Alvin Curran

Alvin Curran playing the shofar in 2008.

Composer Alvin Curran (born December 13, 1938), 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.

Of Jewish descent, Curran was born in Providence, Rhode Island. He was a professor of music at Mills College in California until 2006 and now teaches privately in Rome, Italy, and sporadically at various institutions. His works include solo performance pieces such as Endangered Species, TransDadExpress, and Shofar; 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, and a series of works for chorus SATB; and many collaborative dance and theater works. Since 1996, Curran has worked on a growing series of solo piano pieces entitled Inner Cities, which 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).

Selected discography

• Songs and Views of the Magnetic Garden (1974 Ananda, reissue 1993) Catalyst Records
• Fiori Chiari Fiori Oscuri (1975) Ananda No. 4
• The Works (1978) Fore
• Canti Illuminati (1980 Fore, reissue 2004) Fringes Recordings
• Natural History (1982) Editions Gianozzo
• Maritime Rites, ten environmental concerts produced for National Public Radio (1984, reissue 2004) New World Records
• Field It and Lenz (1985) Radio Art Foundation
• For Cornelius and Era Ora (1986), Ursula Oppens, Frederic Rzewski pianos, New Albion
• Electric Rags II (1989) New Albion Records, with Rova Saxophone Quartet
• Hyper Beatles (1990) Aki Takahashi piano, Toshiba-EMI/Angel
• Il Clarinetto (1992) David Keberle clarinet/Curran electronics, BMG Ariola
• Schtyx (1994) Abel Steinberg Winant Trio, with VSTO (string quartet) David Abel, Sharon Wood, Meg Tichener, Dina Weinschelbaum, CRI.
• Animal Behaviour (1995) Tzadik.
• Yvar Mikhashoff plays Alvin Curran: Piano Works (1995) Mode Records
• Theme Park (1998) Tzadik.
• Crystal Psalms (1999) New World Records
• riverrun: voicings/soundscapes (1999) Klaus Schöning, editor, WERGO
• The Things In Between (1999) Eve Egoyan, piano, Artifact
• Time Tracks (1999) Jeanne Golan, piano, Albany Records
• Apollo and Marsyas, Het Apollohuis 1980-1997: An anthology of new music concerts (2002) ACD
• Inner Cities (2003), Bruce Brubaker, piano, Arabesque Recordings
• Lost Marbles (2004) Tzadik.
• Our Ur (2004), with Domenico Sciajno, Rossbin Production
• ABO: Un Ritratto Sonoro (2004) Companion to the book, Lezione di boxe by Achille Bonita Oliva, Luca Sossella
• Vindobona Blues (2005) Kunstradio OR
• Toto Angelica (2005) I Dischi di Angelica.
• Hesitation-Tango (2005) Aki Takahashi, piano, Camerata
• Inner Cities (2005) Daan Vandewalle, piano, Long Distance Records
• The Art of the Fluke (2007), with Cenk Ergün, TEAR Records
• Hope Street Tunnel Blues (2007) Bruce Brubaker, piano, Arabesque Recordings
• For Cornelius, Kees Wieringa, Do Records
• The Stroke That Kills (2008) Seth Josel, guitar, New World Records
• SOURCE, music of the avant garde: Source Records 1-6, 1968-1971 (2008), Pogus Productions
• Endangered Species (2010), ATOPOS Records
• Under the Fig Tree/The Magic Carpet (2010), Die Schachtel

Discography with Musica Elettronica Viva

• Friday (1969) Polydor
• 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

External links

• Official website Site features numerous musical excerpts.
• Alvin Curran on New Albion Records
• Alvin Curran on Other Minds
• Volume: Bed of Sound: Alvin Curran
• 'Waking Up to Alvin Curran, Frank J. Oteri
• Alvin Curran discography at MusicBrainz
• Epitonic.com: Alvin Curran featuring Crystal Psalms
• Interview from American Mavericks site
• Panel discussion on Curran's music, Slought Foundation, 2007, 60 minutes
• Curran discusses composing in modern world
• Amirkhanian, Charles Speaking of Music: Interview with Alvin Curran. For KPFA, September 28, 1989, as part of the San Francisco Exploratorium’s Speaking of Music series. 124 minutes.
• Golden, Barbara. “Conversation with Alvin Curran.” eContact! 12.2 — Interviews (2) (April 2010). Montréal: CEC.