Alvin Curran (b. 1938) is an American composer from Providence RI who lives and works in Rome, Italy, where in 1966 he formed the influential Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV) ensemble. A prolific writer, performer, improviser and sound artist, Curran has been at the forefront of sonic experimentalism for many decades.

Alvin Curran

Inner Cities is a legendary, epic work for piano written over a 20-year period. It comprises 14 sections that range in length from a few minutes to around an hour: all up, the full set has a running time of around six hours. Here, South Australian pianist Gabriella Smart presents Nos. 1–11 (written between 1993 and 2003), which comes in at just under four-and-a-half hours.

Curran describes these works as “contradictory etudes¬–studies in liberation and attachment”...