SIMON RUMMEL
MICROTONAL HARMONICA // KYOTO
During my stay at the Villa Kamogawa in Kyoto I developed a microtonal reed-organ. It consists of 15 tubes, which can pick up one reed each. The reeds are taken from an old reed organ, and with a special preparation, they can be tuned microtonally. There is a simple keyboard with 15 keys, two bellows to be operated with the knees of the player and one tube with a mouthpiece to blow in additional air. On the upper side of the table there is a reservoir, the pressure of which can be changed by pushing it down with the left hand, while the right hand plays the keyboard. Like this, even crescendo dal niente is possible. Any frquencies between about 200 and 1200 Hertz are tuneable quite precisely.
I wrote a piece for this instrument and the traditional japanese mouth organ Shô and performed it together with →Eri Ito, a japanese Shô player who introduced me to traditional and contemporary music and playing techniques of this unique instrument.
Here an excerpt of the piece:
And →here an impression of how we worked together, posted on Eri Ito's Instagram account.
A detailled and beautiful documentation in german and japanese is worth a visit on the →Villa Kamogawa Blog
//////////
Below the invitation flyer for our concert, with Eri Ito on the Shô and me with some prototypes made of japanese drinking boxes.
Special thanks to: Araki Mina, Regine Dura, Fukui Satomi, Caglanur Gencer, Ikeda Hiroko, Ishida-san, Hans-Werner Krösinger, Kyoto Makers Garage, Onodera Fumiake, Katharina Pelosi, Sawai Noriko, Timo Seber, Achim und Sachiko Stegmüller, Tanaka Chihiro, Rosa Wernecke, Markus Wernhard, Yamaoka Junko.
BACK