KARST [2015-16]
chamber orchestra (22 instruments, no conductor) [36’]
commissioned by Ensemblekollektiv Berlin and sponsored by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin and the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation
recordings
Portrait Disc on KAIROS. Performed by Ensemblekollektiv Berlin. Purchase/download here. Listen on Spotify & Apple Music.
Listen to a live recording of the premiere here.
performance history
3/17/2016 - Ensemblekollektiv Berlin. Maerzmusik. Haus der Berliner Festspiele. Berlin, Germany.
further reading
KARST by Tim Rutherford-Johnson, written to accompany my portrait CD on KAIROS [June, 2020]
outside of time | inside the sound [dissertation colloquium presented for the degree of PhD at Harvard University, May 6, 2019]
program note
KARST was written for a chamber orchestra of 22 musicians without conductor, broken into four groups. As in much of my music, the musicians shape the piece together through a network of sonic cues that are interwoven within the musical fabric of the piece. KARST requires the musicians to listen and attend to each other with urgency and care as they collectively travel through the piece's extremely varied and turbulent sonic landscape. At times overwhelming and ecstatic, at times vulnerable and hermetic, the soundworld of KARST is informed by the eponymous geologic terrain: weathered bedrock, rivers that disappear into sinkholes, cave systems that shift dramatically from cavernous anterooms to narrow passageways... My goal is to place the listener squarely within this earthen, eroding sonic landscape that feels both inner and outer, expansive and private, tactile and ephemeral, and moving slowly forward with impending and, at times catastrophic, urgency.