Catherine Christer Hennix mixed drones and minimalism with arithmetic, logic, and spirituality. Hennix died earlier this week in her dwelling in Istanbul, Turkey, at age 75.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Catherine Christer Hennix was an expansive musician, composer and artist, although even that description doesn’t fairly sum up what she did together with her music, which mixed drones and minimalism with arithmetic, logic and spirituality. Hennix died final week in her dwelling in Istanbul, Turkey. She was 75. NPR’s Andrew Limbong has this remembrance.
(SOUNDBITE OF CATHERINE CHRISTER HENNIX’S “SOLO FOR TAMBURIUM”)
ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: The factor about Catherine Christer Hennix’s artwork was that we, as listeners, have been simply as essential to creating her artwork as Hennix was herself.
JOSHUA MINSOO KIM: An important factor to grasp about her work is that the sounds themselves aren’t as vital insomuch as the best way they situation your posture of listening.
LIMBONG: That is Joshua Minsoo Kim, the editor-in-chief of Tone Glow, a publication that interviews experimental musicians.
KIM: For instance, she has a brand new album out this yr, “Solo for Tamburium.” And, you already know, somebody might hearken to this – somebody might hear to 5 seconds of it and be like, oh, this seems like sparkly, new-age music or one thing.
(SOUNDBITE OF CATHERINE CHRISTER HENNIX’S “SOLO FOR TAMBURIUM”)
KIM: However once I spoke together with her – once I interviewed her three years in the past, the factor that stored coming to thoughts in our dialog was this notion that, you already know, sound is God. And that is not her romanticizing sound. She actually believes, like, sound is God. It has an everlasting existence. The whole lot else is perishing. She consequently approached life with this perception on a regular basis.
LIMBONG: This is how she put it at a chat at a museum in Amsterdam in 2018.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CATHERINE CHRISTER HENNIX: You’re the artist. You’re the performer. You occur to be a medium. However what’s going on is principally a present to all people who’re current.
LIMBONG: Hennix was born in 1948, in Stockholm. Her mom was a jazz composer, and he or she performed drums as a child. In Stockholm, she caught jazz luminaries akin to Miles Davis and John Coltrane. She had a mathematical life, too. She ultimately moved to the States, educating at SUNY New Paltz and MIT’s Synthetic Intelligence Lab. In fact, it wasn’t a separate life. This is Lawrence Kumpf, the creative director of Clean Varieties, which has launched a few of her music.
LAWRENCE KUMPF: Her curiosity in, you already know, kind of, like, arithmetic and physics, you already know, was a kind of continuum all through her profession and, you already know, informs the musical observe in varied methods.
LIMBONG: Hennix labored with artists akin to minimalist composer La Monte Younger and Indian classical singer Pandit Pran Nath, who taught her that drones, significantly ones present in Indian classical music, might actually transport the listener locations.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KUMPF: The kind of act of seeing her work, participating together with her work, was actually meant to, you already know, take one to a kind of heightened expertise.
LIMBONG: In Hennix’s splendid world, musicians could be enjoying music all day, every single day, and artists would not be sure by schedules and set instances.
KUMPF: She additionally used to say that, you already know, you’ll be able to choose a tradition by how lengthy it lets its musicians play.
(SOUNDBITE OF CATHERINE CHRISTER HENNIX, ET AL.’S “BLUES ALIF LAM MIM”)
LIMBONG: Is – this system’s solely three minutes?
KUMPF: Sure, like 3 1/2, I believe I’ve.
LIMBONG: So that is the antithesis of her…
KUMPF: Sure, completely.
LIMBONG: …Common observe.
(LAUGHTER)
LIMBONG: As a result of to Hennix, music is God, and God is infinite.
Andrew Limbong, NPR Information.
(SOUNDBITE OF CATHERINE CHRISTER HENNIX, ET AL.’S “BLUES ALIF LAM MIM”)
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