Bertoia I and II

For many, the name "Harry Bertoia" is synonymous with the ubiquitous "Diamond" chair this Italian-born American sculptor and furniture designer created for Knoll Associates in 1952. Formed of chromed steel wire in a flowing meshed pattern, Bertoia's chair pointed toward the space age with grace—in fact, Bertoia was fond of pointing out that, when looking at his chairs, you could see that "space passes through them."

After this chair brought him fame and sufficient royalties to strike out on his own, Bertoia went on to further investigate this concept of space moving through metal—and the mirror concept of metal moving and resonating in space—in a fascinating and revolutionary series of what he termed "Sonambient ®" sculptures. When struck, brushed, blown in the wind, or otherwise prompted to vibrate, these works created spectral sounds that were, somehow, both distantly familiar and like nothing ever heard before.

Following a serendipitous encounter with these amazing works of visual and aural art and a visit to the Sonambient ® Barn in rural Pennsylvania with producer Chuck Helm, David Harrington searched for a way to bring Bertoia's spell-binding sounds into Kronos' repertoire. He enlisted the help of San Francisco Bay Area-based composer and longtime Kronos sound designer Mark Grey, and as Grey tells the story:

"It was one of those wonderfully clear spring days in San Francisco when David Harrington invited me to the Kronos studio to listen to a recording he had acquired while on tour. He sat us down and asked me to hold onto the seat because I was in for a wild ride. As the CD began I could not believe the sounds coming through the speakers. Huge metallic textures weaved through delicate chimes growing into massive gong stokes. Each complex sound easily sustaining up to one minute, if not three. The experience was baffling. How was this possible?

"All this was made possible through the sculptural vision and mastery of the late Harry Bertoia, of famed chair design. The instruments in this 1972 re-issue recording are beautifully crafted sound sculptures performed by Harry in his Sonambient ® barn in rural Pennsylvania. After pondering the intense afternoon, David and I began to develop ideas of how to take audiences to this magical barn. For months we brainstormed the idea and finally, in 2001, visited the Sonambient ® barn, where we met Val Bertoia, Harry's son, and Melissa Strawser who curate this retrospective museum of Harry Bertoia's lifelong dream in sculpture, sound, humanity through the arts, and a deep understanding of his place in the natural world. After visiting the barn, we realized transporting sculptures around the world was not practical and would probably damage the long plate-mounted rods, many of which also had metallic beaters attached to their tips.

"We decided to use technology to solve our problem. Using a computer and infra-red sensors, Kronos now triggers sampled Bertoia sculptures and controls their timbral colors in real time. The two Bertoia movements performed in Kronos' Visual Music program are composed improvisations recalling the rich open-form spirit of composer Earle Brown. Each quartet member plays a unique sculpture 'sample group' organized by classes of chimes, gongs, bowed and brushed instruments. Resembling performances on theremins, each of these virtual sculptures is 'activated' with one hand while the other controls long sustain, overtone colors, and dynamics. The choice of individual instruments in each sculpture group is randomly selected by the computer, so the quartet members have fresh interpretations in each performance."

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