Composer/sonologist Roland Kuit encountered the paintings of Tomas Rajlich in 1992. ‘Fundamental Painting’, a minimalist strategy that explores the post-existential nature of the painting itself – its color, structure and surface — it is simply the painting as a painting. Tomas opened Kuit’s eyes to a kind of minimalism that Kuit recognized in his music at that time when he was working with semi-predictable chaotic systems. Kuit began creating works for Tomas Rajlich in 1993 and last year, Kuit released a new piece for Kyma-extended string quartet: Tactile Utterance – for Tomas Rajlich.
The world premiere of Tactile Utterance took place on 23 June 2017 in the Kampa Museum – The Jan and Meda Mládek Foundation in Prague (CZ) for the opening of a special Tomas Rajlich retrospective: Zcela abstraktní retrospektiva. Composed especially for the occasion, Kuit’s three part work Tactile Utterance, expresses 50 years of painting by Tomas Rajlich.
Kuit’s recent research into new compositional methods, algorithms, and spectral music came together in this work. His aim was to capture the process of painting: how can we relate acrylate polymers on canvas to sound? Using bowing without ‘tone’ as a metaphor for brushing a tangible thickness of color; pointing out the secants with very short percussive sounds on the string instruments as grid; dense multiphonics as palet knifes — broadened textures smeared out and dissolving into light.
The premiere, performed by the FAMA Quartet with Roland Kuit on Kyma, was very well received.
The Prague recordings
For the recording, made during 15-20 February 2018, Roland decided to record the string quartet alone and unprocessed so he could do post-processing and balancing in the studio. Recording engineer Milan Cimfe of the SONO Recording Studios in Prague used 3 sets of microphones: one to create a very ‘close to the skin’ recording of all string instruments; the second set overhead; and the third set as ‘room’ recording. Kuit took the recordings to Sweden to finish the mix and Kyma processing.
Album art © Tomas Rajlich, Acrylic on Linen, 1990-1991 c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2018
Tactile Utterance – Roland Emile Kuit
For Tomas Rajlich
1/ BRUSH 00:14:42
From a pianissimo-bowed wood sounds to noise, to an elaborated crescendo ending in a broad fortissimo textural cluster: Kyma extends the string sounds with spectral holds.
2/ MAZE 00:12:06
When walking by a grid, we see it first condensed – then open – then condensed again in both horizontal and vertical directions. The string quartet interprets ‘intersections’ by means of percussive sounds like pizzicato, spiccato, martelé, col legno etc. These sounds are treated as particles copied 100 times with the Kyma system, resulting in a noise wall. A ritardando to the center of the piece allows these particles to be distinguished as single sounds. With these single sounds, Roland made “spectral pictures” that could be smeared to complement the grid lines, followed by an accelerando back to prestissimo particles again.
3/ SURFACE 00:14:59
Multiphonics morphing to airy flageolets and the Kyma system processing the string quartet in algorithmic multiplexed resynthesized sounds, dissolving them into a muffled softness.
Roland Emile Kuit – Kyma
FAMA Quartet:
David Danel, – violin
Roman Hranička – violin,
Ondřej Martinovský – viola
Balázs Adorján – violoncello
Recorded by Milan Cimfe at the Sono Recording Studios Prague
DONEMUS
Composers Voice: CV 229
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