2005 was an exceptional year for me; like other snails I felt my music was at last emerging from its happy hermitage. The publications of 4 key works CANTI ILLUMINATI, MARITIME RITES, TOTO ANGELICA spanning a lifetime in the electric department and INNER CITIES - a 5.5 hour piano work played by Daan Vandewalle, felt like long-overdue Darwinian feathers in my cap. Performances with Zeitkatzer in Krems, Zorn directed Cobra in Bologna, MEV in New Jersey, Brackage festival in Rome with Domenico Sciajno; with Kosugi and Phil Corner for Merce Cunningham company; with Zu and 40 other friends in Roma, The town band of Donaueschingen, and 120 students from the Cagliari Conservatori and David Toop's beautifully produced Arnolfini show PLAYING JOHN CAGE were all full of wonder. When I was called to fill in for Pansonic at the Amsterdam "Night of the Unexpected," at the Paradiso, I thought, hey, maybe I can get into the bigtime now!

Best music: The Arditti's Scelsi concert in Rome; Otomo Yoshide quartet in Donaueschingen and Beat Furrer's FAMA; Keith Rowe/Mike Cooper playing Cardew's Treatise; Supersilent, Joel Ryan and Evan Parker live in A'dam.  Books:Snow, Orhan Pamuk; Biography of Giulliame Appolinaire; The Great Fair,Sholem Aleichem...Films: Mathew Barney's Cremaster Series....  Pop music: CocoRosie and Attwenger...

Susan my dear wife created a momumental website for me: www.alvincurran.com

On 2005: we witness the tragic worldwide confusion created largely by ex (UK) and would-be (USA) empires and the terrifying polarization of the haves and have-nots, along with the increasing desacralization of human life.  China and India begin to rock, and rock the boat. The worldwide trend in wearing running shoes is in my opinion a global preparation for an apocalyptic escape.. to where, nobody knows - the planet is riddled with perilous faults. Our unbearable life in airports is absolute proof we have nowhere to go!

Music continues to fill the gaps as it replaces chewing gum, cellphones and sex. As digital and predigital life become more integrated we seem, musically speaking, to be entering a period of a "new common practice" where electronic and acoustic, composed and improvised, bourgeoise and lumpen are obsolete. Musicians will at last assume the prodigious but quite natural task forging a new vocabulary from every sound ever heard or imagined - Cage will never stop laughing.

Alvin Curran, published in The WIRE January 2006, page 49