Browse by Artist: LUCIER, ALVIN

Artist:	LUCIER, ALVIN
Title:	Anthony Burr/Charles Curtis
Label:	ANTIOPIC
Format:	2CD
Price:	$19.00
Catalog #:	ANSI 002CD

"The work of Alvin Lucier needs little introduction. He is certainly one of the most innovative composers of his time, a pioneer and central figure in the world of experimental and electronic composition and performance. His early work, alone and in conjunction with Robert Ashley, David Berhman, Gordon Mumma and others in the Sonic Arts Union -- which Lucier helped found in 1966 -- is musically rich while simultaneously exploring the many physical and psychic effects of sound. Pieces such as I Am Sitting in a Room (1970) and Music on a Long Thin Wire (1977) are unequivocal minimalist classics. Recent activity includes sound installation work and compositions for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra in which, by concentrating on the combination of close tuning and pure tones, sound is subtly sculpted and shifted to create mesmerizing patterns and sonic shapes. Alvin Lucier finds two extremely sympathetic interpreters of this approach in Charles Curtis (cello) and Anthony Burr (clarinet). This collection of compositions spread over two CDs, including a new piece, titled 'Charles Curtis' and written by Lucier for this project, elicits an intense physical reaction -- a testament to Lucier's poetic and scientific focus, as well as the deftness of technique with which Curtis and Burr execute these rigorously transcendent compositions. Packaged in a deluxe matte varnished fold-out digipak including a 20 page booklet of illustrations and writings by Alvin Lucier, Hermann Helmholtz and others."

Artist:	LUCIER, ALVIN
Title:	Bird And Person Dyning
Label:	GET BACK (ITALY)
Format:	LP
Price:	$20.00
Catalog #:	GET 420

"American avant-garde composer Alvin Lucier is well-known for his pioneering exploration of the physical properties of sound including the use of brainwaves to generate music. This LP features two of Lucier's groundbreaking early works. Lucier himself described his Bird and Person Dyning project in the following way: I got this electronic bird in the mail, a Christmas tree ornament, and you simply plugged it in, and it made this birdcall... I had this idea to put binaural mikes in my ears and to head that bird and to move my head and pan the sound of the bird around in space. I had a mike in one ear and one in the other and I could make the stereo image by moving my head, so I started the birdcall and I put the amplifier on, and I started to get feedback and I discovered that these beautiful interference patterns were occurring between the sound to the birdcall and the strands of feedback. The flipside ('The Duke of New York') deals with the power of entertainers in our society and the hypothesis that their voices are present on different levels in our memory."

Artist:	LUCIER, ALVIN
Title:	Music On A Long Thin Wire
Label:	LOVELY MUSIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	LCD 1011

Alvin Lucier is one of American's quintessential minimalist innovators, composing & performing extreme music for pure tones, brains waves, the ""generation of visual imagery by sound in vibrating media," etc. Music On A Long Thin Wire is one of his all-time classic works of hovering tones & sonic phenomena, recorded in 1979. "A 50-foot length of taut wire passes through the poles of a large magnet and is driven by an oscillator; the vibrations of the wire are miked at either end, amplified and broadcast in stereo. The thin wire is set vibrating four times at four different frequencies; what results is not the low drone one might expect from a long, vibrating wire, but a complexity of evocative, ethereal chords. First released on Lovely Music in 1980, Music on a Long Thin Wire is a classic example of Alvin Lucier's investigations into the physics of sound and the sonic properties of natural processes."

Artist:	LUCIER, ALVIN
Title:	Panorama
Label:	LOVELY MUSIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	LCD 1012

Consists of 1990-94 recordings, released in '97. "A gorgeous recording of works for trombone and piano, transformed by Lucier's electronics and oscillators. 'Wind Shadows' (1994), 'Music for Piano with One or More Snare Drums' (1990), and 'Panorama' (1993) -- were written for the Swiss musicians Roland Dahinden and Hildegard Kleeb, who play them on this CD. Also included: 'Music for Piano with Amplified Sonorous Vessels' (1990), which was originally written for Margaret Leng Tan."

Artist:	LUCIER, ALVIN
Title:	I Am Sitting In A Room
Label:	LOVELY MUSIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	LCD 1013

One of Lucier's most classic works and a cornerstone in the world of resonant frequencies. Performed by Lucier on recorded voice, tape machines, delay. "In this fascinating exploration of acoustical phenomena, Alvin Lucier slips from the domain of language to that of music in the course of 40 minutes and 32 repetitions of a simple paragraph of text. In I am sitting in a room, several sentences of recorded speech are simultaneously played back into a room and re-recorded there many times. As the repetitive process continues, those sounds common to the original spoken statement and those implied by the structural dimensions of the room are reinforced. The others are gradually eliminated. The space acts as a filter; the speech is transformed into pure sound. All the recorded segments are spliced together in the order in which they were made and constitute the work. I am sitting in a room was composed in 1970; This recording was made by Alvin Lucier on October 29th and 31st, 1980, in the living room of his home in Middletown, CT."

Artist:	LUCIER, ALVIN
Title:	Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas
Label:	LOVELY MUSIC
Format:	2CD
Price:	$26.00
Catalog #:	LCD 1015

Double CD release of of a four-part work, initiated in 1972 and recorded as presented here in 1983/4 and 2001. This reissues 2 long o/p LPs on Lovely, with 4 added parts released for the first time. A series of mostly solo instrument works for the likes of: clarinet, marimba, viola, voice, xylophone, violin, flute, glockenspiel, cello, horn, vibraphone. Performed by: Thomas Ridenour, William Winant, Dan Panner, Rebecca Armstrong, Conrad Harris, Susan Palma, Gregory Hesslink, James de Corsey. An absolute masterpiece of "interference sound".

Artist:	LUCIER, ALVIN
Title:	Crossings
Label:	LOVELY MUSIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	LCD 1018

"1990 CD reissue of prime-era Lucier product, with works from 1982-85. Features 'In Memoriam Jon Higgins (for clarinet in A and slow-sweep pure wave oscillator)', 'Septet for Three Winds, Four Strings and Pure Wave Oscillator', and 'Crossings (for small orchestra with slow-sweep pure wave oscillator)'. Said slow-sweep pure wave oscillator produces slowly swept pure waves that oscillate (on separate occasions) a clarinet, three winds and four strings, and a small orchestra. Maximum beat frequency heterodyning, often at an audible pitch. Similar acoustic phenomena as Tony Conrad/Penderecki string work and just as aurally stimulating (for those with lazy ear-ciliae)." -- Hrvatski.

Artist:	LUCIER, ALVIN
Title:	Clocker
Label:	LOVELY MUSIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	LCD 1019

Another classic Lucier catalog item, a 45-minute recording made in 1991 of this piece that he first conceived in 1978. The piece is for: amplified clock, performer with galvanic skin response sensor and digital delay system. The sounds that emanate are beautifully shifting patterns of tock-collage that reveal dramatic sonic detailings. "I wanted to make a work in which a performer could speed up and slow down time, stopping it, if possible, simply by thinking. I bought a Westclox Silver Bell Monogram in a local store and ordered a galvanic skin response sensor through the Edmund Scientific Catalogue. A GSR is designed to measure differences in skin resistance caused by changes in emotional state. A small current is sent through the body, the response to which is amplified, producing an output voltage which can be used to control various devices...later I added a bank of fixed delays which, as they splay out from the voltage controlled delay, create multiple reflections that almost convince the listener that the room is changing size."

Artist:	LUCIER, ALVIN
Title:	Theme
Label:	LOVELY MUSIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	LCD 5011

New 1999 release previously unrecorded Lucier works from the mid-90s. Features: "Music for Piano with Magnetic Strings" (performed by Lois Svard, piano), "Theme" (Sam Ashley, Thomas Buckner, Jacqueline Humbert and Joan La Barbara, voices set to a poem by John Ashbery) and "Music For Gamelan Instruments, Microphones, Amplifiers and Loudspeakers" (performed by the Wesleyan University Gamelan Ensemble). "'Music For Piano...' is a work in which the strings of a piano sound by themselves. Several EBows (small electromagnets used primarily with electric guitars) are placed on the strings of the piano. The pianist works from a prose score which describes the process and suggests (s)he freely position and reposition five EBows on the piano strings, creating strands of sounds of varying density and texture. Much of the pianist's time is spent listening for harmonics, audible beating, occasional rhythms produced as one or more magnets vibrate against adjacent strings, and other acoustic phenomena. 'Theme' sets a poem of John Ashbery's to music. Lucier didn't want to violate the flow of the words of the poem by fragmentation or any other cut-up method. The stanzas seemed musical enough just as they were, and he wanted the audience to hear the poem more or less in its pristine state. So working intuitively and by ear, he wrote out the poem for four readers in the order it was written, repeating words and phrases, overlapping and superimposing them in various ways. To 'set' the poem, he inserted microphones into the mouths of various vessels, including a small milk bottle, a sea shell, a vase , and an empty ostrich egg, to pick up the words as they were sounding inside the vessels. The readers speak normally, allowing the pitches of their voices which match those resonances of the vessels to create musical sounds."

Artist:	LUCIER, ALVIN
Title:	Still Lives
Label:	LOVELY MUSIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	LCD 5012

"Three new pieces for piano soloist with accompanying pure wave oscillation. Titles: 'Music for Piano with Slow Sweep Pure Wave Oscillators' (performed/composed for Marilyn Nonken), "On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon" (performed/composed for Ryuko Mizutani), and 'Still Lives' (performed/composed for Joseph Kubera). All pieces exhibit Lucier's unique take on performance-environment concepts. Quiet, melancholy, rather soothing. Gaining age with grace I suppose." -- Hrvatski

Artist:	LUCIER, ALVIN
Title:	Navigations For Strings/Small Waves
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 124CD

"'Navigations for Strings': For String Quartet. 'Small Waves': For String Quartet, Trombone, Piano and Two Water Pourers. The Arditti Quartet: Hildegard Kleeb, Roland Dahinden. Alvin Lucier (b. 1931) has been a pioneer in many areas of music composition and performance, including the notation of performers' physical gestures, the use of brain waves in live performance, the generation of visual imagery by sound in vibrating media, and the evocation of room acoustics for musical purposes. 'Navigations for Strings' (1991) consists of 4 tunes, for which a long stream of continually changing melodic and instrumental combinations occur. In 'Small Waves' (1997), six glass vessels, some partially filled with water, are mounted on pedestals scattered around the performance space. Microphones are inserted into the mouths of the vessels, then routed through corn compressor-limiters to amplifiers and monitor speakers. During the course of the performance, the volume levels of the amplifiers are raised and lowered, causing feedback at pitches determined by the size and shape of the containers and their proximity to the loudspeakers. Both works are remarkable microtonal musical experiences."

Artist:	LUCIER, ALVIN
Title:	Ever Present
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 178CD

Awesome collection of new, post-2000 works by Lucier. It's a been a long time since "I Am Sitting In A Room" for sure, but the dude clearly understands how to fill a room with sound as well as most anyone alive. "Alvin Lucier's (b. 1931) works on this CD, for solos and trios, continue to explore his unique sound world, exploration of microtones, and use of unusual instrumentation. 'Piper' is probably one of the few avant-garde pieces composed for the bagpipe. The piper is asked to walk slowly around the performance space, sounding his instrument as he does so. From time to time he detunes the chanters, creating beating patterns of slightly varying speeds and minor spatial disturbances (imaginary dopplers). In 'Fan,' four koto players play a long series of plucked tones over a 12-minute time span. During the course of '947,' four pure tones are sounded in all their combinations. In 'Silver Streetcar,' the player dampens the triangle with the thumb and forefinger of one hand while tapping the instrument with the other. Ever Present is inspired by Robert Irwin's garden at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Four first recordings."

Artist:	LUCIER, ALVIN
Title:	Vespers And Other Early Works
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80604CD

"Alvin Lucier (b. 1931) is best known for his pioneering work in the mid-sixties in the exploration of sonic environments, particularly sounds that we would never perceive under ordinary circumstances. Vespers and Other Early Works restores to the catalog several of his key works from that time. In 'Vespers' (1969) performers with Sondols (sonar-dolphin), hand-held pulse wave oscillators, explore the acoustic characteristics of given indoor or outdoor spaces by monitoring the echoes of the pulse waves off the walls, floors and ceilings, as well as any objects or obstacles in range of the sound waves. Over time, the listener receives an acoustic signature of the room. In 'Chambers' (1968), battery-operated radios, tape recorders, and electronically powered toys of various kinds are hidden in paper bags, shoes, kettles, and small suitcases and other small resonant environments. As performers carry these small 'rooms' into larger ones, such as concert halls, football stadiums and underground cisterns, the sounds, already altered by the acoustics of the small environments, are altered a second time by the acoustics of the larger ones. This version was recorded in 2002. 'North American Time Capsule' (1967), for voices and vocoder, is described metaphorically by Lucier as a message to listeners who don't know about us. '(Middletown) Memory Space' (1970) is a reenactment of the composition called '(Hartford) Memory Space', for any number of instrumental players with recordings of environmental sounds. 'Elegy for Albert Anastasia' (1961-1963) is described as composed 'for electromagnetic tape using very low sounds most of which are below human audibility.' Liner notes by Robert Ashley."

Artist:	LUCIER, ALVIN
Title:	Wind Shadows
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	2CD
Price:	$30.00
Catalog #:	NW 80628CD

"The music on these CDs takes us into a new realm of music making, one that Alvin Lucier (b. 1931) has defined for us and one that demands that we start to listen anew. His work has been more often described in terms of science than of art as if it were a series of quasi-scientific experiments, but to put the emphasis here is to miss the point, for its purpose is never 'explanatory' (the goal of science) but, like all art, 'revelatory.' This is not to suggest that the composer has some spiritual agenda in the usual sense of this term. On the contrary, it is the physical behavior of sound itself that he so elegantly reveals, each work unveiling an otherwise hidden or ephemeral aspect of aural phenomena and allowing us time to witness its beauty. He achieves this by ruthlessly excluding any trace of self-expression, or indeed anything extraneous to the phenomenon itself. The Barton Workshop has been the only group to really work closely with Lucier in terms of doing 'portraits' of his work (the first in 1995), commissioning new works (40 Rooms, Bar Lazy J, and Q) and performing older/extant pieces. This 2CD set is the fruit of this long collaborative process. In Memoriam Stuart Marshall [bass clarinet and pure wave oscillator] (1993/rev. 2003), 40 Rooms [quintet and digital reverberation system] (1996), In Memoriam Jon Higgins [clarinet and slow sweep pure wave oscillator] (1984), Letters [clarinet, violin, cello, piano] (1992), Q [quintet and pure wave oscillators] (1996), A Tribute to James Tenney [double bass and pure wave oscillators] (1986), Bar Lazy J [clarinet, trombone] (2003), Fideliotrio [viola, cello, piano] (1987), Wind Shadows [trombone and closely tuned oscillators](1994)."

Artist:	LUCIER, ALVIN
Title:	Nothing Is Real...
Label:	WERGO (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$22.00
Catalog #:	WER 6660

Performed by Matthias Kaul (percussion, voice & piano), recorded 2001. "The focus of the pieces by composer Alvin Lucier on this Wergo CD is the phenomena of resonance -- sympathetic vibration -- in many variations. 'Time and again, I find myself having to pare away any musical gestures in a work in order to uncover the true idea in a piece,' says Lucier. The composer knows which ideas he wants to liberate. But the process of causing the environment to resound is always a collaborative, interactive project. It needs someone who is creatively engaged, even obsessed, to make Lucier's music of ideas a music of the ears. Percussionist Matthias Kaul is just such a person, and this new disc, Nothing Is Real..., will open up many ears to Lucier's compositional brilliance."

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