The Field Guide » Alvin Lucier

Guitar Trio at Flywheel, Swallowtail Premiere, Christoph Heeman, More!

Holland Hopson — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 01:13:46 +0000

Easthampton! Are you ready to rock?!

Saturday October 9 @ 8pm
Flywheel
Old Town Hall
43 Main Street (Rt. 10)
Easthampton MA

I can’t wait for Saturday night to play at Flywheel with SoundBarn and members of the Albany Sonic Arts Collective. We’ll play Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio and premiere my new work, Swallowtail. The ensemble includes the pummeling Matt Weston on drums, Eric Hardiman on electric bass, and six (!) electric guitars played by Matthew Ernst, Tara Fracalossi, Ray Hare, Thomas Lail, Patrick Wecklar, and myself).

If you’d like to follow along, you can bring your own copy of the Swallowtail score. The piece is the next installment of my glissando music series–in the tradition of glissando masters James Tenney, Alvin Lucier, Iannis Xenakis, Lois V Vierk.

And at the risk of sounding like a ginsu knife commercial…But wait, there’s more…

Surrealist noise legend Christoph Heeman will perform, as will Easthampton locals Son of Earth.

Bring hearing protection.

Weeping Willow Street Improvisations

Holland Hopson — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:00:17 +0000

Last November I spent a memorable, rainy afternoon at Travis Weller’s place performing a house concert as part of his Willow Street Concert Series. Nick Hennies wowed us with music for solo percussion including an entrancing performance of Alvin Lucier’s Silver Streetcar. I played music for fretless banjo, bent electronics and computer. Then Travis and I improvised two pieces with Travis playing his Owl, a custom-built piano wire lyre with electronics. Nick joined in for the last piece of the afternoon. The rain kept us company all along.

091108 Willow Street Improvisation 1.mp3

091108 Willow Street Improvisation 2.mp3

091108 Willow Street Improvisation 3.mp3

New Music Co-op: Immersive and in the dark

Holland Hopson — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:35:32 +0000

Austin American-Statesman Arts Critic Jeanne Claire van Ryzin reviews the latest New Music Co-op concert, Sound in Time, featuring guest cellisst Charles Curtis performing music by Alvin Lucier. This article is another entry in the “Austin’s Other Live Music Scene” series remarked on here

RIP Bo Diddley

Holland Hopson — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 02:57:55 +0000

Go on Bo Diddley! Gone.

I picked up the double album reissue of “Bo Diddley / Go Bo Diddley” a few years ago and I’ve been playing it regularly ever since. Everybody talks about his beat, but what about that strange rhythm section of maracas and tomtoms and no cymbals? Bo Diddley had the weirdness and he knew how to make it work. The NYTimes reports he was one of the first guitarists to use a stomp box to get that wobbly tremolo effect.

I’ve also been playing Bo Diddley recently because of a kind of revisionist listening. Where once I heard iconic 50′s rock and roll, now I hear echoes and flutters from Henry Flynt and Reich’s Four Organs and excise that beat from your mind (if you can) and what’s left resembles some Alvin Lucier modulation+reverb dream.

Gone Bo Diddley! Go on.