Alvin Lucier: Orpheus Variations / Glaciers

MUSIC
FRIDAY & SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21 & 22, 2020
8:00 PM

ISSUE Project Room
22 Boerum Place, Downtown, Brooklyn

$25
https://issueprojectroom.org/event/alvin-lucier-orpheus-variations-glacier-performed-charles-curtis-abigail-levine-dancers-wind

Alvin Lucier has been doing sonic explorations longer than just about anyone now active.  I wouldn't say his work makes sound do new things as much as it does new things with objects, instruments, and electronics and sees how they sound.  The results, however, are almost always deeply compelling.  Tonight's program focuses on Lucier's longtime interpreter (if that's the word) Charles Curtis, Downtown cellist par excellence.  Glaciers is for solo cello; in Orpheus Variations, Curtis will be joined by a wind ensemble and by dancers performing choreography newly commissioned for these performances of a piece that explores a particular sonority in Stravinsky's Orpheus that has particularly haunted Lucier over the years (see, that's how Lucier thinks:  not about tunes, not about harmonies, not about rhythms — but about sonorities).

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT:  It's a bit of a walk to the new Quebecois-tinged French bistro Bar Bête.  But it's worth it.