ALTERNATING

CURRRENTS

Our weekly search for the needle of creative music in the

haystack of 20th century radio.


 
 
Some of the most adventurous music of this century and the next is broadcast every Sunday night from 6 to 9 p.m. on WMSE-FM (91.7 FM) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

ALTERNATING CURRENTS, hosted by Hal Rammel, surveys the history of creative music in the late 20th century from freely improvised to thoroughly composed, from electronic to acoustic, from lo-tech tape experimentation to the newest explorations of computer composition. Broadcasting every Sunday night from 6 to 9 p.m. since l992, Alternating Currents regularly features new releases from the very active catalogs of Leo Records, Okka Discs, Hat Art (including Hatology, Hat Noir, and HatMusic), Rastascan, Incus, CRI, Maya, Acta, FMP, O.O.Disc, Lovely Music, mode, Intakt, Table of the Elements, Revenant, INA GRM, impreintes DIGITALes, Emanem, Perdition Plastics, BOXmedia, Periplum and many others.

Special programs have featured the history of various record labels (such as Bead, ESP, Kabell, mbari, and TransMuseq); surveyed of development of free improvisation, early tape music, contemporary instrument invention, and experiments in film sound; explored recordings from the Columbia-Princeton Studios, WDR, and other electronic music studios; and presented archival recordings from the earliest works of acousmatic and radiophonic compostion. Entire evenings are often devoted to the work of individual performers and composers who have dramatically transformed our musical landscape and how we listen to the world around us.

In collaboration with Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee,WMSE-FM co-produces the Sunday evening concert series ALTERNATING CURRENTS LIVE presenting three to four concerts inthe Spring and Fall at Woodland Pattern (720 East Locust). These concerts are recorded for broadcast on ALTERNATING CURRENTS the following Sunday evening. In the past four years this series has presented Robin Holcomb, Fred Anderson, Plus-Minus , Francois Houle, Scott Fields, JaapBlonk, Marilyn Crispell, Guy Kuscevek, David Grubbs, Peter Kowald, the Ken Vandermark and Kent Kessler duo, Douglas Ewart, Jim Baker, Steve Nelson-Raney, Richard Lerman, Tom Hamilton's sound installation"Off-Hour Wait State," Jim O'Rourke, Luc Houtcamp, the Michael Zerang and Hamid Drake duo, and many others.



Our schedule of special programs

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