NYC violin duo STRING NOISE performs a program of music by legendary composer Alvin Lucier. Alvin Lucier will attend this concert and discuss his music and aesthetic with the audience.

This is a wonderful opportunity to experience the thoughtful, beautiful sonic ideas of this very important American composer
Admission is FREE.

Program Note: Love Song 

A few years ago I went to see Robert Wilson’s staging of Lohengrin at the Met. In the famous love duet he purposefully placed the singers far apart on either side of the stage. Usually singers in love duets are intertwined, singing as they grasp each other. I thought how beautiful this was: you could hear the voices more clearly and even though they were spaced far apart their love for each other was not diminished at all. In fact the spacing made their love all the more poignant, like images in a haiku poem.
When I was asked to compose a duo for Conrad Harris and Pauline Kim the image of two players placed far apart on the stage came to me. At the same time I envisioned connecting the bridges of the two violins with a long length of music wire. I discovered that one player’s bowing could produce sound in the other player’s instrument and that changing the tension of the wire as well as bow pressure on the open strings could produce amazing alterations in the resulting sounds.

Love Song was composed expressly for the duo String Noise who will give the work its first performance on October 11, 2016 at the Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. 

Alvin Lucier
October 2, 2016