An internationally acclaimed cellist of new and experimental music, Charles Curtis has woven a unique career through the worlds of classical performance and musical experimentation, with a special emphasis on the interpretation of the post-John Cage American avant-garde. He has worked extensively with pioneers of new music including Christian Wolff, Alison Knowles and Éliane Radigue, whose works— among others— he performs in an intimate solo concert tonight as part of Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain.
NY Premieres:
Christian Wolff: One Cellist (2013)
Éliane Radigue: Occam V (2012-13)
Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain– a two-month festival celebrating ISSUE Project Room's 10th anniversary– revisits seminal past projects and initiates new relationships with over 60 artists working across disciplines of sound, dance, performance, and literature. Presented as a series of 24 evenings of provocative double billings, Ten Years Alive blurs the boundaries between divergent disciplines and practices and celebrating the vibrancy of the Brooklyn experimental arts community.
Called by ArtForum "one of the great cellists" as well as "spellbinding and minimal," Charles Curtis has woven a unique career through the worlds of classical performance and musical experimentation. Curtis is an internationally acclaimed cellist of new and experimental music, with a special emphasis on the interpretation of the post-John Cage American avant-garde. He has worked extensively with pioneers of new music La Monte Young, Alvin Lucier and Éliane Radigue in collaborations which straddle the boundaries between concert performance, installation and sound art. Curtis has commissioned and premiered works that re-define the cello, re-frame its basic acoustics, and place the fundamental physics of instrument and performance space in a new light. Curtis has led La Monte Young's legendary Theatre of Eternal Music String Ensemble for more than two decades, and he is a member of The Just Alap Raga Ensemble, the performance group of La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. Alvin Lucier's compositions dedicated to Curtis include works for solo cello and pre-recorded orchestra, cello and sine waves, and cello and piano. Eliane Radigue, a pioneer of tape music composition since the 1950's, created her very first work for an acoustic instrument, Naldjorlak, specifically for Curtis. Fluxus artists Alison Knowles and Mieko Shiomi have also created original music for Curtis, including graphic and text-based scores.
