Alvin Lucier: Silver Streetcar For The Orchestra | Music For Cello with One Or More Amplified Vases

Alvin Lucier wrote a soundtrack for videoconference marathons in lockdown limbo as far back as 1969. “I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now,” are the first words of what is probably his best-known piece, a masterful meditation on medial presence and physical absence. Ironically, the sound art mastermind is not present in person at The Sound of Distance, but worthily represented with four works curated by Oren Ambarchi.

Maurice de Martin presents Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra, one of Lucier’s famous works, played alone on an unamplified triangle, which in addition to the creative interventions of the performer also emphasizes the acoustic nature of the performance space.

Judith Hamann enters into a subjective-objective dialogue. While she slowly explores the full range of her cello in Music for Cello with One or More Amplified Vases, the resonances created in the microphoned vases are relayed to the audience, which, although sitting in the same room, may hear something completely different.