A Little Festival of New Music. Program.

London.: Goldsmith’s College., 1963. Original purple silkscreen front wrapper (a detail of a clenched fist), designer unknown. Sheets stapled to left edge. Small areas of damp-staining, mostly affecting only the cover sheet and final page.. (8.8 x 21 cm).. With 22 sheets, each with a few lines of mimeographed typed text printed recto only. Printed program for one of the earliest manifestations of Fluxus in the UK, organised by a Rock icon in his youth. John Cale is today famous for being the founding member of the American rock band the Velvet Underground. In his youth, having discovered a talent for the viola, Cale studied music at Goldsmiths College, University of London. As a student, Cale became friends with the experimental composer and former Stockhausen assistant Cornelius Cardew. Together they both organised 'A Little Festival Of New Music' held at Goldsmith’s College on July 6, 1963. This was to be one of the most significant Fluxus events to be held in London, highlighting as it did, the early Fluxus art movement, and allowing the performance of works by US avant-garde pioneers such as John Cage, LaMonte Young, George Maciunas, George Brecht, Robert Watts, Nam June Paik, Emmett Williams and Robin Page. Cale himself premiered two pieces at the event, titled Piano Piece (unsequel music 212b) and Plant Piece, the latter instructing the performer to place a potted plant onstage and scream at it until it died. The probable high point of the concert though, was the British premiere of LaMonte Young’s ‘X for Henry Flynt’ (1961), during which the performer, in this instance Cale, was to repeat a heavy sound every one or two seconds as uniformly and as regularly as possible for a long time. [Rare. No copies listed on WorldCat; Fluxus etc. - The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection, no. 639].