John Cage and the Music of Zen -- the biography

John Cage's immense contribution to the arts - and to music by Brian Eno and Philip Glass, Morton Feldman and Pierre Boulez, Nam June Paik and La Monte Young - has a crucial yet invisible Zen component.

A new biography, "Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Life of Artists" (Penguin Press, 2012), by critic Kay Larson (New York Magazine, the New York Times), makes visible the music of Cage's Zen path.

In the 1950s, Cage heard lectures on Zen by the great Japanese scholar D. T. Suzuki. These ancient teachings spoke to Cage as though meant just for him. He wrote music based on Zen principles of indeterminacy and chance, and a “silent piece” (4’33”) that honors Suzuki’s teachings. Cage’s transformation became ground zero in a new international postmodern art, music, and performance avant-garde that still honors him as pioneer.

Early press:

"Without a doubt, the richest, most stimulating, most absorbing book I've read in the past year, if not decade. . . ." -- Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

"Tough-minded even when working at high levels of abstraction, Where the Heart Beats is one of the most profound, not to mention unexpected, gifts imaginable during John Cage's centennary year." -- Seth Colter Wells, Slate.

"A thoroughly researched and wittily written guide to Cage and the Zen mind. There are delightful surprises and revelatory anecdotes on nearly every page." -- Larry Lipkis, LIbrary Journal.

https://www.storyamp.com/dispatch/780/e4c0afcef20e0b5048aac8f65f3e4639