Ace Hotels will be presenting a full day of the composer’s music in lobbies and public areas on September 5.

In celebration of John Cage’s 105th birthday, hotel chain Ace Hotels will be presenting 24 hours of the composer’s music. The event, which will be open to the public, will take place in the hotels’ lobbies and public areas.

“In 1952 a composer called John Cage told us there was music in silence, and the world hasn’t been the same since,” Ace Hotel said in a statement. “Today, the gradual wearing away of stone by water, the echoes of gravitational waves, and the caloric metamorphosis of food into energy may all be understood as musical works, a privilege for which we are indebted to Cage.”

“To commemorate and honour our favourite sonic philosopher, Ace Hotel and the John Cage Trust, in partnership with Mode Records, present Untouchable Numbers, a 24-hour listening event beginning at 12am. Cage’s sounds, and silences, will play throughout lobbies and public spaces of all nine Ace Hotels as the earth completes one full rotation, freely and open to the public.”

The 24-hour marathon will be curated by Mode Records, a New York based record label that focusses on contemporary classical and avant-garde music. In addition to collections by Xenakis, Feldman, Scelsi and Wolff, the label has a 50-volume collection of works by Cage, who died in 1992.

The birthday event will take place at Ace Hotels’ locations across the USA on September 5, as well as their London hotel. “Listening is a radical act,” the hotel’s statement said.

 

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