"THIS IS NOT A CONCERT", declares the programme. If you wandered into Kettle’s Yard last Wednesday by lucky chance, you did the right thing, because that was sort of the point of the night. An event fuelled by "chance operation", John Cage’s Musicircus was a bizarre evening indeed.

What on earth was it then? Well, Cage described his original 1967 Musicircus as "nothing more than an invitation to a number of musicians, who perform simultaneously anything or in any way they desire". So in 2010, on a drizzly, dark November evening in Cambridge, a museum and adjoining house came to life with the sounds of guitars, violins, radio static, spoken words and laptops in one of the most surreal musical evenings I’ve ever witnessed.

The twenty musical acts, spread across the museum, were under strict instructions: they must start and stop playing according to a second-by-second ‘time-chart’. These spasmodic periods were utterly randomised, so a performer might smash away at their string, skin or brass based instrument for three minutes or barely three seconds. The audience was free to wander around and listen to whatever they liked. The result of this, we are promised, is "sonic chaos".

At times, the experience was a little chaotic, but this was what made it so engrossing. I sat for some time on a comfy chair-cum-stool of the type Kettle’s Yard so specialise in, and consequently positioned myself between four competing, simultaneous musical performances vying for my attention. Facing me, the folksy reassurances of Josephine Stephenson’s guitar were battened down by the impossibly crouched Freddie Brown’s amusing plonkings upon his toy piano. Meanwhile, in the two rooms that flanked our sonically befuddling piece of hallway, the scores at the fingers of Andrew Goldman’s saloon piano fought bravely with the full gusto of The Staircase Band, which dominated the House’s landing and provided the entire buildilng with a jubilant heartbeat, at times heaving, at others fluttering.

As these sounds cascaded over each other I couldn’t help but smile. The effect was profoundly original, to say the least, and the whole event had a rare charm and personality. A noticeable glint appeared in the eye of a performer when he or she was obliged to stop, leaving the nearby listeners with only an abrupt, uncanny silence. There was a sense that they were breaking an unwritten contract with the listener; both musician and audience member were, without compromise, at the mercy of an ambiguous ‘chance-determined’ scheme of sound.

There were, of course, moments of frustration. With such unabashed randomisation, there were corners in which, at the wrong time, you could find yourself being treated to a lot of unwanted sound. I tried hard, but ultimately failed to warm to the orchestra of radios at the entrance. They were enthusiastically conducted to alter their volume and frequency, and although one could occasionally take purchase on a slimmer of distant, fuzzy melody, the overall result tended to hurry people along to quieter corners of the building. Similarly, the varied smashes of the huge gong proved overly aggressive.

But even when the Musicircus was unsettling it remained charming; it was an orchestration, if such a thing can be formed, of chaos. The New Music Ensemble and all the performers ought to be congratulated for their initiative and originality – especially the chap found whistling, alone, in the toilet.