Fredagar på Sibbe: CHRONOVARIATIONS – Sibelius-museo Skip to main content

Fredagar på Sibbe: CHRONOVARIATIONS

25.10.2024 19:00 – 20:00

Standard price 15€ (+order fee)

Students/ pensioners/ children 12€ (+order fee)

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Heli Hartikainen, tenor saxophone
Esther Calderón Morales, live electronics, programming

Heli Hartikainen is a Finnish saxophonist, clarinetist, composer, and sound artist whose practice derives from a pursuit of enduring textures, functions, and forms. As a saxophonist, Hartikainen is a passionate instrumentalist who constantly pushes the boundaries of their instrument and themself ever further. At the core of Hartikainen’s creative practice, abstraction and existential curiosity playfully intertwine with an endless love of sound. Their work stands as a testament to the power of artistic experimentation.

CHRONOVARIATIONS weaves together the haunting allure of the tenor saxophone with the limitless possibilities of electronic manipulation, superimposing avant garde gestures onto minimalist ambient soundscapes. The record is rooted in notions of sonic resonance, temporality, and emergence, with the title of the work, CHRONOVARIATIONS, deriving from the concept of time and its transformation; timelessness, loss of temporal perception, and the decay of memory. The constantly-evolving chain of variations manipulates the perception of temporal reference points and envelops the listener. The themes of emergence and unfolding encompass the entire album, from compressed “microsounds” to cathartic roaring; journeying through layers of sound, where Hartikainen’s use of silence and negative space is as powerful as their cacophonous crescendos.

”Combining live looping, pieces of scrap industrial metal and surging waves of reverb and delay, she and sound artist Esther Calderón Morales created an astonishing wall of sound – – Hartikainen explored the myriad sounds that can be produced by a sax, including popping the keys for a percussive effect that Morales looped and treated to create complex layers of sound. All the sounds apparently originated from her tenor sax, shape-shifting from a rich, warm sound to a rough-edged keening, at times echoing the more soulful side of John Surman or Jan Garbarek (ECM should snap her up while they have a chance).
– – mind-expanding journey.”
Jazz Journal UK

“CHRONOVARIATIONS is a bold five-part composition that employs tenor saxophone, computer, resonating metal objects, and a space with a magnificent acoustic. The work challenges the conventional notions of form and structure, and utilises multiple dimensions of sound processing and augmentation. It calls for heightened engagement and active participation from the listener and, indeed, patience, but it’s a hugely rewarding and totally engulfing listening experience—these are musicians who are sculpting sound with virtuosic precision. CHRONOVARIATIONS feels like a conversation with time itself; where the past, present, and future collide and coexist.”
Artistic producer Hugh Sheehan

Heli Hartikainen – CHRONOVARIATIONS
binaural album / releases 06.09.2024
Heli Hartikainen: tenor saxophone, composition, concept
Esther Calderón Morales: live-elektronik, programmering
Hugh Sheehan: artistic production
Kaj Mäki-Ullakko: recording, mixing
Jaakko Viitalähde / Virtalähde Mastering: mastering
Recorded binaurally at St. Henrik’s Church in Nousianen, March 2023.
© Multiphonic Works 2024

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