Cellist Charles Curtis is an internationally renowned performer and composer of a wide variety of music, with particular emphasis on the avant-garde. Curtis is most strongly associated with minimalism, modern classical, and so-called "downtown music." He has worked extensively with pioneers of new music La Monte Young, Alvin Lucier and Éliane Radigue in collaborations which straddle the boundaries between concert performance, installation and sound art. Curtis has premiered and commissioned works that re-define the cello, re-frame its basic acoustics, and place the fundamental physics of instrument and performance space in a new light. Curtis has led La Monte Young's legendary Theatre of Eternal Music String Ensemble for nearly two decades, and he is a member of The Just Alap Raga Ensemble, the performance group of La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. Alvin Lucier's compositions dedicated to Curtis include works for solo cello and pre-recorded orchestra, cello and sine waves, and cello and piano. Éliane Radigue, a pioneer of tape music composition since the 1950's, created her very first work for an acoustic instrument, Naldjorlak, specifically for Curtis. Fluxus artists Alison Knowles and Mieko Shiomi have also created original music for Curtis, including graphic and text-based scores. A graduate of the prestigious Juilliard School, Curtis has since been involved with the music department at Princeton University and at the University of California, San Diego, where he has served as Professor of Contemporary Music Performance since the year 2000. Curtis has studied under such masters as vocalist Pandit Pran Nath and composer La Monte Young and still regularly records and performs. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.