Join Bard College, the John Cage Trust, and Slought on April 8-9, 2016 for a newly staged version of John Cage's work "How To Get Started," which is a collaborative experiment that explores improvisation and the origin of ideas.

Nine performers -- Roger Berkowitz, Olive Carrollhach, David Degge, Brian Dewan, John Kelly, Chris Mann, Pauline Oliveros, Jamie Parry, and Bobby Previte -- will draw upon Cage's realization as a script in effect and add new layers to the mix: their extemporizations on ten topics of interest, in their voices. The event will include introductory remarks by curators Laura Kuhn and Aaron Levy and collaborating sound engineer Peter Price, and post-performance conversation with the artists.

In 2010, the John Cage Trust joined with Slought in Philadelphia to create a permanent installation of this little-known work by John Cage, which was first performed by him at Skywalker Ranch in Nicasio, California, on Aug. 31, 1989. In the piece, Cage took the stage with ten note cards, shuffled the deck and spoke 'off the cuff' for no more than three minutes on each idea. His monologue was recorded in collaboration with engineers and looped back as the next card was addressed, creating a complex acoustic layering of his ideas. This amounted to an experiment having to do with thinking out loud, in public, before a live audience.