Heart Chamber Orchestra. Music coming from the heart

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Musicians often say that their compositions come "from the very heart." A beautiful metaphor. But in the case of the Heart Chamber Orchestra, these words must be taken literally: the members of the orchestra play music transformed in real time from the beating of their hearts.

The Heart Chamber Orchestra is a collective of twelve professional musicians and creative duo Eric Berger and Pure from the audiovisual company Terminalbeach. The orchestra begins its performance without any score, there is no question of preliminary rehearsals either, because the musicians do not know until the last moment what exactly they will have to play. EKG sensors are attached to the body of each participant, information from which is immediately transmitted to the computer. The software analyzes the data and generates a score in real time, constantly changing according to the beating of each musician's heart. This score is displayed on the screen opposite each member of the orchestra, and it is on this score that the musicians play their parts.

Throughout the performance, the heart rate of each member of the orchestra changes, sometimes increasing, sometimes slowing down. Thus, each musician is a composer for himself, while performing his work online.

The beats of hearts can not only be heard in the form of a melody, but also seen: behind the orchestra there is a large screen on which computer graphics generated from ECG data are displayed. The members of the orchestra themselves call this “synesthetic impressions for the audience” (the ability to “see” the sound).

The first performance of the Heart Chamber Orchestra took place in 2006 in Trondheim, Norway. After that, the ensemble also performed in The Hague (Netherlands, 2009), Graz (Austria, 2009) and Helsinki (Finland, 2010).