musicircus which was first performed at the University of Illinois in 1967. 

On September 20th 1990 The Whistlebinkies premiered Scottish Circus at Glasgow University's Concert Hall in the presence of John Cage, together with an ensemble version of 4' 33'' . Critical reaction was universally positive with Bill Alexander writing in The Times Educational Supplement "the freshest listening experience... a fusion of the improvised avant-garde freedom with traditional folk music..." Scottish Circus was performed again at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in November 1992 shortly after the composer's death. Scotsman critic Mary Miller described this performance as "... an improvisation of incredible beauty and delicacy".  In 2012 Scottish Circus was performed once again at the Rotterdam Philharmonic Gergiev Festival. Below are John Cage's instructions to The Whistlebinkies  for their 1990 ensemble performance of 4' 33''. 


In May 2007 the exhibition No Fixed Points - Drawings by John Cage and Merce Cunningham opened at Inverleith House, Edinburgh. As part of this The Whistlebinkies played, including performances of 4' 33'' and Scottish Circus. Demonstrating admirably crazy creativity, New York based independent label Mode Records travelled to Scotland and captured two premiere video recordings of Scottish Circus and two of an ensemble version of  4' 33''. All the recordings were made at Inverleith House, with one of the 4' 33'' performances  captured outdoors with the impressive backdrop of Edinburgh Castle, as seen in the header image. A truly Cageian chance element meant this outdoor performance was terminated by torrential rain and thunder, as captured on the video. 

It has taken considerable time to bring these 2007 recordings to market. But now Mode Records have releases a DVD of the four Inverleith House video recordings with the Scottish Circus material with 5.1 surround sound and Dolby Stereo. In addition there is a stereo PCM 24-bit audio only concert recording of Scottish Circus, a 32 minute discussion between Eddie McGuire and Whistlebinkie fiddler Stuart Eydmann, and a 56 minute mono audio recording from 1984 of John Cage in conversation in Edinburgh. The DVD comes a 24 page booklet containing more new Cage material - see below.


Clearly this Mode Records project with premiere recordings of Scottish Circus is an important contribution to the John Cage legacy. But is is far more than that. I have been privileged to attend several memorable Cage 'happenings', notably Bruges in 2008 and Aldeburgh with Exaudi in 2011, so Scottish Circus has some impressive competition. But this project is up their with the best; because director Tim Chu and video editor Anton Cabaliero have not only created an important John Cage document, but through their crazy creativity video becomes a seamless part of the Cage aesthetic.    

That chance event captured on video of torrential rain supplementing the ensemble performance of 4' 33" is a prime example of what John Cage's friend and fellow Zen practitioner Alan Watts called 'a controlled accident'. Chögyam Trungpa explained that "...the shaky ground is something we should look forward to". When things become uncertain, we become more conceptual and discursive in an attempt to negate that uncertainty, and John Cage's crazy creativity shook - and continues to shake - the ground of established music conventions. What classical music needs today is not more bland pandering to audience metrics. It need more uncertainty, more crazy creativity, and more brave musicians following in John Cage's footsteps. Thank you to Mode Records and The Whistlebinkies for reminding us of that.  
 

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