Four Violins

Free Event

Maximilian Haft violin
Elissa Cassini violin

Tony Conrad (US, 1940), arr. by Maximilian Haft (2022)
Four Violins (1964) UK Premiere

Tony Conrad’s recording of Four Violins is a monumental work of early American minimalism. Recorded in his Lower East Side, Manhattan apartment in December 1964 using a reel-to-reel tape recorder, Tony Conrad layered four tracks of a heavily distorted violin drone which became a signature sound in his work with La Monte Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music as well as in his later recordings.

Profoundly influenced and moved by Four Violins, and keen to experience how it might sound in a live context, Belgian-American violinist Maximilian Haft sought to arrange the work for two violins sustaining all four voices. Haft panned between channels and used a timer to notate each voice, working with sound designer and engineer Thierry Simonot to create a patch closely resembling the distortion of the recording. This new arrangement, produced with the guidance of Tony Conrad’s estate following his death, evokes a meditative, deep listening-like quality through varying densities of timbre, microtonality and distortion.

Produced by hcmf// supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia

With acknowledgment to Thierry Simonot and Ensemble Contrechamps for funding this arrangement

Photo: composite Maximilian Haft / Elissa Cassini © ManhattanShot