Ellen Arkbro

Sculptures is a work for organ by composer and musician Ellen Arkbro. The piece grows out of Arkbro’s fascination for the textural qualities of chordal sound and is an extension of the explorations on her latest release Sounds while waiting. By fine-tuning complex, yet clear, harmonies she guides the listener through rare moments when harmony and space blend and become perceptually inseparable. For her Chicago debut, she presents this work on the Reneker Organ in Bond Chapel.

At 7:45pm, just before the 8pm organ concert, Arkbro’s piece for solo carillon the greatest trees are cut down will be performed on the Rockefeller Chapel bells by university carillonist Alex Johnson. The carillon performance can be heard from anywhere in the vicinity of Rockefeller, including just outside Bond Chapel where the organ concert will be held.

Ellen Arkbro (b. 1990) is a composer, musician, and sound artist working with precision-tuned intervallic harmony and installation. Arkbro composes for acoustic instruments, synthetic sounds, and combinations of the two. She has presented her site-specific work at Barbican in London, Kölner Philharmonie, Serralves in Porto, Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, Silent Green in Berlin, Ina GRM in Paris, and Tempelaukkio Kirke in Helsinki. In all aspects of her practice, Arkbro focuses on the qualities of harmonic sound that reveal listening as an active process of creative participation, inviting the listener to gradually transform into the sound itself.

Presented in partnership with the Frequency Festival.