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John Cage taught experimental composition at the New School for Social Research multiple times between 1956 and 1959. This course was famously “open to those with or without musical training” (as stated in the course catalog). Indeed, some of the key students enrolled in the Summer 1958 session were known primarily as visual artists and had limited musical training (e.g., Allan Kaprow, and especially Al Hansen). But it is also true that other regular members of the class—including Carol Galente (left) and Stephen Addiss (right)—came to the course with classical musical training and more conventional musical taste. In this photograph, Mac Low (center) plays a drum that was part of a large collection of traditional, albeit non-Western, percussion instruments kept in a closet in Cage’s classroom. The tensions and disagreements that arose from the students’ differing disciplinary backgrounds and philosophies helped to create a charged atmosphere conducive to risk-taking. There could be a measure of difference among the teachers’ perspectives, too: When Cage was on tour, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, and Richard Maxfield would substitute for him, bringing their distinctive ideas about composition to the students.