Alvin Lucier - Almost New York

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4...according to our Ant on Thu 13 Jan, 2011.

If you want to know what this release is all about then you can get it straight from the horses mouth right there on the item page. I won't even begin to attempt to re transcribe it. The sonics really are very interesting, provided by Charles Curtis on Cello, Robert Dick on flutes, Robin Hayward on Tuba, Joseph Kubera on Piano and Danny Tunick plays vibraphone. Of course none of these guys are playing all at the same time. Instead what we have are immaculate experiments in pure sound exploring tone, pitch etc. for example 'Twonings' has a pianist and a cellist playing a series of pitches in unison, the cellist in just intonation and pianist in equal temperament. The result is audible beating and other acoustic phenomena as discrepancies in pitches occur due to the different tuning systems. Probably unsuitable for getting girls on the dancefloor but lots of interesting food for thought in terms of the way we experience sound and the physics that control it.

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CD 1 - Twonings: Charles Curtis, cello; Joseph Kubera, piano; Almost New York: Robert Dick, flutes; Broken Line: Robert Dick, flute; Danny Tunick, vibraphone; Joseph Kubera, piano
CD 2 - Coda Variations: Robin Hayward, tuba

Pogus is extremely delighted to be release this 2 CD set of recordings of works by Alvin Lucier.
He is one of the key experimental artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, and is one of my favorite composers. A unique and individual artist: No one sounds quite like Alvin Lucier.

Lucier writes about the genesis of the works on this release:

?Since the early 1980?s I have made a series of works for conventional musical instruments. Before that time I had been mainly occupied with the exploration of such phenomena as echoloca¬tion, brain waves, room acoustics and the visual representation of sound. Often these works required special equipment?hand held pulse wave oscillators (Vespers), differential amplifiers (Music for Solo Performer), horseshoe magnets (Music on a Long Thin Wire). Then players began asking me for pieces. Now I needed to find a way of achieving the same poetry with acoustic instruments as I did with electronic means.
?One of the things I discovered was that players could create rhythmic patterns by closely tuning with electronically generated pure waves or with each other, producing audible beats. Often, to get continuous motion, I have one or more voices sweep up or down at various speeds against fixed sustained pitches. As a wave approaches a sustained pitch the audible beating slows down to zero when it reaches unison, then speeds up again as the wave leaves the pitch. Almost New York employs slow sweep pure wave oscillators, Broken Line, flute glissandi. In Twonings two different tuning systems collide and in Coda Variations slight variations in pitch are heard chronologically.?

Recorded by Charles Curtis, Joseph Kubera, Robert Dick, Danny Tunick, and Robin Hayward - some of the leading new music performers of our era, these works are essential additions to the Alvin Lucier oeuvre, as well as satisfying anyone interested in great experimental music.

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