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
