alvin curran

Live In Roma

The first ever comprehensive account of Alvin Curran's career and music, this 300-page book (printed with both Italian and English text) sets about describing the key works and compositional techniques employed by this widely revered artist. Curran was a founder of improvisational group Musica Elettronica Viva (or MEV), but also came to prominence within experimental music circles as a composer and music academic in his own right, having himself studied under Elliott Carter. The text is edited by Daniela Margoni Tortora, who gathers contributions from a various authors as well as Curran himself, who offers up a "travel log" as well as numerous unpublished images from his personal archive. As Die Schachtel put it, the book sets out to outlay "a historical account of Curran's musical concerns and changing style: in permanent flux between two distinct cultural geographies (Italy and USA), sensitive to an infinity of pressures, encounters, transformations, and provocations, Curran's artistic voyage is presented here through a comprehensive historical and critical study that avoids buzz-word definitions and gives great respect to his otherness - an otherness clearly and happily a part of the variegated musical universe of our time."