Celebration, Participatory Installation to Honor Lucier’s 40-Year Career

For 40 years, Alvin Lucier, the John Spencer Camp Professor of Music, has pioneered 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, and the evocation of room acoustics for musical purposes.

His recent works include a series of sound installations and works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra in which, by means of close tunings with pure tones, sound waves are caused to spin through space.

On Nov. 4-6, the Music Department and Center for the Arts will celebrate Lucier’s remarkable musical career and contributions. Lucier retires this June.

The celebration will be held over Homecoming/Family weekend. It will include a symposium, concerts and Zilkha Gallery exhibition titled, “Alvin Lucier and His Artist Friends,” curated by Andrea Miller-Keller.

Included in the exhibition, which runs through Dec. 11, will be a participatory installation called “Chambers.” Students, staff, faculty and alumni are invited to contribute recordings to this project. Participants will need to record an indoor or outdoor environment and choose a small resonant object: vase, kettle, box, tin can or other enclosed space, into which those sounds will be placed. Recordings will be routed to their respective objects through miniature loudspeakers. To express your interest in participating, and receive complete instructions, visit this website or send an e-mail by July 1 to chambers@wesleyan.edu.