NEWS

Focus on Alvin Lucier

The third Tectonics Reykjavík festival includes a focus on American composer Alvin Lucier, featuring two performances by the composer himself and a sound installation.

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. Since 1970 he has taught at Wesleyan University Connecticut, where he was John Spencer Camp Professor of Music.

Lucier has been a pioneer in several areas of music composition and performance, including the notation of performers’ physical gestures, the use of brain waves in live performance, the generation of visual imagery by sound in vibrating media, and the use of room acoustics for musical purposes. His works also include a series of sound installations.

His most iconic works include Music for Solo Performer from 1965 where the alpha waves of Lucier’s brain are detected by electrodes and are amplified to vibrate percussion instruments.

We are delighted to present a number of Alvin Lucier’s works as part of Tectonics Reykjavík and we are thrilled that he has agreed to take part. He will give a performance of his work Music for Solo Performer and perform with Icelandic pianist, Tinna Þorsteinsdóttir, Nothing is real for piano and amplified teapot. Other works being performed include Diamonds for three orchestras, Music for piano with one or more snare drums, Opera with objects, Two circles and Vespers

The sound installation, Music on a Long Thin Wire, will be realized by Hauke Harder, composer and assistant to Alvin Lucier.