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.

Curran’s piece Maritime Rites, a signature work of his, has been evolving since the 1970s across many iterations and changes – always relating anew to his life-long enjoyment of bodies of water. Playing with the minimal splendour of the foghorn as its basis, Maritime Rites contorts and stretches its familiar howls into something astonishing and encompassing multitudes – of timbres and of meaning. Performed at the opening event of Rewire 2025 on 3 April, this time, Maritime Rites takes to The Hague’s own inner-city body of water, the iconic Hofvijver beside the parliament building, for a performance of numerous musicians in multiple boats – passing one another like ships in the night, performing for the landlocked onlookers. This event is free to attend.