Alvin Curran. “Shofar Rags XXXL”. Performance
Practical information
- 15 € regular | 12 € reduced | Admission free with “365 Live”
Event overview
For TUNE, a programme looking at Alvin Curran’s work features live performances, a screening and artist talk.
As a composer, performer, improviser, and co-founder of the ground-breaking music collective Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV), pioneer and iconoclast Alvin Curran has forged his own very personal language, through inspired research and invention. Starting his musical journey in Rome in 1965, he developed radical ideas around “spontaneous” music with MEV, revolutionising how music is made and performed, finding music in all people and in found objects. He simultaneously composed for Rome’s avant-garde theatre scene, and wrote solo works for synthesiser, voice, taped sounds and found objects. His love for natural and “instant” sound drove him to record the bustling sounds of Rome and places around the world, and with a passion for developing new music spaces, he wrote concerts for lakes, ports, parks, buildings, quarries, and caves. He continued to push boundaries, producing experimental radio works for ensembles to play simultaneously in different cities, and large-scale site-specific sound environments and installations.
On Friday evening, Alvin Curran will present a new iteration of his solo performance Shofar Rags XXXL, a piece in which he fuses the archaic sound of shofar, an ancient musical horn typically made of a ram's horn and used for Jewish religious purposes, with contemporary digital technologies.
On Saturday, there will be a film screening and performance. When There is No More Music to Write, and Other Roman Stories is a new film work by artist and filmmaker Éric Baudelaire, and collaboration with Alvin Curran. As Curran gives first-person accounts of his life in Rome in the 1960s and 1970s, it shows a time that was deeply shaken by revolutionary politics, and how it influenced his approach to music. The screening of the film will evolve into a live performance by Alvin Curran of Endangered Species, with a special intervention by a group of musicians from the University of Music and Performing Arts, Munich.
There will also be an artist talk with Alvin Curran and Éric Baudelaire on Saturday. Admission is free of charge.
The new annual card “365 Live” grants free admission to all performances and TUNE events in addition to the benefits of the annual card “Haus der Kunst 365”. Further information on Haus der Kunst annual cards.
