Naoyuki Arashi is a Japanese artist based in Kanazawa, who performs under the name "Asuna". He will present his performance "100 Keyboards", at Kunstraum Walcheturm in Zurich, by invitation of the Currents Festival and Noise Reduction on Sunday, February 23rd 2025.

"100 Keyboards" is a performative music installation featuring 100 instruments, many of which are children's toys or beginner pianos. Instead of dismissing these toylike instruments as tonally unreliable, Asuna embraces their imperfections as their primary appeal. Due to their design and construction, these keyboards may produce slight pitch fluctuations, particularly during extended use or when battery powered. Asuna transforms these natural misalignments into an evolving soundscape, fostering a dialogue between the instruments to create a floating, ever-changing, and delightful auditory experience. "100 Keyboards" invites us to dive into this beautiful arrangement of site-specific instabilities. 

The performance’s tonal structure is deeply influenced by the acoustic characteristics of each venue. Asuna carefully listens to the space and builds the sonic landscape layer by layer, responding intuitively to how the frequencies interact within the room. Each performance—whether in Tokyo, Paris, or Zurich—is a unique experience, shaped by its environment. At its core, the performance explores the phenomenon of "interference sound"—the interaction of overlapping sound waves of similar frequencies—and the moiré-like patterns generated by subtle pitch differences.

"100 Keyboards" embodies the pursuit of harmony in diversity, creating a musical dialogue of empathy and connection by embracing the tonal divergences of individual instruments and gradually weaving patterns of resemblance. Asuna orchestrates a common ground for these instruments, inviting us to immerse ourselves in the process. This resonates with the pressing challenges and fragmentations of our current times, where stark political divisions seem to have become commonplace. As musicologist Tim Rutherford-Johnson aptly stated: "As our world is reconfigured in terms of flows (and resistances), perhaps the best way past this fragmentation is to turn things on their sides, to seek out the continuities across relationships and networks at the same time as we relish the differences between individuals." (Music after the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture since 1989, University of California Press, 2017)

Prior to "100 Keyboards", the Swiss bass player & composer Martina Berther (Ester Poly / AUL / Sophie Hunger / Hallow Ground) will open the evening with a Solo-performance, presenting material from her debut solo album titled «Bass Works: As I Venture Into». The Zurich-based artist has been exploring and expanding upon the sonic potentials of her instrument in her live practice for years. The twelve pieces of her debut solo album draw on her improvisational approach, but were continuously refined as fully fleshed-out compositions that Berther recorded in one take, with no edits made or overdubs added afterwards. Bass Works: As I Venture Into hence serves as a lively snapshot of an on-going explorative process, collecting these pieces in one place to give them a space in which to unfold. 

We can expect lush drones, elegiac soundscapes & alien music between improvisation & compositional rigour - RIYL Éliane Radigue, Mica Levi, Olivier Messiaen.


LINKS:

Asuna – 100 Keyboards
Martina Berther – Bass Works: As I Venture Into