A former student reports meeting a young Southern belle in North Carolina, mentioning John Cage to her, and having her respond, “Oh, didn’t he write some kind of opera about Sitting Bull?”  I’m going to speculate she was a student at Lenoir-Rhyne College when I performed Custer down there about eight years ago. Of course, what’s important about a name is how many letters it has, so, John Cage, Kyle Gann, Carl Orff, Arvo Pärt, Alex Ross, whatever. I wrote The Planets so people would mistakenly buy my CD thinking it was Holst, but I’m equally flattered to be confused with Cage. (But Senator – I knew John Cage, and I’m no John Cage.)
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
