“In March 1970 … the composer Alvin Lucier … sat in his living room with two tape recorders, a microphone, a single loudspeaker and an amplifier,” writes Kerry O’Brien in Tuesday’s (5/11) New York Times. “Lucier … pressed record and began to speak. ‘I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now,’ he said. ‘I am recording the sound of my speaking voice, and I am going to play it back into the room again and again.’ … Each recording accumulated more and more of the resonant characteristics of the space. … By 23 minutes, speech has fully transformed into noisy drones.… On Thursday—continuing through Friday, Lucier’s 90th birthday … Issue Project Room in Brooklyn hosts a 26-hour streamed ‘I am sitting in a room’ marathon, featuring 90 performers…. On Friday, the Ever Present Orchestra, an ensemble dedicated to Lucier’s music, will premiere his ‘Adagio for Strings.’ … A new box set of archival recordings … demonstrates how the music reflects the acoustics of the space in which it’s performed…. Although the work has long been synonymous with Lucier’s voice and personality, anyone can perform it.”
Change font size
