Browse by Artist: CURRAN, ALVIN

Artist:	CURRAN, ALVIN
Title:	Live In Roma
Label:	DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format:	Book
Price:	$29.00
Catalog #:	DS 904873

Although Alvin Curran is almost universally recognized as one of the leading figures of the late 20th century musical avant-garde, he has never received the recognition he deserves in the form of a proper publication. This is, in fact, the first book ever to present a complete and coherent picture of this gigantic figure of experimental music. A radical experimentalism and a kind of innate volatility have, in fact, long kept the person and the work of Alvin Curran, one of the historic founders of the group Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV), at the margins of contemporary musical historiography. His vast and all-inclusive experience refuses to fit into the common schemas and cubbyholes, excluding him from the conceptual straitjackets of current Western musicology. Lavishly produced and conceived, this book is centered around extensive descriptions of the most important works and compositional techniques, providing a historical account of Curran's musical concerns and changing style: in permanent flux between two distinct cultural geographies (Italy and USA), sensitive to an infinity of pressures, encounters, transformations, and provocations, Curran's artistic voyage is presented here through a comprehensive historical and critical study that avoids buzz-word definitions and gives great respect to his otherness -- an otherness clearly and happily a part of the variegated musical universe of our time. Gathered for the first time in a single monograph, the contributions of several of the foremost Italian and international scholars -- enriched by an astounding "travel log" by Alvin Curran himself and by unpublished images from his private archive -- confirm the role of this composer-performer-teacher-writer as a major contributor to the evolution of artistic languages in the late 20th century and beyond. Edited by Daniela Margoni Tortora. 300 pages, softcover, in Italian and English.

Artist:	CURRAN, ALVIN
Title:	Inner Cities
Label:	LONG DISTANCE (FRANCE)
Format:	4CD
Price:	$80.00
Catalog #:	LONG 560304

Performed by Daan Vandewalle (piano), 4 hours, 24 minutes worth. "Alvin Curran's music-making embraces all the contradictions (composed/improvises, tonal/atonal, maximal/minimal) in a serene dialectical encounter. His more than 100 works feature taped/sampled natural sounds, piano, synthesizers, computers, violin, percussion, shofar, ship horns, accordion and chorus. Whether in the intimate form of his well-known solo performances, or pure chamber music, experimental radio works or large-scale site-specific sound environments and installations, all forge a very personal language from all the languages through dedicated research and recombinant invention. The composer says of Inner Cities, 'This music is open, unhurried, brutally lyrical, quiet, private, and tonal as it is raucous, aggressively impolite and obsessively meticulous in making the simple relations between tones and durations an unending adventure of personal wonder. My goal, as always, was to reduce the musical elements to their ultimate essences, to repudiate and embrace dualism, and to emulate, even in permanent notation, the feel of spontaneous music-making.'"

Artist:	CURRAN, ALVIN
Title:	Crystal Psalms
Label:	NEW ALBION
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	NA 067CD

An homage to Kristallnacht. A concert performed by 7 European radio stations, scored for 7 choruses, 4 trombones, 4 celli, 4 violas, 4 flutes, 4 clarinets, 2 tubas, 2 saxophones, 6 accordions, 6 percussionists, plus prerecorded sounds. "The music is structured in two contiguous sections. The first, lasting 24 minutes and dominated by the percussion using fallen and thrown objects, is an 18 voice polyphonic structure, where the musical fragments in each 'voice' are repeated cyclically and woven by chance into an increasingly dense texture. The remaining 29 minutes shift without warning from one musical discourse to another -- from the sound of an idling car to a Yiddish lullaby, to a ram's horn, to breaking glass; from a familiar warm melody to random sonic collisions." -- A. Curran.

Artist:	CURRAN, ALVIN
Title:	Maritime Rites
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	2CD
Price:	$30.00
Catalog #:	NW 80625CD

Featuring the foghorns and other maritime sounds of the U.S. Eastern Seaboard and solo improvisations by John Cage, Joseph Celli, Clark Coolidge, Alvin Curran, Jon Gibson, Malcolm Goldstein, Steve Lacy, George Lewis, Pauline Oliveros, and Leo Smith. "Rich in ambient detail, Maritime Rites presents the foghorn as indigenous American 'found' music par excellence and the source of one of the most enduring minimal musics around us. The series is also a comprehensive aural documentary of our regional and national maritime heritage including such historical sounds as the Nantucket II Lightship, now out of service and doing service as a museum docked in Boston Harbor. The Lightship's horn is the only one of its kind (and the loudest!) on the East coast and was recorded extensively during an exclusive session ten miles off shore with the special cooperation of the ship's crew. As the foghorn gives way to other electronic navigational aids, this work may serve as a historical document of some of the most beautiful and mysterious sounds of the sea. As an expression of sonic geography, Maritime Rites brings together different areas of the Seaboard in a single musical moment. The series was expressly conceived for radio, the only medium that can safely accommodate over sixty foghorns at once and bring an entire coastline, seemingly live, into anyone's home! An essential document for anyone interested in sound art."

Artist:	CURRAN, ALVIN
Title:	Solo Works: The '70s
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	3CD
Price:	$45.00
Catalog #:	NW 80713CD

"I am happy to stand again in front of all these free-wheeling tone paintings and look back -- embracing both their concrete and their purely ephemeral, abstract qualities -- while reflecting on how much these four seminal works determined the music I made afterward, similarly inspired by the rhythms, colors, and eternal durations of nature and the immediacy and knowledge of making music with anything at hand." --Alvin Curran
"This historic collection gathers together the four seminal solo albums recorded by Alvin Curran (b. 1938) in the 1970s. Two, Fiori Chiari Fiori Oscuri (1974) and The Works (1976), are making their first appearance on CD. Author/critic Tim Page, an early advocate of these works, writes, 'Curran weaves electronic technology, an occasional acoustic instrument, voices and musique concr�te ('found' music) into a multi-hued tapestry of sound. He holds these dissimilar elements together with a compelling subliminal musical consciousness; the listener never feels that Curran is deliberately being clever, or that he is out to impress, shock or self-consciously 'expand the musical language.' Curran's eclecticism is not willful; his sounds are there because they fit, and they convey a subtle and ingratiating sense of mysticism. These challenging, multi-faceted compositions manage, through their very catholicity, to synthesize and perfect a striking new musical syntax uniquely Curran's own.'"

Artist:	CURRAN, ALVIN
Title:	Toto Angelica
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	IDA 020CD

2005 release. "Stylistically follows in the wake of his Tzadik release Animal Behavior, to the extent that a plethora of alienated, musical sounds become a single piece of music when altered and thoughtfully mixed together. During his Angelica Festival performance (which was the impetus for this recording), his computer crashed and, by means of a pre-recorded phoneme voice, uttered the syllables, 'It's not my fault. Please make sure the Apple Talking Network is connected.' This happy accident inspired Curran to re-evaluate both our penchant to so strongly rely on technology, and the propitious results when such technology leads the artist into unexplored and unimagined territories by reason of necessity. From this standpoint, the composer examined the entire recordings from all 10 past Angelica Festivals from 1991 to 2001, and set about to mix disparate but somehow complimentary performances together to create a new work. These are otherwise impossible combinations: Fred Frith plays with two Eskimo women. Pavarotti plays with Mike Patton, etc. that logically should not work. But as the world becomes smaller and smaller by means of technology, by design, these instances certainly do. The outcome, while certainly intense, is by no means a nod to the world of lazily thrown together noises or shock-tastic-shivarees; instead, Curran's penchant to carefully consider all of the elements at his disposal left him with a full palette of possibilities for excellence and innovation."

Artist:	CURRAN, ALVIN
Title:	Animal Behavior
Label:	TZADIK
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TZ 7001

Tzadik is John Zorn's most prolific label; similar (though not directly related) to his continuing Avant label, but these are pressed in the US, w/ a domestic list price. Their output has been very prolific to date, divided into 5 label series: Composer, Radical Jewish Culture, New Japan, Archival (for reissues) and Lunatic Fringe. The design is typically nice (mostly under the direction of Ikue Mori), with lovely 5-color graphics, detailed notes, small score reproductions, etc. Each release on the label seems to have some sort of burning personal aesthetic ingrained within, making Tzadik one of the most significant US labels of the contemporary continuum. The Tzadik Composer Series starts off with Alvin Curran, who was a founding member of the legendary MEV in the 60s, and has been one of the main outside composers of new music for the past few decades. This CD features 2 recent works: "Animal Behavior" is a slightly dated piece for sampler, juxtaposing Gulf War insanity with the moans and groans of Ms. Annie Sprinkle. "Why This Night Different Than All Others" is much more spectacular, a beautiful 30 minute piece for small ensemble: Curran (piano), Roy Malan (violin), Donal Haas (accordion), Peter Wahrhaftig (tuba), William Winant (percussion). A perfectly realized textural opus.

Artist:	CURRAN, ALVIN
Title:	Theme Park
Label:	TZADIK
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TZ 7039

"Performed by virtuosic madman William Winant, Theme Park is a major new work by Alvin Curran and one of the most dynamic solo percussion compositions of the decade. Coupled with a kaleidoscope tribute to jazz giant Charlie Parker, this newest CD by one of today's most important musical pioneers incorporates minimalism, structuralism and post-modernism into an exhilarating new aggregate. Wild sounds, wit and passion to celebrate the opening of the 21st century."

Artist:	CURRAN, ALVIN
Title:	Lost Marbles
Label:	TZADIK
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TZ 7097

"A pioneer of live electronic music and one of America's most adventurous composers, Alvin Curran has been walking his own eclectic path since the late 1960s. The range and scope of his work is enormous, and unprecedented. Few composers have as many interests, or as much wit. This special compilation takes us on a whirlwind tour of fifteen of his most productive years (1987- 2002), capturing both live and studio performances from around the world. Featuring a seductive work for chorus and ensemble, an incredible piece for eleven of the world's largest and loudest musical instruments (shiphorns), an electroacoustic tribute to John Cage using the sound of his laughter and the purring of Merce Cunningham's cat and much, much more. This long overdue release will surely confirm Alvin Curran as one of America's most courageous and outrageous musical mavericks."

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