Featured Profile

Ron Kuivila is a sound artist and a teacher at Wesleyan University. Kuivila also attended Wesleyan University (BA 1977, magna cum laude, music and mathematics) where he studied composition with Alvin Lucier and Richard Winslow, piano with Peter Armstrong and Jon Barlow, and shakuhachi with Yoshikazu Iwamoto. He composes music and designs sound installations that revolve around the unusual homemade and home modified electronic instruments he designs. He pioneered the use of ultrasound and sound sampling in live performance. More recent pieces have explored compositional algorithms, speech synthesis and high voltage phenomena. Kuivila has performed and exhibited installations throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe. He has collaborated with other composers, artists, and choreographers including Anthony Braxton, Rudy Burckhardt, Nicolas Collins, Merce Cunningham, Hugh Davies, Douglas Dunn, Susan Foster, and Larry Johnson.