Three Cellos by Kenneth Kirschner

The inaugural release in Greyfade’s innovative new FOLIO music release format — a 6.5 x 8” hardcover book with included high-resolution music download (https://www.greyfade.com/folio) — is Kenneth Kirschner’s Three Cellos.

The culmination of five years of development, Three Cellos offers a detailed examination of the process, techniques, and experience of translating an intricate contrapuntal composition by Kirschner from its originally electronic form, into a notated score for cello, and finally into the finished suite of cello recordings included with the book.

Three Cellos began its life as a digital composition by Kirschner — July 8, 2017 — that played with algorithmic and generative techniques, while simultaneously keeping one eye on a more traditional image of instrumental counterpoint and harmony. Recognized by Greyfade founder Joseph Branciforte as a potential next step in Kirschner and Branciforte’s From the Machine series – an ongoing exploration into the integration of digital composition and instrumental chamber music – the musicians began a long journey toward adapting the digital piece into an acoustic arrangement and, finally, a studio recording.

Branciforte first undertook the task of translating Kirschner’s digital composition into traditional musical notation, painstakingly capturing the uniquely non-metric rhythmic sensibility of the original, while establishing a distinct new identity for the piece as an acoustic arrangement. The two then turned to cellist Christopher Gross as a sole performer to realize the multi-cello piece, layering his nuanced, emotional and intense performance over itself in the studio to create a unique recording that both captures and extends the composer’s original vision.

Like any complex artistic undertaking, the project had its setbacks and triumphs, all of which are detailed in the FOLIO edition of Three Cellos. The book features an extended narrative from Kirschner setting out the composition’s backstory, underlying processes and subsequent adaptation; an essay by Branciforte discussing the transcription of the piece and situating Kirschner’s work at the interface between digital and acoustic music; reflections on the recording process from Gross; a reproduction of two movements of the composition’s score; and photographs capturing various stages of the project’s development.

But the artists’ intention with the book, rather than a conventional act of documentation, is to create what they refer to as a “cookbook”: a text that will act not simply as an explanation or story of how the music was created, but as an active, generative set of instructions, processes and techniques – recipes – that they hope other artists will explore, learn from, and adapt within their own practices.

Renewing Greyfade’s commitment to the continued relevance of thoughtfully designed physical objects, Three Cellos offers not only beautiful, challenging and innovative music, but an inside look into the practices and struggles of deeply engaged contemporary artists as they push the boundaries of the possible in music today.

Composer Kenneth Kirschner was born in 1970 and lives in New York City; his music is freely available at kennethkirschner.com

kennethkirschner.com