Alvin Curran (born December 13, 1938) is an American composer, performer, improviser, sound artist, and writer. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and lives and works in Rome, Italy. He is the co-founder, with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum, of Musica Elettronica Viva, and a former student of Elliott Carter. Curran's music often makes use of electronics and environmental found sounds. He was a professor of music at Mills College in California until 2006 and now teaches privately in Rome and sporadically at various institutions.
His works include solo performance pieces such as Endangered Species, TransDadaExpress, and Shofar;[1] radio works such as Crystal Psalms, Un Altro Ferragosto, I Dreamt John Cage Yodeling at the Zurich Hauptbahnhof, and Living Room Music; large-scale musical choreographic works such as Oh Brass on the Grass Alas, for 300 amateur brass-band musicians, and the Maritime Rites series of performances on and near water; sound installation works such as Magic Carpet, Floor Plan, The Twentieth Century, and Gardening with John; chamber music such as For Cornelius for piano, the trio Schtyx, the string quartet VSTO, the saxophone quartet Electric Rags II, the percussion quartet THEME PARK, a series of works for chorus SATB, and the work for chamber orchestra and video Circus Maximus; The Book of Beginnings for orchestra, youth orchestra, self-playing pianos, and cellphone app; and many collaborative dance and theater works.[2]
Since 1993, Curran has worked on Inner Cities, a growing series of solo piano pieces that together form one of the longest non-repetitive piano pieces ever written. Daniela Tortora has edited a book about his work, Alvin Curran Live in Roma (Die Schachtel 2010). In 2015 he published The Alvin Curran Fakebook, an atypical autobiography that includes photos, writings, and sketches alongside more than 200 scores and fragments ranging from raw sonic materials to conceptual musics and completed compositions. His articles have been published in the New York Times, Leonardo, The Contemporary Music Review, and Musiktexte, among others.
The Stroke That Kills (2008) Seth Josel, guitar, New World Records
The Magic Carpet (2008), reissue of 1971 LP on SOURCE, music of the avant garde: Source Records 1–6, 1968–1971, Pogus Productions
Endangered Species (2010), ATOPOS Records
Under the Fig Tree/The Magic Carpet (2010), Die Schachtel
Alvin Curran: Solo Works – the '70s (2010), 3-CD set, New World Records
MMM Quartet – Live At The Metz' Arsenal (2012), with Joelle Leandre, Fred Frith, Urs Leimgruber, Leo Records
Shofar Rags (2013) Tzadik
Inner Cities 8, Eve Egoyan, (2014) Other Minds Records
On Hearing the Brooklyn Bridge Sing in Yiddish (2016),SWR Digital
Natural History (2017), Black Truffle
The Irrawaddy Blues (2017), Documenta 14
From The Alvin Curran Fakebook: The Biella Sessions (2017), Dodicilune
Endangered Species, 2-CD set. New World Records 80804, 2018.
Dead Beats, performed by Reinier Van Houdt. 2-CD set, Moving Furniture Records, 2019.
Café Grand Abyss by Jon Rose & Alvin Curran - ReR Megacorp, JRAC, 2019 (CD/DL).
Community Garden, with Walter Prati, CD Da Vinci Classics C00405 and digital album, 2021
Achim Freyer Trifft Don Giovanni am Checkpoint Charlie (Achim Freyer Meets Don Giovanni at Checkpoint Charlie), a radio work for Deutschlandradio, 2022
Drumming Up Trouble, BLACKTRUFFLE094, LP and digital download, 2022
Discography with Musica Elettronica Viva
Friday (2008) reissue of 1969 Polydor LP by Alga Marghen
Spacecraft/Unified Patchwork Theory (2001) Alga Marghen
apogee – MEV/AMM (2005) Matchless Recordings
MEV40 (2008) 4-CD set with 40 years of music, New World Records
AMM/MEV: Live Electronic Music Improvised (2009) reissue of 1968 Mainstream LP by WERGO
Symphony No 106, Les Disques Victo, 2016 VICTO CD 129, 2016, and digital album
Symphony No. 105, a Café Oto download available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC, 2016
Symphony No 108, Live at Brno Philharmonic, Hermes' Ear - HE CD 015 / aSB 03, 2017
Alvin Augustus Lucier Jr. was an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. A long-time music professor at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, Lucier was a member of the influential Sonic Arts Union, which included Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma. Much of his work is influenced by science and explores the physical properties of sound itself: resonance of spaces, phase interference between closely tuned pitches, and the transmission of sound through physical media.
Frederic Anthony Rzewski was an American composer and pianist, considered to be one of the most important American composer-pianists of his time. His major compositions, which often incorporate social and political themes, include the minimalist Coming Together and the variation set The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, which has been called "a modern classic".
Joan Linda La Barbara is an American vocalist and composer known for her explorations of non-conventional or "extended" vocal techniques. Considered to be a vocal virtuoso in the field of contemporary music, she is credited with advancing a new vocabulary of vocal sounds including trills, whispers, cries, sighs, inhaled tones, and multiphonics.
Mark Dresser is an American double bass player and composer.
Giacinto Francesco Maria Scelsi was an Italian composer who also wrote surrealist poetry in French.
Richard Lowe Teitelbaum was an American composer, keyboardist, and improvisor. A student of Allen Forte, Mel Powell, and Luigi Nono, he was known for his live electronic music and synthesizer performances. He was a pioneer of brain-wave music. He was also involved with world music and used Japanese, Indian, and western classical instruments and notation in both composition and improvisational settings.
Chaim Moshe Tzadik Palestine, known professionally as Charlemagne Palestine, is an American visual artist and musician. He has been described as being one of the founders of New York school of minimalist music, first initiated by La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Robert Moran, and Phil Niblock, although he prefers to call himself a maximalist.
Kontra-Punkte is a composition for ten instruments by Karlheinz Stockhausen which resolves contrasts among six instrumental timbres, as well as extremes of note values and dynamic levels, into a homogeneous ending texture. Stockhausen described it: "Counter-Points: a series of the most concealed and also the most conspicuous transformations and renewals—with no predictable end. The same thing is never heard twice. Yet there is a distinct feeling of never falling out of an unmistakable construction of the utmost homogeneity. An underlying force that holds things together—related proportions: a structure. Not the same Gestalten in a changing light. But rather this: various Gestalten in the same light, that permeates everything."
Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV) is a live acoustic/electronic improvisational group formed in Rome, Italy, in 1966. Defined as "something of an irregular institution, a band that has come together intermittently through the years", Musica Elettronica Viva's founding members were Allan Bryant, Alvin Curran, Jon Phetteplace and Frederic Rzewski, Richard Teitelbaum. and Carol Plantamura. Other members include Ivan Vandor and Steve Lacy. Garrett List and George E. Lewis subsequently joined the group.
Chris Brown is an American composer, pianist and electronic musician, who creates music for acoustic instruments with interactive electronics, for computer networks, and for improvising ensembles. He was active early in his career as an inventor and builder of electroacoustic instruments; he has also performed widely as an improviser and pianist with groups as "Room" and the "Glenn Spearman Double Trio." In 1986 he co-founded the pioneering computer network music ensemble "The Hub". He is also known for his recorded performances of music by Henry Cowell, Luc Ferrari, and John Zorn. He has received commissions from the Berkeley Symphony, the Rova Saxophone Quartet, the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio, the Gerbode Foundation, the Phonos Foundation and the Creative Work Fund. His recent music includes the poly-rhythm installation "Talking Drum", the "Inventions" series for computers and interactive performers, and the radio performance "Transmissions" series, with composer Guillermo Galindo.
Gerry Hemingway is an American drummer and composer.
Paul Jacobs was an American pianist. He was best known for his performances of twentieth-century music but also gained wide recognition for his work with early keyboards, performing frequently with Baroque ensembles.
Fred Frith appears on over 400 recordings. This is a selection from bands he was/is a member of, collaborations with other bands and musicians, and his solo recordings. The year indicates when the album was first released. For a comprehensive discography, see the Discography of Fred Frith by Michel Ramond, Patrice Roussel and Stephane Vuilleumier.
Arabesque Records is an American record company and label specializing in jazz and classical music.
Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza was an avant-garde free improvisation group considered the first experimental composers collective.
Michael Vetter was a German composer, novelist, poet, performer, calligrapher, artist, and teacher.
Refrain for three players is a chamber music composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is number 11 in his catalog of works.
Schlagtrio is a chamber-music work for piano and two timpanists composed by Karlheinz Stockhausen in 1952. It is Nr. ⅓ in his catalogue of works.
Plus-Minus, 2 × 7 pages for realisation, is a composition for one or several performers by Karlheinz Stockhausen, first written in 1963 and redrafted in 1974. It is Nr. 14 in the composer's catalogue of works, and has a variable performing length that depends on the version worked out from the given materials. The score is dedicated to Mary Bauermeister.
The Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio is a trio, formed in 1984, resident at Mills College, and named for its members; violinist David Abel, pianist Julie Steinberg, and percussionist William Winant. They specialize in new music from the Americas and the Pacific Rim.
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