Soundings

Solo · violin & live electronics · Lange Nacht, ZHdK Zürich · 2017

Diego Kohn playing violin alone on the dark stage of the concert hall, in a pool of light, pedals at his feet

Gesture, sound and space in dialogue.

Soundings are improvisations based on the concept of the American composer and violinist Malcolm Goldstein about the relation between gestures and sounds. In this performance I expanded that experience with a microphone, delays and loudspeakers placed at different points of the hall.

The improvisation examines a spiral of actions and reactions: the relationship between my body gestures, intentional and unintentional, and their consequences in the sound of the instrument and in the acoustics of the room. Three hidden loudspeakers return the violin after 7, 14 and 20 seconds, the last one transposed, and two volume pedals let me open or close each layer. I play with these returns as with partners: the room answers, and the physical space is transformed by the acoustic space that comes from the gestures and the instrument.

Date: 7 December 2017
Place: Konzertsaal 3, Toni-Areal, Zürcher Hochschule der Künste
Event: Lange Nacht – Artikulationen in der zeitgenössischen Musik, Studio zeitgenössische Musik, ZHdK
Violin, electronics: Diego Kohn
Concept: Improvisation after Malcolm Goldstein
Setup: Microphone, three delay lines to three loudspeakers, two volume pedals

Concert

Soundings · Diego Kohn, violin and live electronics · live, 7 December 2017 12:38

Diego Kohn playing violin, his foot near the volume pedals

Diego Kohn playing violin, seen from the front in the stage light

Stills from the concert video.

Sound check

Diego Kohn seen from behind, playing toward the empty hall

Diego Kohn from behind, bow raised, a loudspeaker hanging above

Diego Kohn on stage raising his bow, pedals at his feet

The violin and bow on the stage floor among cables and volume pedals

Konzertsaal 3, before the concert.

With Malcolm Goldstein, Montreal

Malcolm Goldstein (born 1936 in New York) is a composer, violinist and improviser who has been part of experimental music since the 1960s. He played violin with the Judson Dance Theater, co-founded the Tone Roads ensemble with Philip Corner and James Tenney, and his work is connected with the New York School around John Cage and Morton Feldman. Since the mid-1960s he has built structured improvisation into his compositions; Soundings is the name of his solo violin improvisations.

In 2017 I spent three weeks in Montreal to study with him in person. The lessons took place in his home, among boxes of scores. He went through his pieces, many of them in graphic notation, and explained how he works with them. Soundings, presented a few months later in Zürich, grew out of this work.

Malcolm GoldsteinBiography, Philmultic
Malcolm Goldstein on WikipediaGerman

Malcolm Goldstein in his study, pointing at a score

Graphic scores by Malcolm Goldstein spread on the wooden floor

Hands holding a text score above a graphic score on the floor

Malcolm Goldstein and Diego Kohn outdoors in Montreal

Malcolm Goldstein explains one of his scores 0:51

Malcolm Goldstein on a map he uses as the basis for a sound performance 1:18

Notation and improvisation 0:50

Photos and video: Diego Kohn, Montreal, September 2017.

Poster and setup

Poster of the Lange Nacht 2017: colourful silhouettes of instruments over pink and blue triangles, 07.12.2017, Toni-Areal — Poster of the Lange Nacht 2017, ZHdK.

Setup diagram: three loudspeakers around the audience, violin and mixer at one end of the room — Setup from my project proposal: three loudspeakers around the audience.