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KRONOS QUARTET WITH KIMMO POHJONEN KLUSTER
TRAVELLING IN TIME ─
UNIKO MELTS KRONOS AND KIMMO POHJONEN KLUSTER INTO ONE
─ If there’s one thing common in all the different people that Kronos has worked with in the last 31 years, it’s that they have all somehow redefined their instrument or genre. That certainly goes for Kimmo. I’ve listened to a lot of accordion music in different genres around the world from folk to high art ─ whatever that might be ─ and nobody sounds anything like him. He’s one of those great players, who can infuse every note with their soul and personality, says David Harrington (54), the leader of the world’s most revolutionary string quartet, in regard to his fresh partner in crime sitting next to him: the Finnish accordionist Kimmo Pohjonen (40).
We talk in Helsinki’s Ramada President, where the four members of Kronos (Harrington and John Sherba: violin, Hank Dutt: viola, Jennifer Culp: cello) stay while rehearsing and performing Uniko in two concerts. Kronos commissioned the spiritual-feeling, 8-part work (about 80 minutes) from the Kimmo Pohjonen Kluster that also includes percussionist/sound-manipulator Samuli Kosminen. Both protagonists agree that last night’s world premier went exceptionally well for the always nerve-racking first night.
MIND-BENDING RITUAL
Having so far made only three albums (totally solo Kielo, Kluster with Kosminen, The Kalmuk Symphony with The Tapiola Sinfonietta, Kosminen and another percussionist Abdissa Assefa) Pohjonen has caused quite a stir internationally in the new music circles with his highly original sound and vision.
Kluster is a unique mix of acoustics and electronics that goes for a 360º experience both live and on record. While Kimmo’s accordion is an acoustic 5-row standard model (heavily customized by him), Kosminen samples and manipulates it, and Pohjonen’s voice, live via his hand-played electro pads. Their PR is a special sensurround sound-system (the sound literally travels all over the performance space) run by Heikki Iso-Ahola. With special lighting and Kimmo’s dramatic, occasionally humorous, performing style the effect is mind-bending. The music itself, often discribed as shamanistic, trance-inducing and ritualistic for a good reason, walks a path all it’s own.
CURIOUS AND OPEN
Son of a rural folk accordionist, Pohjonen has solid roots to back his classical schooling. On top of Sibelius Academy he studied extensively in Tanzania and Argentina, and played in several top Finnish folk bands (Pinnin Pojat, JPP, etc.) and in Ismo Alanko Säätiö, one of our best rock bands. Kimmo is musically curious and open, but his personality is the antithesis of ”the difficult artist”.
Kluster keeps getting excited reactions from all sorts of cutting-edge artists. David Bowie asked them to play the Meltdown, when curating the London Festival, and guitarist Trey Gunn and drummer Pat Mastelotto (collectively TU) from the avant-rocking King Crimson played a series of inspired concerts with Kluster last spring as Kluster TU. Kimmo has an occasionally active improvising duo with French drummer Eric Echampard. In Finland Pohjonen has worked with many esteemed theatre and music artists, teaming, for instance, with multimedia wizard Marita Liulia for two works: Animator and Manipulator.
DREAM COME TRUE
Harrington learned about Pohjonen from the Finnish journalist Harri Uusitorppa, when Kronos last performed in Finland a couple of years ago.
─ “I often ask music journalists, who makes the most exciting music in their country, as they usually know that”, Harrington grins adding that ”soon after, Kimmo’s records rather mysteriously appeared from somewhere”.
Spell-bound by them, he contacted Pohjonen suggesting Kimmo to compose a work that Kronos could perform with Kluster. He considers it a bonus that Pohjonen and co-composer Kosminen, unlike most of Kronos’ composers, are performers, who know what playing music on stage for live audience means. It is different every time, he stresses.
─ “I had already hoped to do something with a string quartet and to get to do it with Kronos, was a dream come true for me, because they have more experience than any other string quartet about working with electronics. It’s not easy working with loops, samples and delays”, Pohjonen explains.
─ “It is weird hearing something you already played when you play something else. And scary: you want to get those notes right the first time… Experiencing the past and the present simultaneously, that’s the future”, Harrington laughs adding that though Kronos has used electronics before, they never played such an essential role as in Uniko.
TO DO SOMETHING THAT HASN’T BEEN DONE
─” My idea from the beginning was to do something that hasn’t been done. To melt Kluster and Kronos into one unit and to get new sounds and colours out of the strings. We do that by augmenting the Kluster method so that Samuli not only manipulates my voice and accordion, but also the strings… both with real-time and pre-made samples. The great thing was that Kronos was into it right away”, says Kimmo.
Of course, that is the Kronos way. In fact, Harrington readily admits to being addicted to premiering virgin music. From the beginning Kronos has focused on special works, either custom-made for them or custom-arranged existing music generally considered unsuitable for string quartets. Respecting different genres equally, they have dug as deep into the space blues of Jimi Hendrix, the ragas of Pakistani singer Pandit Pran Nath, the meditations of Arvo Pärt and the harmolody of Ornette Coleman, as the classical masterworks of Bartók and Webern.
─ “Kluster’s music has that time travelling aspect that I love. You enter a time web, where you can’t tell anymore, if you are in the past, the present or the future. It takes you outside the ordinary conception of time”.
JUSSI NIEMI /Finnish Music Quarterly
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