Alvin Lucier

For trombone and piano (1993).
Feat: Roland Dahinden / Hildegard Kleeb.

Alvin Lucier – Panorama

Sizzles epitomizes Alvin Lucier's approach of setting up an aural situation where acoustic bodies and architectural spaces are free to resonate in indeterminate ways.  The work calls for several drums to be set up with beans, paper clips, or other light object on their heads.  The resonance of the drums is amplified in the space as they are excited by the long tones, beats, and interferences of the organ in the acoustic space.  Recorded in Rockefeller chapel at the University of Chicago, with the collaboration of percussionist Matthew Andreini. 

Alvin Lucier - Sizzles

So You ... (Hermes, Orpheus, Eurydice) is a major new work by legendary experimental composer Alvin Lucier. It is an hour long epic that tracks the familiar Orpheus myth from a less familiar perspective: that of Eurydice as imagined by poet H.D.; a Eurydice who rails at Orpheus for his hubris in attempting to rescue her. Two key, and formerly distinct, aspects of Lucier's practice come together in this piece: the exploration of interference patterns in closely tuned intervals, and the exploration of resonant chambers. From speakers mounted inside amphorae a constantly turning braid of beating sine waves trace the descent into the depths of hell, and then the doomed attempt to climb back into life.

Singer Jessika Kenney and long-time Lucier collaborators Anthony Burr and Charles Curtis embody the three title characters in deeply focused performances that assert themselves against the process of the sweep, or become enfolded in it. The electronics were mixed in real time by programmer and equipment designer Tom Erbe.

BT044 -Alvin Lucier - So You ... (Hermes, Orpheus, Eurydice)[sample]

Alvin Lucier: Music for Piano with Two Slow Sweep Pure Wave Oscillators
Sebastian Berweck, piano

Alvin Lucier

Dave tilley