John Cage’s Musicircus – You won’t hear a thing; You’ll hear everything :: 11AM – 4PM, October 7, 2007 :: Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St., Chicago, IL :: FREE!!!

CHICAGO COMPOSERS FORUM presents “art as life” with hundreds of Chicago musicians, artists, and performers in a single four-hour collaborative performance. The underlying idea of Musicircus reflects Cage’s social philosophy of autonomy and responsibility in which each performer or “act” individually contributes to a greater whole. John Cage first brought the idea of the Musicircus to fruition in 1967 at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana where its first performance included jazz bands, pianists, dancers, mimes, vocalists, films, slides, black lights, balloons, cider and popcorn. Musicircus merges diverse art forms into a single, largescale event that celebrates all of these forms at once.

There will be OVER 125 MUSICIRCUS acts this year, including: Lester Jenkins Jr, GreenSugar, Irina Feoktistova, Jennifer Karmin, Free Improvisation Ensemble, Aleksander Garibashvili, The Chicago Cobra Ensemble, Saalik Ziyad, Asimina Chremos, Johnny Tokyo, Eric Leonardson, The Unknowns, Tony Chen, Plasticene, Michelle Tupko, A D Jameson, Sid Yiddish, Nana Shinelfug, Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra, Marita Bolles, Janet Schmid, Preston Klik’s Synphoric OM Choir, Rodney Jones, Marvin Tate, Chicago Bass Ensemble, Mahjabeen Karim, Erin Carlisle Norton, Bill MacKay, Jessica Hudson, Blank Line Collective, Wannapa P-Eubanks, Beatriz Albuquerque, Guillermo Gregorio, End of the World Band, Lois Veenhoven Guderian, Chris Powers, Kaiju Daiko, Northern Illinois University Percussion Group, Thomas Tabora, Sonic Inertia Performance Group, and many many many more.

There will also be a LECTURE, 11am Art Is Life: An Introduction to John Cage & His Musicircus at the Cultural Center’s Claudia Cassidy Theatre 2nd floor

You can read more about John Cage’s Musicircus here: http://musicircus.chicagocomposers.org/.