Drone music pioneer Catherine Christer Hennix dies, aged 75

Catherine Christer Hennix, a Swedish polymath and pioneer of drone music, has died on the age of 75.

Her passing was introduced and confirmed on Friday, November 17 by Clean Types – an experimental music nonprofit which was a frequent distributor of Hennix’s music.

“Catherine Christer Hennix handed away at her house in Istanbul, Turkey yesterday. For the reason that late Sixties, she has created a large and revolutionary physique of labor spanning minimal music, laptop programming, poetry, sculpture, and lightweight artwork—pushing the technical and conceptual boundaries of those media towards singular ends,” started the caption of the put up shared on the official Clean Types Instagram account.

It continued: “She was a part of the downtown music faculty in New York and has labored extensively with a few of its key figures, together with Henry Flynt and La Monte Younger. Within the ’70s, Hennix studied the character and use of harmonic sound as a disciple of Pandit Pran Nath, a grasp of the Kirana custom of classical Hindustani music. For a lot of her life, Hennix was an enigmatic determine in musical minimalism, primarily identified for her “billowing cloud” research The Digital Harpsichord (1976). Her resurgence and later inventive exercise can in some ways be credited to the advocacy of Henry Flynt, who would current the piece at tape live shows all through the ’70s and ’80s.”

“In 2003, Hennix returned to producing computer-generated sound works, initiating a productive two-decade run. After a protracted hiatus from main ensembles, she shaped the Chora(s)san Time-Courtroom Mirage in 2005 after assembly the trombonist Hilary Jeffery, and later led the simply intonation group the Kamigaku Ensemble. She toured internationally, launched a number of archival recordings, circulated her poetic and theoretical writing, and exhibited her paintings in surveys equivalent to Traversée du Fantasme at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and Thresholds of Notion at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong, in 2018.”

“Whereas a scholar of Pran Nath, Hennix was launched to Sufism—first within the Chishti Order, and later taking hand with Sheikha Fariha within the Nur Ashki Jerrahi Order—and has been devoted to its follow ever since, integrating the devotional dimensions of Islam and Sufism into all of her work with poetry and sound,” it added. “Hennix formally transformed to Islam earlier than relocating to Istanbul, the place she spent the ultimate years of her life in a wondrous immersion within the name to prayer, the sound of the One.”

In accordance with The New York Times, Hennix’s explanation for loss of life was reported as problems of an undisclosed sickness. The artist had obtained remedy for most cancers previously.

Talking to Pitchfork about Hennix’s passing, Clean Types’ founder and inventive creator, Lawrence Kumpf, staid: “Hennix was an uncompromising artist whose striving for perfection was usually at odds with the fabric circumstances of our society.”

He continued: “Whereas she produced an unlimited physique of labor she by no means deviated from her singular imaginative and prescient usually on the expense of fabric comforts. The live shows she gave within the final years of her life have been a number of the most profound musical experiences that I’ve ever had and the fruits of her life’s work. I believe we’re solely on the very starting of understanding the huge contributions she’s made to music, arithmetic, philosophy, and artwork.”