Musica Elettronica Viva is a live acoustic/electronic improvisational group formed in Rome, Italy, in 1966. It is "something of an irregular institution, a band that has come together intermittently through the years". Its founding members have been reported variously as Allan Bryant, Alvin Curran, Jon Phetteplace, and Frederic Rzewski, Rzewski, Curran and Richard Teitelbaum, Curran, Phetteplace, Bryant, and Carol Plantamura, and Rzewski, Teitelbaum, Plantamura, Bryant, Phetteplace, Ivan Vandor, and Steve Lacy. Garrett List and George Lewis subsequently joined the group. They were early experimenters with the use of synthesizers to transform sounds: a 1967 concert in Berlin included a performance of John Cage's Solo for Voice 2 with Plantamura's voice transformed through a Moog synthesizer. At the end of the 1960s, they took part in the group Lo Zoo, founded by artist Michelangelo Pistoletto. They also used such "non-musical" objects as amplified panes of glass and olive oil cans, and their performances achieved notoriety in Italy for their ability to generate riots. The final MEV tour was in 2017.
Discography
Spacecraft, recorded in Cologne in 1967 by Bryant, Curran, Rzewski, Teitelbaum and Vandor
Unified Patchwork Theory, recorded in Zurich in 1990 by Curran, Rzewski, Teitelbaum, Steve Lacy, and Garrett List
Both of the above first issued in 2001 on the CD, "Spacecraft/Unified Patchwork Theory".
Friday, recorded in London in 1969 by Curran, Rzewski, Teitelbaum, Franco Cataldi and Gunther Carius, reissued 2008
MEV 40, recorded 1967-2007, a 4-CD set of previously unpublished performances issued by New World Records in 2008
Apogee, a double CD shared with another of the electronic improvisational ensembles that emerged during the 1960s: AMM. The first CD is a studio recording in a joint session in England on April 30, 2004 featuring MEV's Curran, Teitelbaum and Rzewski with the three members of AMM. This is the first occasion that the two ensembles have performed together, but not the first time they have shared a split release - each outfit filled a side of the LPLive Electronic Music Improvised, released on a US label in 1968. The second CD consists of the performances that each group gave at a festival held in London on May 1, 2004.
