Alvin Curran is an American composer, performer, improviser, sound artist, and writer. A master of alchemising experimental electronics and environmental found sounds, his idiosyncratic compositions have spanned decades – from his humble musical beginnings in the 1960s as part of Rome’s avant-garde theatre scene up until the present. Whether working in contemporary classical, free improvisation, sound collage, or electronics, his work has remained uncompromising for over 50 years. A determined commitment to experimentation and the resistance of commercial co-option roughen Curran’s oeuvre with jagged counter-cultural corners. His mixture of structure and indeterminacy, chaos and harmony, abstraction and clarity, leads to myriad morphing sounds suited for a world in flux.

A canonical work of Curran’s, Canti Illuminati was originally composed and recorded between 1973 and 1977. The piece is Curran’s tribute to the world’s first instrument: the human voice. Envisioned for choir, synthesizer, piano, and tape, Canti Illuminati will be performed at Rewire 2025 with the rare involvement of live vocalists – tapping into the ancestral and deeply human tones summoned in the piece. Among organised and dis-organised sounds, courtesy of field recordings and instrumentation, the performers’ voices form the pulse of Canti Illuminati, leading the listener through a complex hypnagogic sound world of whirling melody and droning ambience.

This concert is part of a focus programme around Alvin Curran’s work hosted by Rewire.