Swedish-American artist Catherine Christer Hennix appears alongside her Berlin-based just intonation ensemble Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage as part of Ultima Festival New York. In their first-ever US performance the group premieres Blues Alif Lam Mim in the mode of Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis (1434 A.H.), intended to reveal the blues' origins in the eastern musical traditions of raga and maqam musics. The ensemble features Imam Ahmet Muhsin Tüzer, Catherine C. Hennix, Amirtha Kidambi, voice; Amir Elsaffan, Paul Schwingenschlögl, Hilary Jeffery, Elena Kakaliagou, Robin Hayward, Brass; Stefan Tiedje, Marcus Pal, computer/Live electronics. Hennix’ s Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis, a multichannel electronic sound installation of infinite duration, originally premiered at ISSUE Project Room in June 2013.
Catherine Christer Hennix (C.C. Hennix) is a Berlin-based Swedish-American composer, philosopher, scientist, mathematician and visual artist associated with drone minimal music. Hennix was affiliated with MIT's AI Lab in the late 1970s and was later employed as research professor of mathematics at SUNY New Paltz. Hennix met La Monte Young and Hindustani raga master Pandit Pran Nath at the Nuits du Fondation Maeght festival in 1970 and pursued studies with both men during the 1970s.
In the '70s Hennix led the just intonation live-electronic ensembles Hilbert Hotel and The Deontic Miracle. In 1978 Henry Flynt formulated what, subsequently, became known as the concept of an Illuminatory Sound Environment (ISE) on the basis of Hennix' performance of The Electric Harpsichord at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm,1976. ISE was first realized in 1979 at the Kitchen, New York, as a joint manifestation by Flynt and Hennix. For the next 20 years Hennix devoted much of her time to mathematical research at the insistence of her late Nada Guru, Sri Faquir Pandit Pran Nath, serving as a professor of mathematics and computer science and assistant to and coauthor with A.S. Yessenin-Volpin for which she was given the Centenary Prize-fellow Award by the Clay Mathematics Institute, Cambridge, USA. In 2003 she returned to computer-generated composite sound wave forms now called Soliton(e)s of which Soliton(e) Star was the first result. Subsequently she formed the just intonation ensemble The Choras(s)an Time-Court Mirage which performs Blues Dhikir al- Salam.
