A String is a String is a String is a four-evening festival dedicated to the family of string instruments in the context of contemporary improvisation. Conceived to celebrate the 75th birthday of Australian violinist, composer, instrument inventor, author, and sound artist Jon Rose, the festival brings together close artistic collaborators and musicians from Berlin and beyond whose work resonates with his singular artistic vision. For more than five decades, Rose has redefined the possibilities of bowed and string instruments through improvisation, composition, instrument building, performance, and research. Rather than looking back on a remarkable career, the festival explores his ideas as a living artistic practice – through performances, encounters, films, and conversation.
The festival opens with a rare solo performance by Jon Rose, in which live violin enters into dialogue with film footage from the Australian Outback. For more than two decades, Rose has developed multimedia projects in the desert landscapes of Central Australia that intertwine landscape, sound, and cultural history. His films do not merely depict places; they become active musical partners in the improvisation. The result is an open dialogue between image and sound, between the physical presence of the landscape and the immediacy of the musical moment – an exploration of space, memory, and resonance that is at once poetic and experimental.
In the second part of the evening, Jon Rose is joined by pianist Magda Mayas and electronic musician Bob Ostertag. While Rose and Ostertag have collaborated repeatedly over many years, Ostertag and Mayas previously crossed paths only in a single festival project. This concert marks the first time all three artists perform together as a trio. Three distinctive artistic voices, each shaped by decades of experience in improvisation, experimental music, and sonic research, come together in a new constellation. Rose’s unconventional extensions of the violin, Mayas’ multifaceted work with the prepared piano, and Ostertag’s pioneering integration of sampling, live electronics, and improvisational thinking open a shared sonic space where acoustic and electronic sounds, delicate textures, and moments of intense energy converge in an open-ended musical dialogue.
After leaving formal musical training at the age of fifteen, Jon Rose developed an independent artistic practice that has ranged from free improvisation and contemporary composition to sound installations, radio art, environmental projects, and experimental instrument building. A central figure in Australian free improvisation before moving to Berlin in 1986, Rose developed his long-term project The Relative Violin, creating more than thirty new instruments, exploring extended performance formats, interactive electronics, and alternative histories of the violin. His work has consistently challenged conventional ideas of the instrument and opened new perspectives on what string instruments can be and do. Since 2001, Rose has increasingly worked in the Australian outback on large-scale environmental projects such as The Great Fences of Australia and collaborations with Indigenous communities, including The Wild Violins of Warmun and the ongoing Singing Telegraph project. He is the author of four books, founder of the Rosenberg Museum – a unique collection of more than 1000 violin-related artefacts – and recipient of Australia’s Don Banks Music Award for lifetime achievement. In 2025, he and his wife, violinist and composer Hollis Taylor, received the Richard Gill Award for Distinguished Services to Australian Music.
https://www.jonroseweb.com/
Magda Mayas is a Berlin-based pianist, composer, performer, and researcher whose work has significantly expanded the sonic possibilities of the piano through preparations, amplification, and extended techniques. Her artistic practice explores timbre as compositional material while developing a distinctive language for inside-piano performance and improvisation. Alongside her international concert activity, she is Professor and Researcher at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.
Bob Ostertag is an American composer, performer, writer, and media activist whose work has shaped experimental electronic music for more than four decades. A pioneer in the creative use of sampling and live electronics, he works at the intersection of improvisation, composition, and technology while consistently engaging with political and social questions. Alongside his musical practice, he has published numerous books and worked across film, performance, and interdisciplinary art.
Jon Rose is supported by the Australian Government / Creative Australia
