Performance:
I play modular eurorack analog synthesizers with a customizable software I built in MaxMSP that allows me to perform with a variety of different spatial speaker arrays. My software also allows me to control several inputs from the modular with filtering effects, customizable algorithmic spatialization trajectories, and individualized amplitude control. I also use my setup to process other external sound sources such as acoustic and electronic instruments. I perform solo and as one half of the Watson & Kleijn duo.
Kari Watson & Katinka Kleijn Duo
Kari Watson and Katinka Kleijn bring together a wide range of sounds, merging acoustic, analog, and digital sound sources and often exploring extended aspects of improvisation such as physicality, attunement, and embodiment. Combining cello, modular eurorack synthesizer, Max MSP, and handheld electronics, the two create tactile performance environments for their audiences. Together, Watson & Kleijn have a deep commitment to live performance as a venue for possibility, vulnerability, and variability. The two embrace improvisation as grounds for continual exploration of connection, empathy and risk.
Kari Watson & Katinka Kleijn: VISTAS
An experiment in scale and vantage point, VISTAS consists of a single thirty-five-minute track that explores two seemingly contrasting sound sources: the acoustic cello and the eurorack analog modular synthesizer. Electrical circuits and metal strings warp and weft, rewiring and restringing a panoramic sonic tapestry.
Watson and Kleijn transform and transpose their instruments, morphing from fusions to fissures, from discrete sonic characters to summations of astonishing blend. VISTAS gradually reveals different sides of these two instruments, illuminating their seams and edges, playing amidst and between a sonic language that blurs pitch, texture, and noise, refracting and rebuilding a tactile tectonic track.
UPCOMING DUO GIGS:
June 20th: at MISE-EN PLACE in Brooklyn NYC
September 5th at SOUND AND GRAVITY in Chicago, IL
February 2027 at Montreal New Music Week in Montreal, QC with Supermusique
