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 second festival evening presents two performance concepts by Jon Rose, the Numbers and the Hat concept, that explore improvisation as a constantly shifting social and musical process. Rather than fixed ensembles, changing constellations of performers emerge, dissolve, and re-form, creating an ever-evolving network of musical relationships.
Performed by an ensemble of exceptional string players, improvisers, and electronic musicians brought together especially for the festival, the concert explores a broad range of instrumental approaches, from acoustic traditions and extended playing techniques to electronic sound.
About Jon Rose
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/
Festival Ensemble
Vinicius Cajado is a Brazilian double bassist based in Germany whose work moves between free improvisation, contemporary music, silence, and noise. His playing combines minimalist and highly energetic approaches, drawing on deep listening as a practice of empathy, exchange, and transformation. Alongside his international performing activity, he teaches double bass and extended techniques at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg.
Audrey Chen is a Taiwanese-American musician based in Berlin working with voice, cello, and analog electronics. Since leaving her classical training behind, she has developed a deeply personal improvisational language centred on extended vocal and instrumental techniques and non-linear forms of storytelling. While long known for combining voice, cello, and electronics, her recent work has increasingly returned to the voice as a primary instrument.
Rhodri Davies is a Welsh harpist, improviser, composer, and multidisciplinary artist whose work spans acoustic and electric harps, experimental instrument building, and sound installations. His artistic practice extends the harp through site-specific works employing elemental materials such as wind, water, ice, and fire. Alongside improvisation, he has played a key role in expanding the contemporary repertoire for the harp through close collaborations with composers.
Meinrad Kneer is a German double bassist, composer, and improviser based in Berlin whose work moves between improvised music, contemporary composition, and intercultural musical practices. Alongside his performing activities, he is the founder of the label Evil Rabbit Records, dedicated to contemporary improvised music. Since 2025, he has also served as artistic director of the festival FEST:Spiele Oberschwaben.
Aleks Kolkowski is a composer, violinist, and researcher based in Málaga whose work combines historical sound recording technologies, obsolete media, and live performance. Using mechanical-acoustic instruments, analogue recording processes, and archival sound, he explores contemporary listening through the technologies of the past. Alongside his artistic practice, he has held research appointments at several major cultural and academic institutions and is co-author of Doing Experimental Media Archaeology: Practice.
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.
Olaf Rupp is a German guitarist working with acoustic and electric guitar in the field of improvised music. He has developed a highly individual musical language based on the radical integration of intrinsic and extended playing techniques, with a particular focus on resonance, overtones, and the physical properties of sound. His recordings have appeared on numerous labels dedicated to experimental and improvised music.
Zsolt Sőrés is a Hungarian experimental musician, composer, sound artist, and researcher based in Berlin. Working across free improvisation, electroacoustic music, and sound art, he explores expanded string techniques, live electronics, and the relationship between instrument, gesture, and space. His recent work centres on the sensor-augmented PolyViola, developed as a platform for new forms of experimental performance and improvisation.
Caroline Cecilia Tallone is a Swiss musician and instrument maker based in Berlin working with hurdy gurdy, electronics, and experimental instrument building. Drawing on backgrounds in classical, early, and folk music, she has developed a distinctive practice in experimental, electroacoustic, and improvised music centred on a prepared electroacoustic hurdy gurdy. Alongside her performance work, she is engaged in research on instrument making and creative composition across sound, movement, and visual media.
18:00: soundwalk with Thomas Gerwin
Jon Rose is supported by the Australian Government / Creative Australia
