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mubone

Conversations with Space and Architecture

[site-specific]

An ongoing series of site-specific compositions, 2020 –.

Usually a concert hall is just where the music happens. In Conversations with Space and Architecture (CSA for short) the building gets a part too. We start by hanging out in a place and listening to it: how it sounds, how it's shaped, what it used to be. Then we fill it with sound, leaving bits of it on the walls and ceiling with mubone, and the projector draws each one where it was left. By the end the room is covered in sound and light, and we hand the audience a sensor so they can play it too.

We sometimes call it sonic calligraphy: writing with sound, on a building. There's no fixed score and no conductor. We, the audience and the room all add to it.

Projected strokes on the wall of Basement, a decommissioned boiler room in Copenhagen, May 2025.
Projected strokes on the wall of Basement, a decommissioned boiler room in Copenhagen, May 2025.

Iterations

Greenpoint, 2020

The first piece under the title, before the series moved to the mubone: trombone and Splunger mute on a Brooklyn rooftop. Film by Peter Brensinger.

Saint Laurent, 2022

For mubone, in Montréal. The frame of a building becomes a graphic score for the mubone to trace, the slide a big sound paintbrush.

CSA: Saint Laurent (2022). Video still: Jérémi Roy
CSA: Saint Laurent (2022). Video still: Jérémi Roy

Jerwood Kiln Studio, 2024

An interactive installation in a former barley kiln at Snape Maltings, 75th Aldeburgh Festival. Kirsten Voss activated the kiln with sound and motion alone: no visuals yet.

CSA Kiln, Britten-Pears, July 2024. Video still: Matt Jolly
CSA Kiln, Britten-Pears, July 2024. Video still: Matt Jolly

Copenhagen, 2025

Three concerts at Basement, a converted boiler room in Copenhagen's west end, hosted by Tonalteatret, after days in residence at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory. Kalun, Kirsten and Sara on mubone, each leading one night; a ring of speakers and real-time projection mapping by Travis; the audience playing the room after each show. See the documentation.

The group in Copenhagen. Photo: spektrals.dk
The group in Copenhagen. Photo: spektrals.dk
Kalun Leung plays into the boiler room.
Kalun Leung plays into the boiler room.
CSA Copenhagen teaser (2025)

Team

  • Kalun Leung — concept, trombone, mubone
  • Travis West — creative technology, projection mapping
  • Kirsten Voss — voice, mubone, producer (Tonalteatret)
  • Sara Nigard Rosendal — percussion, mubone

Past performances

  • Basement, Copenhagen (2025), three concerts with Tonalteatret
  • Jerwood Kiln Studio, Snape Maltings, 75th Aldeburgh Festival (2024)
  • Controlled Chaotic #4, Chaospace at Ki Smith Gallery, New York (2024)
  • Saint Laurent, Montréal (2022)
  • Greenpoint, Brooklyn (2020)

Thanks to

The Canada Council for the Arts and, in Denmark, part of Genstart, supported by Augustinus Fonden, Statens Kunstfond, William Demant Fonden and Hoffmann & Husmans Fond, realised with Edition·S, Dansk Komponistforening and Art Music Denmark, and by Københavns Kommune, Musikudvalg, Statens Kunstfond and Dansk Musiker Forbund.