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I didn’t listen to much from young composer and musician Jonathan Chen, who graduated from Northwestern with a master’s in violin performance in 1999, until after he left Chicago in 2004. But since then I’ve been repeatedly impressed by the consistency and rigor of his work. He’s occasionally sent me pieces of music from Middletown, Connecticut, from Karlsruhe, Germany, and most recently from Athens, Georgia–all places he’s lived since leaving. The recordings usually come in advance of return visits like the one he’s making this week, and every time they reveal new facets of his output.
Both nights Chen will also perform “Three Switch-Hitters,” a pure electronic piece built from feedback created with a computer program for real-time sound synthesis called Supercollider. I don’t know enough about the software to guess how he created this music, but I do enjoy the violent but balletic ebb and flow of its writhing, wriggling sounds.
