Berlin-based composer Chiyoko Szlavnics and host Josh Thorpe discuss phenomenology, psychoacoustics, making music from pictures, and the wonderful experience of listening to, and playing, Indian dhrupad music. We listen to For Eva Hesse, a work using sine waves that beat and shimmer, as well as a track by Uday Bhawalkar, who can seem to make a whole chord bend with just his slow vocal glissandi.
Artist Bio
Chiyoko Szlavnics
Chiyoko Szlavnics is a Canadian composer and visual artist from Toronto, and has called Berlin ‘home’ since 1998. Her compositions encompass acoustic and electroacoustic music as well as purely electronic music, usually just sine waves, for concerts and installations––pieces that explore the perception of subtle perceptual phenomena, such as beating and combination tones––using pure intervals, clusters, non-unisons, and glissandi. Szlavnics began using drawings as the basis for her compositions in 2000, an approach that liberated her from conventional compositional practices, enabling her to develop unique musical and visual aesthetics.
Szlavnics developed her “voice” while experimenting and collaborating with musicians in Berlin’s rich experimental scene. She also participated in Wandelweiser’s projects in the early 2000s. She favours reduced, intimate musical settings, and very resonant spaces.
Learn more about Chiyoko Szlavnics and dhrupad master Uday Bhavalkar.