Alvin Lucier

I tried watching the Mumma episode of Aether tonight and instead I'm just watching the Lucier episode again

it's impossibly great

www.unstcollective.com
www.resonancefm.com

Unusually beautiful packaging is a plus as well.

You still need Panorama for "Music for Piano with Amplified Sonorous Vessels", but this release beats Crossings hands down

The Only Talking Machine of its Kind in the World

This is probably the most moving and beautiful of all of Lucier's pieces.

Interview with him on UBUWEB is brilliant. I nearly crack up everytime he says "I mean, that's fascinating, don't you think?" forcing the interviewer to be all "Uh, yeah, definitely"

Did everybody see this yet? Pretty cool.

http://gawker.com/5554154/what-does-a-video-look-like-after-1000-youtube-uploads

Let's see the CSI:Miami crime lab restore that video!

lucier-mania at wesleyan!

http://www.wesleyan.edu/cfa/lucier.html

The Wesleyan University Orchestra, Gamelan Ensemble and Collegium Musicum perform Alvin Lucier's ensemble works Music for Gamelan Instruments, Microphones, Amplifiers and Loudspeakers (1994), Six Geometries (1993), Panorama 2 (2011), Exploration of the House (2005), and Shadow Lines (2008).

serious brainpower

Panel to include Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Paula Matthusen, Gordon Mumma, Pauline Oliveros and Christian Wolff. Moderated by Anthony Braxton, Professor of Music.

holy moly

yeah, i got the schedule for this. wish i was there. as usual, all the interesting stuff in new england happens the minute i leave town.

i will be interviewing him, though!

hey geeta

good imdb review of one of the 'Dr. Chicago' series of films I brought up in the subway: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0203426/

I haven't seen it myself, sure want to.

http://georgemanupelli.com/

The Chicago films do not use actors. Instead, the main characters are played by major avant garde talents from other creative fields. Dr. Chicago is played by renowned composer Alvin Lucier whose stream-of-consciousness soliloquies in the films are punctuated by his ferocious stutter. Painter and performance artist Mary Ashley, a primary member of the legendary ONCE Group, smolders throughout as Chicago's girlfriend, Sheila Marie.

you know me! in the subway, bringing up things

yeah I really can't believe I haven't seen these yet:
http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2009/07/the_return_of_dr_ch-ch-ch-ch-c.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icruGcSsPp0

http://www.bbc.co.uk/orchestras/events/1369

There is nothing else like 'Still Lives' and any chance to physically hear it with the use of your body shouldn't be missed

looking forward to this on sunday: http://www.thelab.org/index.php/schedule/events/648-charles-curtis

^kinda how I feel about "bird & person dyning", went to a performance of it when I was 19 & have wanted to hear it again ever since. Talked to lucier afterwards, really nice man!

Ward u r in for a treat!

ty guys, i will be there

milton that curtis gig looks sweet - are there any particular charles curtis recordings you wld rec - i remember seeing a dbl alb (?) w/ a helix cover (??), that wld prob be the most common item here in the uk

xyzzzz - come to glasgow!

Ward - re: Curtis, see my post from 2006 with Charles' recording, the link still works.

Have to say that Glasgow gig looks amazing and worth the trip. Let you know if I can make it near the time.

xp

you're talking about this one: http://www.discogs.com/Anthony-Burr--Charles-Curtis-Alvin-Lucier/release/776910

I like it -- good overview of the oscillator + instrument beating pieces, well recorded. gotta say the packaging is unusually good, not only beautiful but really re-enforces the music.

These worth checking out too:
http://www.discogs.com/%C3%89liane-Radigue-Pour-Charles-Curtis-Naldjorlak/release/1542131
http://www.discogs.com/La-Monte-Young--Marian-Zazeela-Just-Charles-Cello-In-The-Romantic-Chord-2002-2003/release/1059636

my favorite of the oscillator + instrument pieces is probably Lucier's ground-zero recording - http://www.lovely.com/titles/cd1015.html -- each instrument acts so differently with the sine wave, you get a lot more variety than you do when two dedicated instrumentalists do their thing for two whole discs. my second favorite is 'Panorama' - http://www.lovely.com/titles/cd1012.html

xyzzzz,i am in NYC the week before the Lucier weekend, la-di-da - (and def gonna go to the Dream House on one day of my trip) - but you wld of course be a welcome guest in the dream house here - now, to read yr post above

ty again milton, will study

OK, so the performance of 'Bird & Person Dyning' was def the highlight of this weekend, for me - sort've reminded me of Ashley's Automatic Writing in that it had the almost subliminal feel/effect of being whispered to, throughout. In fact, seeing the Lucier works performed made it clearer to me that his project is, at least in part, an attempt to bring to light the 'hidden' language of feedback, electricity, amplification, etc - a secret sound world that we don't normally hear or recongise, in the course of the everyday, but that runs perpetually, just out of reach. The piece for cello and amplified vases also illuminated this, with the cellist almost coaxing sound from the pots, like a snake-charmer. 'Still Lives' wasn't quite as effective, this time; the drones didn't seem to be loud enough, and funnily enough, a lack of volume was also the problem w/ the o'malley/ambarachi performance, both of them playing their amplified guitars flat on a table using e-bows, opposite each other, but not really generating enough of a noise to get the full speaker/feedback interaction-thing going. O'malley later got the chance to bring the skronk on a massive Dumitrescu piece for orchestra and electric guitar that closed the fest - lots of metal bashing, percussion, cosmic cataclysms, stirring stuff.

It involved four parade sized bass drums with ping pong balls on fishing wire dangled in fron of the heads..
very low pitched square waves were played via speakers into the open end of the drums causing the ping pong balls to swing at various speeds. created a sort of sparse polyrhythm free of human hands and looked amazing.

This was also in situ throughout the fest, and was great to watch and experience - there was also an element of suspense or surprise, wondering when the ping pong balls would stir against the drums. Took a couple of pics of this on my phone, hope to upload them later.

http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/cc497/WardFowler/Photo0061_zps74c62541.jpg

sounds like an amazing show

found a copy of this recently: http://www.amazon.com/Chambers-Scores-Alvin-Lucier/dp/0819550426/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368553358&sr=1-2

worth it. the early scores are all prose, pointing at and digging around the ideas behind the music; I found it as inspiring as Silence or A Year From Monday

Fantastic report Ward, real shame I couldn't be there.

http://www.alvin-lucier-film.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZahY5IjbkZU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGtS2mnYFQw&feature=youtu.be

5 year anniversary

https://twitter.com/alvinlucier

Follower #250.

This looks positively amazing. Stoked for the 120 page book(let) alone.

This compilation, if it can be called that, sorely misses 'Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas', 'Music On A Long Thin Wire' and especially 'Bird and Person Dyning', but perchance it's the best Lucier compilation out there. Can't wait for this box to be dropped at my doorstep.

wouldn't call that one a comp. new performances of older works are reboots. saw the sonic arts union show at issue project room a few months ago and lucier's new works for sinewaves were new territory; instead of keeping one or two slow moving sinewaves as foundational sounds to prompt the acoustical beating of the live instruments, there are quite a few sinewaves in motion, each with diverging / converging trajectories, so the latticework / beating coming from the electronics are already completely busy - not minimal at all, crazy sounding. like some kind of audio illusion bridge between radigue and amacher. it was amazing lucier was even there in person for the show - walking very slowly now, but on top of it, black lives matter t-shirt, surrounded by old friends

Ha, that's amazing, and heartening to hear. The guy's 87 and wearing a BLM shirt! Good for him.

Call it a comp, call it a reboot: I'm excited about it either way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-Pnb_ZE7Hs

Lucier is compelling throughout. Majestically ignores the interviewer for much of the interview. (I hate this interviewer but he gets good results so maybe he is good?)

“How do I get in touch with John Cage?” “Have you tried calling him?”

AL: [Fascinating detailed explanation of upcoming piece]
Interviewer cuts him off: [bored and unimpressed] “Okay. Something to look forward to.”

has anyone figured out why red bull boosts avant garde music

RIP

RIP. I kind of guessed this when I saw this thread bumped.

:(

Was so lucky to see him do Music for Solo Performer. Just a little old man sitting quietly while everything erupted around him.

First mention of Alvin Lucier in the NYT, August 28, 1963 pic.twitter.com/Ni32QySlCP

— Marc Masters 🌵 (@Marcissist) December 2, 2021

Uh

Hey, um, can we talk about this factoid in the art forum Lucier piece? pic.twitter.com/t31bE1laSh

— Unseen Worlds (@Unseen_Worlds) February 3, 2022

waht

"I Am Being Cloned In A Room (In Perth)"

"I am sitting in a body different than the one I was in before"

"I am recording the sound of my soul and am going to play it back into the body"