Research

Chris Cutler looks at the diversity of instruments extended out from the xylophone and their sometimes surprising use in almost every imaginable musical context.  

In PROBES #31 we begin to consider evolutionary pressures and invented instruments and follow the twists and turns that led the xylophone out of Asia and Africa, spun it around the world and metamorphosed it into the vibraphone; with a coda from the intonarumori.

Chris Cutler takes us on a stroll through music made  (variously) with water, stones, stage props, ice, snow, stalactites, Tesla coils, sand dunes, leaves, flowers, grass, twigs, glass and a coffee can.

Chris Culter shows us how artists, composers and performers make water, ice, glass, fire, wind and Styrofoam their soloists in installations, recordings and events designed for concert halls, galleries, the Phillips pavilion, TV series' and open air gatherings.

In this new PROBES Auxiliary by Chris Cutler, composers and performers expand their classical, contemporary, avant garde, jazz, rock, electronic and installation art vocabularies by incorporating real or virtual collaborations with wildlife, soundscapes, insects, amphibia, birds, whales and wolves. And we learn what a whale has in common with a nightingale.

In PROBES #29 composers turn to nature, not as pastorale but as concrete musical resources. Chris Cutler looks at animals, vegetables and one or two minerals as they are directly incorporated into musical works, as leading voices:  there are birds, wolves and whales, obviously, but also less cuddly creatures, plants, cacti, rocks and stones. We also consider some of the motives and ideologies at work, and hear minerals make sounds that are hard to credit.

In this new PROBES Auxiliary by Chris Cutler, Beethoven is reorchestrated with power tools and a variety orchestra partners with canteen equipment while radios, gramophones and telephones explore their new vocation as performing instruments, and become the subjects of formal composition.

in PROBES #28 Chris Cutler follows the incorporation into new works of saws, sandpaper and power tools, artisans and knitting machines – and goes on to investigate the repurposing of radios and gramophones as musical resources.

In this episode typewriters invade every imaginable musical genre, while hoovers, bicycles, lightbulbs, foley work, the Eiffel tower and mail-franking are all conscripted into musical employment in quest of novel sonorities.

In PROBES #27 Chris Cutler tracks the modern composer from the scrapyard to the office, then through the living room and into the kitchen in search of new musical resources - including scrap-metal, typewriters, vacuum cleaners, dot matrix printers, industrial quantities of paper, telephones, and the humble bean.