Sympathetic Vibrations. I
remember a cello lesson I had as a child in which I was
particularly fascinated with how a string on the cello would vibrate
seemingly all by itself, when in tune with the same note played on
another cello. Later I found out that there was a term for this
acoustic phenomenon - sympathetic vibration. Space & Electronics. At the
time I was also more interested in building
electronic
oscillators than practising my cello scales. I was particularly
fascinated with the way in which different objects in the room could be
made to vibrate as I tuned the oscillator to different frequencies. Records & Radio. My
parents owned a Deutsche Gramophone recording
of Beethoven’s fifth piano concerto which I loved to listen to while
constructing my electronic circuits. Later I was given an old radio by
an aunt and the whole world of popular music flowed in through its
loudspeaker and shook up my room. I gave up the dream of building my
own synthesizer, bought one and started making music with it...
Place. Since then I have
travelled much and lived in many different countries
and environment and language have come fill much of my attention. Much
of my music has grown out of a process of transcription and
transformation of things I find in the world around me.
Environment & Language. I
have
constructed pieces purely from recorded sound, combined those sounds
with “classical” instruments or found ways of translating everyday
environmental sounds into instrumental counterparts.The rhythm and
melodies of language have also become an important point of departure
for creating instrumental music. I am interested in how speech and
story-telling both
reflect and shape the way we percieve the world around us.
Body. But even
though music might be closely related to the forms and structures of
words and language, it all comes down to vibrations - the ways in which
bodies
vibrate and are affected by vibrations - the
two celli and their sympathetically vibrating strings.