Cor Fuhler
Sound Alchemist
The keyolin is the combination of a 2 1/2 octave piano-keyboard (played with the left hand), a two string violin and a bow (played with the right hand). The keyboard controls the pitch, partials, vibrato and glissando's, the bow controls volume and timbre. The strings can be plucked to get a pizzicato effect. Cor invented, developed and built the keyolin during the 1990s with its first performance in 1997.
At the time I received the file, I happened to have recently heard Cor Fuhler's disc as DJ Cor Blimey and His Pigeon and especially enjoyed the track, "Man-Ray-Nance", which featured Cor on his keyolin, improvising rebab-style [one of the interestingly disturbing aspects of this piece is how convincing, to my innocent ears, Cor's playing is. I'm sure I would have guessed at a North Indian source for the string work, this despite the rhythm being clearly derived from a wavering tape]. It's quite a relaxed work, languid and warm and has the added and irresistible feature of, a couple minutes prior to its conclusion, shifting gears via tape warpage, morphing into a slow dance groove redolent of Jon Hassell and including taped speech concerning pigeon breeding. Brian Olewnick, Just Outside.
The keyolin appears on: Simon Nabatov's A Few Incidences, my own quintet PPP5, Jon Rose's Strung, F-O'R (with Jim O'Rourke) and DJ Cor Blimey and his Pigeon.
PPP5 = Cor Fuhler - keyolin, Alex Waterman - cello, Michael Moore - clarinets, Jan Rokyta - cimbalom, Steve Heater - drums
Z 3105, dedicated to Walter Winter, played on keyolin, cimbalom and organ (all dubbed in).
See the keyolin in action in a short fragment from rehearsals at Carriageworks in 2016: