Reinier van Houdt

Claudio F. Baroni, Re-Genetic Mutation for piano and tape
performed by Reinier van Houdt and Claudio F. Baroni

Giuseppe Chiari, INTERVALLI
Reinier van Houdt, piano

Re-Genetic Mutation (released on Unsounds in 2025) is part of Baroni's recent series on the spoken word, incorporating voice and lyrics from Robert Ashley's Love Sure Is a Good Example (1991). Baroni sets recorded speech against acoustic and electronic pitched sounds. The instrumental material emerges entirely from digitally aided speech analysis, which identifies occurrences of Western scale pitches within the natural intonations of speech. From these pitches, Baroni selects and assigns certain tones to instruments and electronics.

Giuseppe Chiari's Intervalli (1951-58) might be the first truly minimalist piece in music history. There are no themes, motifs, sequences, or sets in this piece—not even patterns: only intervals, conjugated in various movements—movements of expansion, contraction, addition, subtraction, etc. In each of the 12 parts, 12 intervals are processed in various ingenious, breakneck ways that amaze with their diversity, timbre, and movement.

Reinier van Houdt is a leading contemporary pianist with a fascination for matters that escape notation: sound, timing, space, physicality, memory, noise, and environment—that which exists beyond composition, interpretation and improvisation. Aside from his own music, he has premiered works by Robert Ashley, Alvin Curran, Kaikhosru Sorabji, Francisco López, Christian Marclay, Charlemagne Palestine, Petra Strahovnik, Arnold Dreyblatt, Maria de Alvear, Jerry Hunt, Michael Pisaro, Walter Marchetti, Jürg Frey, Nomi Epstein, and Lucie Nezri. He has also worked with Annea Lockwood, John Cage, Alvin Lucier, Luc Ferrari, Peter Ablinger.