Open sessions | Composing for newly designed musical instruments

at 15:00 – Introduction to the instruments, Performance 1, Q&A
at 19:00 – Performance 2, Discussion, Q&A. Please arrive on time. The doors will close at the start of the event. 

Free trials on the instruments for the audience!

Alessandro Perini is developing three new experimental musical instruments at IAC. Each is built so that its tuning reaches into the microtonal domain – in some cases by changing the tension of strings, in others through a particular configuration of the instrument's own elements. Perini is also interested in how two performers act on a single instrument, together or against one another, where one player's gesture inevitably reshapes what the other is doing.

The first is a kalimba-like instrument assembled from twenty-five stacked layers of cut steel, each carrying a row of tuned tines. Every layer is set a small fraction of a semitone apart from the next, so that together they form a dense, near-continuous microtonal field of around two thousand pitches, sounded by exciting the tines and captured through contact microphones. Here the microtonality arises purely from how the elements are arranged.

The second instrument is a motorised string instrument; its steel strings stretched between a fixed bar and a movable crossbar. As a motor slowly shifts the crossbar, the tension of all the strings changes at once, drawing the instrument through continuous, collective glissandi. This retuning will be driven from outside or by the performers themselves. In the first case, the two performers must play with or against a force that is constantly reshaping the strings beneath their hands.

The third is a radial, self-supporting structure: metal arms extend from a central hub, held in space by resonant strings under tension. The strings form an interdependent body in which acting on any single one – pulling or pressing it – tightens or loosens all the others, since the whole instrument holds itself in balance. Two performers can act together or in opposition on this shared surface.

Lorenzo Colombo and Marta Soggetti, two percussionists based in Copenhagen, join the project as performers, testing the instruments' feasibility and playability and exploring ways of playing them that will lead to the composition of three new pieces.

Alessandro Perini is a composer and sound artist exploring how bodies, spaces, and sound interact through custom-built instruments and experimental electroacoustic devices. His background in composition and electronic music shapes a practice grounded in material processes, mechanics, and physical performance, often using electromechanical systems, custom-built machines, or 3D‑printed prosthetic devices. His work has been presented internationally and is documented on the KAIROS portrait album The Expanded Body. Alessandro also teaches composition and electronic music, co‑founded the Malmö-based collective Hertzbreakerz, and curates the academic programme of the Intonal Festival at IAC while working between Italy and Sweden. 

The instruments and the compositions are developed with the support of Sten K Johnsons Stiftelse and Helge Ax:son Johnsons.

Visit Alessandro Perini’s artist page – alessandroperini.com

Visit Lorenzo Colombo’s artist page – lorenzocolombo.org

Read more about Marta Soggetti as part of Sistro Duo – sistroduo.com/about