b. 1938, United States
Alvin Curran (b. 1938, Providence, Rhode Island, based in Rome, Italy) has realised a long and fruitful career as a composer, performer, installation artist, writer, and teacher in the American experimental music tradition.
He studied with Ron Nelson, Elliott Carter and Mel Powell, and cofounded the group Musica Elettronica Viva in 1966 in Rome. He has taught at Rome’s National Academy of Theater Arts; Mills College, Oakland and the Mainz Hochschule für Musik, Frankfurt am Main. Recent projects include: Concerto for Bathtub and Orchestra (2017); the disintegrating installation – Pian de Pian Piano (2017); Maritime Rites Rome – for musicians on rowboats (2017); A Banda Larga – a street symphony (2018). He has performed at the Teatro Colón (2017); Big Ears Festival (2017); The New York Armory (2018), and collaborated with poet Clark Coolidge (Other Minds Festival, 2018), pianist Ciro Longobardi, and stage director Achim Freyer (on Der Goldene Topf, 2019). He has published articles in the New York Times, Musiktexte, The Contemporary Music Review, amongst others, and released more than thirty solo and sixty collaborative recordings. A book about his work, Alvin Curran: Live in Roma (2011), was 4 edited by Daniela Tortora, and in 2015 Curran published the alvin curran fakebook, an illustrated compendium of more than two hundred (mostly) notated pieces. In 1975 he won the Logos Award, in 1995 the Leonardo Award for Excellence, and in 2004 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is currently a consultant for the American Academy in Rome.