Beginning Thursday, May 13th, 8pm EST and continuing throughout all of Friday, May 14th, ISSUE presents a streamed program celebrating the occasion of revolutionary American composer Alvin Lucier’s 90th birthday. Spanning more than 24 hours, the program features 90 artists staging their own performances of Lucier’s paradigmatic 1969 work I am sitting in a room, a piece taking on new connotations within the global conditions of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. A letter to the artist from his peers, friends, and artists inspired by his work, ISSUE is proud to celebrate Alvin, his legacy, and ongoing influence in experimental music.

Beginning at 8pm on his birthday eve, and running throughout Alvin's birthday, the marathon stream will commemorate this important milestone. Alvin specifically chose a select group of people who have meant a great deal to him over the years. The program will feature 90 artists, including:

SCHEDULE<

START TIMES EST

May 13th
Alvin Lucier - 20:00
Amanda Lucier - 20:19
Abigail Levine - 20:39
Aki Takahashi - 20:48
Akiko Hatakeyama - 21:09
Alec McLane - 21:26
Andrea Miller-Keller - 21:45
Anna Pangalou - 21:56
Anthony Burr - 22:13
Barbara Bloom - 22:30
Bernhard Rietbrock - 22:42
Bob Bielecki - 22:59
Charles Curtis - 23:12
Christian Wolff - 23:35
Christina Kubisch - 23:56
May 14th
Claire Chase - 0:16
Cleek Schrey - 0:31
Conrad Harris - 0:52
Daniel Fishkin - 1:07
David Behrman - 1:26
Dave Scanlon - 1:40
David Toop - 1:46
Dina Maccabee - 2:02
Douglas Simon - 2:22
Ernest Braun - 2:42
Evan Ziporyn - 3:01
George Lewis - 3:22
Georgia Hubley - 3:38
Gordon Monahan - 3:57
Hauke Harder - 4:14
Heidi Senungetuk - 4:34
Ira Kaplan - 4:55
Irvine Arditti - 5:13
Isabelle Bozzini - 5:34
James Peter Falzone - 5:50
James Fei - 6:09
James McNew - 6:35
Jan Thoben - 6:53
Jane Alden - 7:10
Jennifer Hadley - 7:29
Intermission (15 minutes)
Jessie Marino - 8:00
Joan Jordi Oliver Arcos - 8:17
Joan La Barbara - 8:38
Joe Kubera - 8:58
Jordan Dykstra - 9:17
Jung Hee Choi - 9:36
Kata Kovács - 9:53
KCM Walker - 10:13
La Monte Young - 10:31
Laura Cetilia - 10:48
Lucy Railton - 11:03
Lynn Bechtold - 11:23
Marian Zazeela - 11:38
Intermission (15 minutes)
Mark Slobin - 11:54
Matt Sargent - 12:26
Matt Wellins - 12:40
Matthew Evan Taylor - 12:50
May Klug - 13:09
Meredith Monk - 13:29
Michael Steinborn - 13:49
Mimi Johnson - 14:02
Minoru Sato - 14:17
Nestor Prieto - 14:37
Nic Collins - 14:55
Nina Katchadourian - 15:09
Olga Bell - 15:26
Oren Ambarchi - 15:42
Paula Matthusen - 15:58
Pauline Kim Harris - 16:10
Peter Ablinger - 16:21
Petr Kotik - 16:38
Robert Wilson - 16:53
Ronald Kuivila - 17:14
Ron Shalom - 17:31
Seth Cluett - 17:52
Seth Kim-Cohen - 18:12
Steve Reich - 18:28
Steven Drury - 18:45
Sumarsam - 19:02
Susan Leigh Foster - 19:19
Terri Hanlon - 19:37
Thomas Buckner - 19:52
Thurston Moore - 20:11
Tom Hamilton - 20:32
Tom O'Doherty - 20:51
Trevor Saint - 21:11
Valentine Michaud - 21:28
Viola Rusche - 21:44
Warren Enström - 22:01
Wendy Stokes - 22:17

Participant biographies are accessible here

I am sitting in a room consists of several sentences of recorded speech simultaneously played back into a room where they are re-recorded sequentially. As the repetitive sequence continues, those sounds and resonances common to the original spoken statement and those implied by the structural dimensions of the room are reinforced. The others are gradually eliminated. As the album notes for the Lovely Records edition of the piece state, “the space acts as a filter; the speech is transformed into pure sound [...] All the recorded segments are spliced together in the order in which they were made and constitute the work.”

A fascinating exploration of acoustical phenomena, I am sitting in a room slips from the domain of language to that of music in the course of multiple repetitions of a simple, instructive text. Composer and former student of Alvin Lucier, Nicolas Collins, notes that “l am sitting in a room would seem to be a piece that needs no further explanation. It begins, after all, by stating in plain English exactly what is going to happen and why – a radical notion at the time (1969), and one that spawned a whole school of compositional activity in the United States and England.” He goes on, “Somehow, somewhere in the course of [the piece] the meaning of what we've been listening to has slipped from the domain of language to that of harmony.”

The limited-edition boxed set “Alvin Lucier. I am sitting in a room. Archival Recordings 1969–2019” will also be released on the occasion of Alvin Lucier’s 90th birthday on May 14th, 2021. Last year marked the 50th anniversary of the piece’s premiere. To celebrate the anniversaries of the piece and the composer likewise, Jan Thoben, Bernhard Rietbrock and Trevor Saint, the editors of this publication, compiled ten archival recordings of Lucier’s most well-known composition I am sitting in a room on 3LPs and 2CDs, as well as a booklet containing numerous articles and Mary Lucier's complete Polaroid Image Series: ROOM. For the first time, this collection of recordings represents the widely unknown genealogy of what is today regarded as one of the most important experimental compositions of the 20th century. The editors were able to unearth fascinating archival material ranging from Lucier’s first preliminary attempt to realize this piece in 1969 to his last performance of I am sitting in a room in Riga, Latvia 2019. Available here

Since the 1960s, Alvin Lucier has deeply influenced the culture of experimental music and the sonic arts. Lucier’s delicate and lyrical compositional legacy shows an enduring engagement with contextual listening and the elusive characteristics of how acoustic mechanics are rediscovered, considered, and performed. Lucier has pioneered many areas of music composition and performance, including the notation of performers' physical gestures, the use of brain waves in live performance, the generation of visual imagery by sound in vibrating media, the minute exploration of audible beating between closely-tuned pitches, and the evocation of room acoustics for musical purposes. A vital figure within experimental music, Alvin Lucier's work highlights a general theory of sound, one suggestive of our entangled perceptual position in the sonic world, as well as our attempts to hear the yet-to-be heard.

Lucier was born in 1931 in Nashua, New Hampshire. He was educated in Nashua public and parochial schools, the Portsmouth Abbey School, Yale, and Brandeis and spent two years in Rome on a Fulbright Scholarship. From 1962 to 1970 he taught at Brandeis, where he conducted the Brandeis University Chamber Chorus, which devoted much of its time to the performance of new music. In 1966, along with Robert Ashley, David Behrman and Gordon Mumma, he co-founded the Sonic Arts Union. From 1968 to 2011 he taught at Wesleyan University where he was John Spencer Camp Professor of Music. Lucier lectures and performs extensively in Asia, Europe and The United States. Recently, Alvin Lucier was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States and received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Plymouth, England. Lucier's compositions have been recently featured at ISSUE Project Room including in a two-night retrospective in 2017 and as part of the Sonic Arts Union celebration in 2018. Lucier was honored at ISSUE's 2018 Gala for his exceptional leadership in the experimental arts community. ISSUE has also recently premiered his works Hard Wood (2019) and Orpheus Variations (2020).