Residency #134
MAY 18 – JUNE 7
Application deadline: February 6, 2009

ALVIN LUCIER, composition

Alvin Lucier was born in 1931 in Nashua, New Hampshire. He was educated at Yale and Brandeis and spent two years in Rome on a Fulbright Scholarship. From 1962 to 1970 he taught at Brandeis, where he conducted the Brandeis University Chamber Chorus, which devoted much of its time to the performance of new music. In 1966 he co-founded, with Robert Ashley, David Behrman and Gordon Mumma, the Sonic Arts Union, which, until 1979, gave numerous concerts in the United States and Europe. Since 1970 he has taught at Wesleyan University where he is John Spencer Camp Professor of Music.

Lucier’s early electronic music includes the use of brain waves in live performance (Music for Solo Performer, 1965); the generation of visual imagery by sound in vibrating media, (The Queen of the South, 1972), and the evocation of room acoustics (Vespers (1969) and I am sitting in a room (1970). His recent works include a series of sound installations and works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra in which rhythms and spatial phenomena are created by means of close tuning.

His most recent instrumental works include Twonings for cello and piano; Canon, for the Bang on a Can All Stars; Slices for cello and orchestra and Music with Missing Parts, a re-orchestration of Mozart’s Requiem, premiered at the Mozarteum, Salzburg in December 2007.

Lucier has collaborated with John Ashbery (Theme), Robert Wilson (Skin, Meat, Bone) and Italian artist Maurizio Mochetti in an exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome, 2008.  His recent sound installation, 6 Resonant Points Along a Curved Wall, accompanied Sol LeWitt’s enormous sculpture, Curved Wall, in Graz, Austria, and in the Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, in 2005.  Lucier has participated in numerous festivals and residencies, including the DAAD Kunstler Program in Berlin, New Music Days, Ostrava, Czech Republic; June in Buffalo, and the Sparks Festival at the University of Minnesota. In 1997, Lucier presented a concert of his works on the Making Music Series at Carnegie Hall and in 2008 he performed a concert of his works on the musicadhoy festival In Madrid. Reflections/Reflexionen, a bi-lingual edition of Lucier’s scores, interviews and writings, is available from MusikTexte, Köln. Many of his works are available on Antiopic (Sigma Editions), Cramps (Italy), Disques Montaigne, Source, Mainstream, Mode, New World, CBS Odyssey, Lovely Music, Nonesuch and Wergo records.

In 2006, Lucier was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States and in 2007, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Plymouth, England, during the Dartington College of the Arts Awards.

Residency Statement

Composers of any style and medium—acoustic, electronic or a combination of both—are welcome. Emphasis will be on individual compositions, although a group endeavor is not out of the question. Special attention will be paid to the exploration of acoustic phenomena. Participating composers are encouraged to bring with them recordings or scores of works of other composers that they particularly admire and have been inspired by. Inspiration for a collaborative work composed during the 3-week residency may be taken from a wide variety of sources, including the myth of Orpheus, global warming and walks in the jungle.

Application Requirements

Please send 2 recorded examples of your work, a brief resume, a statement of what you would like to work on during the residency, what musical instrument, if any, you play, and what skills you have, if any, in electronics.

* For more information on Alvin Lucier please visit http://www.alucier.web.wesleyan.edu/