Alvin Curran: "The Alvin Curran Fakebook" - Excerpts

Alvin Curran
"The Alvin Curran Fakebook" - Excerpts
The solo performances I have been developing for nearly 50 years now appear under this title. They are the sum of my compositional, improvisational, electronic and theatrical work since the middle 1960’s. A recent publication by the same title (available at Amazon.com) is a musically notated book of 300 pages containing many fundamental pieces, or parts of them, which represents much of my work, and is richly illustrated by scores, sketches and photographs of significant events and installations.
On this occasion, a delightful return to the Mills Music Department where I was the Milhaud Professor between 1990 and 2006, my essential solo performance is enhanced by occasional interventions played by the Contemporary Performance Ensemble under the direction of Steed Cowart.
This quasi-improvisational dialogue is one which typifies my traditional ways of making music with whatever is at hand-so eschewing the much easier role of solo performer, I have created a simple score for the ensemble which threads its way in and out of my playing as a flock of birds might do, completely unannounced and completely on time.
What I will perform will be from my Fakebook “modules” old and very new, including an electronic version of Shofar IV, my over 1000 sampled sounds-which “play the world from my fingertips” and of course an acoustic grand piano in a concert of entirely improvised-written music.
Alvin Curran
Mills College
November 2016
Contemporary Performance Ensemble
Steed Cowart, conductor
Tate Carson: string bass
Ricky Crews: flute
Camille Emaille: vibraphone
Nayoung Jung: piano
Charles McGraw: violin
Joel Nelson: guitar
Eric Glick Rieman: melodica
Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir: French horn, and Teaching Assistant
Lucca Troutman: flute
Thomas Weeks: alto saxophone