Charles Cohen
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| Charles Cohen | |
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| Background information | |
| Genre(s) | Ambient Avant garde Improvisation Glitch Noise |
| Occupation(s) | Musician Artist |
| Instrument(s) | Buchla Easel |
| Website | Charles Cohen |
Based in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area, Charles Cohen has been creating music since 1971. Taking inspiration from free jazz pianist Cecil Taylor[1], his music is entirely improvisational and produced solely on a vintage Buchla Music Easel synthesizer, an extremely rare integrated analog performance instrument made by synthesizer pioneer Don Buchla.
An avid collaborator, Cohen is most well known to most listeners from his work with Jeff Cain in their group The Ghostwriters. From Baltimore to Philadelphia and New York City, he collaborates with many media artists in improvisational settings as varied as the Red Room, Knitting Factory and Tonic. With few recorded or commercially available works to his credit, Cohen prefers to concentrate on creating electronic music in the setting of the live performance space. His music ranges from completely abstract and challenging to pleasantly rhythmic and infectious. Each performance is original and new, to the audience and to Cohen as well.
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[edit] Methods
Instrument design is key to the artist's creative technique:
In improvisation I try to think less and experience more. The primary experience for me is listening. Then, I want to respond quickly, honestly, playfully, and intuitively. I have no time or inclination in such a moment to squint at monitors, peck through menu trees, or decipher a panel of look-alike knobs.
I've been playing the Buchla Music Easel since 1976. With its color-coded slide pots, its musically logical panel layout, and its almost sculptural patching system, I can comprehend the state of the instrument with a fleeting glance. The touch-sensitive, capacitance-activated keyboard responds smoothly at the speed of light to the slightest skin contact, and its assorted control voltage outputs can be directed to sonic and structural parameters very quickly. The potential to supplely flow into and amongst all the basic electronic sound forms is literally at my fingertips. I am happy when I'm playing this instrument.[2]
[edit] Discography
[edit] Collaborations
- Straylight (US: Deep Listening, 2001, DL-CD-15)
[edit] Compilations
- SUBMIT (US: alien robot media, 1999, arcd01)
[edit] References
- ^ Personal communication with article's author
- ^ "Thoughts on Buchla instrument design
