Zoe Keating

Yesterday, walking around the city, I was listening to a Radio Lab interview with cellist Zoe Keating. Below is a link to her site and there's a sample of her music on the home page.

www.zoekeating.com

I'll preface my impressions of her music with a quick overview. Zoe is a classically trained cellist with both a symphonic and avant-garde performance background. The sound of her solo work is accomplished through the use of foot-pedals with which she triggers a digital sampler and playback device. She builds multiple harmonies, tones, voicing, percussive sounds, and more, by playing, recording, and layering at the same time.

I was totally blown away by the complexity of her on-the-fly arrangements and the depth and tonal variety she was able to generate using a single instrument and a simple digital tool like a sampler. You can really hear the classical training in her improvisation as she tends to create multi-movement pieces and facilitates reprises, codas, crescendos, and developed themes along the way - much like a sonata.

I mentioned I was walking through the city because in her music I found a temporal relationship to my movement. It felt a lot like getting lost and then finding myself again.

Tal