Blue(s) in Green to the 31 Limit
(World Premiere)
Performance — 16, Feb 17, 2018
- Price
- €3,- (excluding entrance fee)
- Location
- Teijin Auditorium
- Time
- Feb 16, 2018, 7 pm until 9 pm
Feb 17, 2018, 2 pm until 4 pm - Main language
- English
Catherine Christer Hennix: composer, computer
Benjamin Duboc: double bass
Rozemarie Heggen: double bass
Hilary Jeffery: live sound
Marcus Pal: computer assistant
Catherine Christer Hennix’s new work Blue(s) in Green to the 31 Limit will premiere at Sonic Acts Academy with two performances at Stedelijk Museum Teijin Auditorium. This new work, performed with Benjamin Duboc, Rozemarie Heggen, Hilary Jeffery, and Marcus Pal, elaborates on concepts of space – specifically attempting to halt our experience of space-based phenomena – and continues the musicians’ ongoing experiments in micro-tonality, just intonation and the space of sound.
Blue(s) in Green to the 31 Limit draws on distinct computer-generated broken chords derived from Monochromatism (Green), part of Hennix’s previous work Three Monochromatisms – originally developed as the sonic counterpart to one of artist Lucio Fontana’s monochrome light environments. Blue(s) in Green to the 31 Limit – also a reference to Bill Evans’ ballad Blue in Green, made famous by Miles Davis – is the first instance in which Hennix uses a formation involving two amplified double basses, as the composer is joined by experienced improvisers, each at the forefront of contemporary music, who accompany her subtle drone in manners meticulously adapted to the green-lit performance space. The piece represents a fusion of Hennix’s mathematical interest with traditional practices of sustained pitches in just intonation.
“In every media, the work of Christer Hennix shows extraordinary mastery of the interrelationship between Eastern and Western thought.”
Catherine Christer Hennix (US, SE) is a composer, philosopher, mathematician and visual artist. In the 1960s and 70s she worked with illustrious figures such as La Monte Young and Pandit Pran Nath. She has frequently collaborated with the American anti-art philosopher, composer and violinist Henry Flynt. Hennix also drew inspiration from Japanese Gagaku music and the early vocal music of Perotinus and Leoninus. At the invitation of Marvin Minsky, Hennix was affiliated with MIT’s AI Lab in the early 1980s. All of her major compositions are regarded as part of an ongoing, endless cycle. She works in Berlin, where after a long hiatus she has recently began to perform again in public.
In 2017 the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Sonic Acts initiated a long-term research trajectory dedicated to the lesser-known pioneers of sound art. The first stage of this collaboration presented the archives of American composer and sound artist Maryanne Amacher (1938-2009). The performance Blue(s) in Green to the 31 Limit continues this partnership between the Stedelijk and Sonic Acts, and is presented on the occasion of the Stedelijk’s solo exhibition dedicated to Catherine Christer Hennix’s visual artwork. Titled Catherine Christer Hennix: Traversée du Fantasme, the exhibition is organized by Stedelijk Museum Curator of Contemporary Art, Time-based Media Karen Archey and Blank Forms Artistic Director Lawrence Kumpf.