Waltzing on the ASU Tempe Campus: John Cage’s "49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs of New York"

The ASU Art Museum presents an audio-visual installation of a version of Cage’s “49 Waltzes” for the ASU Tempe campus, realized by 23 students from the School of Music and the School of Arts, Media + Engineering for the museum.
In 1977 the American composer John Cage created “49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs of New York.” The work’s score is a map of New York City and features 49 superimposed triangles. Each triangle symbolizes a waltz. Cage obtained each point of the triangles via chance operations to pin down a specific location. Performers of “49 Waltzes” visit each identified location to capture its sounds and sights to experience, treasure and document the acoustic ecology of a place.
Cage encouraged transcriptions of this work for other places. Thus students of ASU’s School of Music and School of Arts, Media + Engineering teamed up to transcribe this work for their Tempe campus.