SYNCOPE

BLACK MOUNTAIN String Quartet: Formed for the occasion, the Black Mountain String Quartet takes its name from the famous experimental arts college in North Carolina, where the ideas of the Fluxus movement, and of composers like J. Cage, M. Feldman and La Monte Young, were developed. Black Mountain College was located in a relatively isolated rural setting, with modest financing and an informal spirit of collaboration. Certain innovations, ties and unexpected connections that took form at Black Mountain had a lasting influence on American art in the postwar era. Buckminster Fuller met Kenneth Snelson, a student at Black Mountain, and the result was the creation of the first geodesic dome (improvised with boards in the school courtyard); Merce Cunningham formed his dance company there, and John Cage staged his first happening. Black Mountain College was a school of artistic disciplines based on the pedagogical concept of progressive education. At the time, it was a unique experiment in instruction due to the artists and writers that guided it, and as such it became an important incubator of the American avant-garde.