Alvin Curran

A founding member of the radical collective Musica Elettronica Viva, experimental composer Alvin Curran has shaken up the music composition world with his radical take on sound—tinkering with synthesizers, instruments, natural sounds, and using non-musical objects as instruments to challenge notions of form and performance in his startlingly original work. Whether they are solo performances, urban sound events, or large-scale installations, his avant-garde compositions flow organically between contemporary classical music, improv, free jazz, and all points in between, yet forge a very personal language through recombinant invention. The iconoclastic sound artist performs “The Alvin Curran Fake Book,” combining his Shofar Shoals, a work that features one of the most archaic music instruments—the ram’s horn—plugged into a computer to create sonic fireworks out of its few humble tones, with works that include his Endangered Species, Era Ora, and Unstandard Time.