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Trans-Dada Express
Alvin Curran
[Multimedia content blocked]
Listen to a 60 minute recording, or download the file
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Slought Foundation
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Please join us on Sunday, February 4, 2007 from 8-10pm at Slought Foundation for a rare evening of new and experimental music with legendary composer Alvin Curran and Ensemble Noamnesia as the first event of the Sound Field 2007 Winter Concert Series. Please note that a special discussion on the music of Alvin Curran featuring Thaddeus Squire, Gene Coleman and Alvin Curran will take place before the concert at 7pm.
As part of the ongoing Soundfield series “American Independents," this program at Slought Foundation will feature Alvin Curran’s composition “Trans-Dada Express”, a fantastic work of electro acoustic music using the recorded voices of many of the key figures from the Dada movement, performed live by Mr. Curran. The program will also feature other compositions by Alvin Curran, performed live by him with Ensemble Noamnesia. Please join us for this rare and unique encounter with the work of one of the great living American independent composers in the tradition of John Cage, Harry Partch, Henry Brandt and Morton Feldman.
As a democratic, irreverent and traditionally experimental composer, Alvin Curran created the "Trans-Dada Express" while traveling in a computerized covered wagon between the Golden Gate and the Tiber River, making music for every occasion with a variety of sounding phenomena. In the process, he has produced a volatile mix of lyricism and chaos, structure, indeterminacy, fog horns, fiddles, and fiddle heads. Throughout his career, through over 100 works featuring taped/sampled natural sounds, piano, synthesizers, computers, violin, percussion, shofar, ship horns, accordion and chorus, Curran's music-making has embraced all the contradictions of contemporary composition, including composed/improvised, tonal/atonal, and maximal/minimal music. Whether in the form of intimate and well-known solo performances, or in the form of pure chamber music, experimental radio works, or large-scale site-specific sound environments and installations, Curran's compositions have demonstrated a commitment to research and recombinant invention and the restoration of dignity to his profession through non-commercial practice.
Whether this is your first visit to a Sound Field @ Slought event, or you have attended events in this series in the past, please consider bringing a friend to this performance and introducing yourself to us.
Please note that a recording of the pre-concert conversation with composer Alvin Curran, and the first 10 minutes of the concert, has been made available for preview above.
Alvin Curran, one of the foremost American composers practicing today, has lived in Rome since the 1960’s. He became known for his work with MEV (Musica Electronica Viva) with Richard Titelbaum, Fredrick Rzewski and new jazz musicians such as Steve Lacy, Evan Parker and Anthony Braxton. His compositions follow their own path, mixing many genres of music together with noise and electronic sounds. Despite being a very important voice in American music, Curran's work is rarely heard in his own country.
Ensemble Noamnesia is a Philadelphia and Chicago based group for new and experimental music, founded by composer Gene Coleman in 1987. Over the last 20 years the group has led the way for American audiences to experience the sound worlds of many important composers, such as Helmut Lachenmann, Luc Ferrari, Yuji Takahashi, George Crumb, Salvatore Sciarrino and many others. Members and guests of the group playing on Feb. 4th will include: Gene Coleman (bass clarinet), Even Lipson (dbl. bass), Dave Smolen (live electronics), and Alvin Curran (keyboards). Others TBA.
This program was made possible in part through the generous sponsorship of the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania
Organized by
Gene Coleman
Media files on the Slought.org website are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
MLA Style:
Alvin Curran. "Trans-Dada Express." Slought Foundation Online Content. [04 February 2007;
Accessed 18 March 2010]. <http://slought.org/content/11349/>.
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