John Cage taught at Cornish

In 1938, John Cage was teaching at the Cornish College of the Arts, in Seattle, close to where Agnes was living at the time. 
Though it isn't likely that they met then, later they would cross each other's paths again, in New York, through their mutual interest in Zen teachings.

John Cage on Wikipedia

And what is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of paradox:a purposeful purposelessness or a purposeless play. This play, however, is anaffirmation of life—not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggestimprovements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’reliving, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.

—John Cage, Experimental Music (1957)