Expanding from the Inside

Sarah Davachi »Double Reeds« w/ film by Dicky Bahto

20:00

Ellen Arkbro & The London Crumhorn Consort

21:15

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For this year's festival, Ellen Arkbro will be presenting a new work for crumhorns, a renaissance double-reed instrument with a distinct buzzy sound. The music draws on the uniquely shaped texture of the instrument's rich spectrum and resonance, and through precisely tuned intervals and chords, in 7-limit just intonation, the sound of the instruments blend with reed organ and create stable architectural blocks, almost like a synthesizer. The sound brings the listener's attention to the delicate rawness of the in-tune sound and harmony as texturality.

The players are intimately involved with the tuning of each chord, striving for harmonic clarity, sounding and listening as one. "There is an interesting tension in the sound of the instrument, suggesting the stability of a synthesizer, while producing a stable tone and pitch on a crumhorn is almost impossible and requires a lot of resistance and finely calibrated air pressure. Somehow it's in that tension that the soul of the music is found - in the striving for something unreachable". Performing with Ellen are players from the London Crumhorn Consort. The piece is a commission from CTM, Somerset House and Goethe Institute and was developed during her residency in London in early 2025.

Sarah Davachi opens with the A/V solo organ performance »Double Reeds,« extending her ongoing investigations into resonance and duration and pairing layered organ tones with a film by Los Angeles filmmaker Dicky Bahto, amplifying the sense of architectural immersion. The work treats the organ as a portal, unfolding dense harmonic fields where overtones slowly reveal themselves. 

• Basse Brevis, by Sarah Davachi

• Basse Brevis, by Sarah Davachi

Premiering the results of her CTM × Somerset House × Goethe-Institut commission, Ellen Arkbro performs alongside The London Crumhorn Consort in a new work for reed organ and crumhorns. Developed during her early 2025 residency in London, the piece continues Arkbro’s inquiry into finely tuned harmonic architectures. The performers lean into the trembling nature of fully in-tune sound, listening and sounding as a single body. Working with seven-limit just intonation, they hold tones attempting to create stable compositional blocks almost like a synthesizer, juxtaposed with the crumhorn’s inherently unruly breath-bound nature — a buzzy timbre and rich resonance which resists perfect steadiness. The music’s core is found in that tension between the unreachable ideal of a pure tone and the effort required to approach it.

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Ellen Arkbro’s piece iscommissioned as part of the Goethe-Institut London x Somerset House Studios Residency in partnership with CTM Festival Berlin.

Sarah Davachi's performance is supported by the Embassy of Canada.