zoe keating's celloscapes

i’m not sure that i can recall the beginning of my appreciation for the cello and for those who play it but it goes back for as long as i can recall appreciating string music. the cello’s colours tend towards the gold and golden-brown and in its lower registers even dark cocoa. remaining with the food analogy, the cello has flavours approximating honey and the sweetest molasses right through melted dark chocolate.

i love finding artists who bridge the interstice between an acoustic instrument and technology. one such musician is canadian-born cellist zoe keating.
i think that the best way to start to get into zoe’s work is to see her performing a piece that came out of an equipment failure - entitled “don’t worry” this has more of a groove to it than her other work but it gives you a brief sense of her sound and how she achieves it through layering samples . . .

the following video is a much longer piece but contains two absolutely stunning pieces that really open out zoe’s careful crafting of layers and her literal and figurative straddling of the cello seamlessly melding the traditional with the contemporary - compelling its body into bowed arcs and fluttered rhythm layered over undulating sheets and washes of colour.

@ Yahoo! Video

listening to those pieces makes me wonder if this music couldn’t also incorporate the presence and music of laurie anderson whose use of bowed recording tape and sampling certainly created a lovely precedent for zoe’s work.
to learn more about zoe and her music then you might like to listen to typical mac user’s - podcast.

visitors to zoe’s homepage will find many links to interviews, videos and in the background you get to listen to samples of her music. her latest album entitled "natoma" is available in the all usual locations and was top album in the classical section of itunes a couple of weeks back!