Voices #14
◦ “voices” is the place where we ask, artists reply and you read.
here we got:
KORF AR SON
answering some questions. We have already observed their ambient piano / minimalism / contemporary classical work here.
n.b.: this is a sound-based art project linking piano improvisations to their graphic transcriptions.
eyes and ears are equally important here, so we’re showing some images of their visual work below.
◦ [Nebel Lang and Sylvain Levier speaking]
[1. IDEA]
■ The A. O.: Can you tell us how “Rippen 115892“ came to light?
► Nebel Lang: Rippen 115892 is the sixth published piece from the Korf ar son project, which has a concept and a specific procedure: I tune a piano, and when I’m done tuning it and consider it ready, I improvise on the piano, testing its tuning. That’s precisely what is recorded and sent to Sylvain so he can continue with his part. This particular piece (Rippen 115892) comes from a piano I bought, a personal piano, in the city of Kiel, Germany. I tuned it and recorded it while testing its tuning; that piano is also the sound of some albums by Nebel lang. The idea for the project arose some years before its first released piece, even this very method, of recording a recently tuned piano, freshly so to speak, I did as part of a cycling trip that mostly covered France in 2018, and on a few occasions I came across pianos along the way, people who hosted me who had pianos, or people I crossed paths with and knew other people who had a piano needing tuning, and so I tuned a couple of pianos and the concept took shape. From those tunings and recordings around 2018 nothing was yet worthy for Korf Ar Son. I couldn’t record most of the tuned pianos, or the pieces were very short, or I couldn’t finish tuning and had to continue the trip. So, well, the first published piece by Korf Ar Son would be the first in which several conditions were met, both on my side with the piano and the tuning, and on Sylvain’s side as well.
► Sylvain Levier: The Rippen improvisation has a rather special history, as it was recorded in 2021 and visually transcribed well afterwards in October 2024. Released in December 2024, more than a year had passed since the last release, and the challenge was to recapture the original spirit of the project despite the passage of time, to stay accurate to it and not miss out.
[2. CREATION]
(more…)