MUSICA ELECTTRONICA VIVA! — Richard Teitelbaum, Alvin Curran & Frederic Rzewski
Musica Elettronica Viva can not be easily defined as one band but closer to a movement based around the idea of free improvisation in the form of experimental, electronic jazz. Join us for a rare performance featuring MEV members Alvin Curran, Frederic Rzewski, and Richard Teitelbaum, -- experience the best of electronic improvisation by these music pioneers. Know your roots!
Composer/performer Richard Teitelbaum is well known for his pioneering work in live electronic music, and his early explorations of intercultural improvisation and composition. He received his master's degree in theory and composition from Yale in 1964. After continuing his composition studies with Luigi Nono on a Fulbright in Italy, he co-founded the pioneering live electronic music group Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV) with Frederic Rzewski and Alvin Curran in Rome in 1966, bringing the first Moog synthesizer to Europe the following year. He has performed his works at Berlin's Philharmonic Hall, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Almeida Theater in London, the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Kennedy Center in Washington, and elsewhere throughout the world. In 2002 he received a Guggenheim to create Z'vi, his second opera in a projected trilogy dealing with Jewish mystical expressions of redemptive hopes. Z'vi has been performed at Bard College, the Venice Biennale and most recently at the Center for Jewish History in New York in April 2005. Teitelbaum has received numerous other awards, including the Ars Electronica Prize from the Austrian Radio in 1986, two Fulbrights, grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, and commissions from several German radio stations and the Venice Biennale. In 2004 he was commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University to compose an interactive instrumental and computer work for the Da Capo Chamber Players, to be premiered in New York during the 2006-2007 season. His many recordings include: Golem: an Interactive Opera, on Tzadik; The Sea Between on Victo; Live at Merkin Hall with Anthony Braxton on Music and Arts; Concerto Grosso with Braxton and George Lewis on Hat Art; and Apogee with Musica Elettronica Viva and AMM Music on Matchless. Teitelbaum is also a Professor of Music at Bard College where he co-chairs the music department of the Master of Fine Arts Program.
Avant-garde composer and pianist Frederic Rzewski studied with many of the best-known names in 20th century music: Randall Thompson, Walter Piston, Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt, Luigi Dallapiccola, and Elliott Carter. Rzewski studied at Harvard and Princeton and taught at schools including the Royal Conservatory of Music at Liege and Yale. He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 1960 and co-founded Musica Elettronica Viva in Rome in 1966. A virtuoso pianist, much of Rzewski's music is written for piano, including what is arguably his best-known work, the politically driven "The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (36 variations on "El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido")" (1975), which pushes the extreme of both instrument and pianist. Rzewski has written works that explore timbres in not only the piano, but also in electronics and incorporating spoken word. An example of this type of experimental voicing is "Coming Together," written for speaking voice and instrumental octet, commemorating the uprising at New York's Attica State Prison. The text comes from a prisoner involved in the riot who later died and the combination of emotional text with instrumental work employing extended techniques, silence, and unique instrumental sounds allow for a unique type of emotional response to the music itself.
American composer Alvin Curran co-founded the group Musica Elettronica Viva and has been active with solo performances, international radio concerts and large-scale sound installations since the 1960s. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Curran studied composition under Ron Nelson at Brown University, and afterward with Elliott Carter at Yale. After completing his studies -- which also included piano and trombone -- in 1963, Curran went with Carter to Berlin, where he remained for a year before moving to Rome. In 1966, Curran co-founded the free music collective Musica Elettronica Viva with Richard Teitelbaum and Frederic Rzewski. In the '70s, Curran focused on solo performances that utilized keyboards, taped sounds, voice and more; over the years, he has also performed on sampler and electronics. The '80s found Curran creating large-scale environmental works in quarries, ports, caverns, on lakes, etc. During this time, he also staged radio concerts of three and six ensembles performing simultaneously from various parts of Europe. From 1990 on, Curran has occasionally collaborated on sound installations with artist Melissa Gould. He has also worked with dance companies and composed for avant-garde theater in Rome. Curran's instrumental works have been commissioned by Kronos Quartet, Aki Takahashi, Rova, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and more. Some of his awards include those from Ars Acoustica International, NPR and the NEA. He taught briefly at the Academia Nazionale d'Arts, and starting in the mid-90s served as guest professor at California's Mills College. Recordings of Curran's works appear on several labels, including CRI, New Albion and Tzadik.
