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 concludes with an audio-visual lecture by Jon Rose, offering a unique insight into more than fifty years of artistic exploration. Through films, photographs, recordings, and documentation, he reflects on a body of work that has fundamentally expanded the possibilities of string instruments and experimental music.
From instrument inventions and large-scale environmental projects such as The Great Fences of Australia to recent collaborations including The Singing Telegraph with the Kaytetye community of Central Australia, the lecture opens a window onto an artistic practice driven by curiosity, invention, and a continual reimagining of what music can be.
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/
Jon Rose is supported by the Australian Government / Creative Australia
