Stringfigures (2026)

Stringfigures, by composer and instrument builder Jo David Meyer Lysne (NO) and violinist Jennifer Gersten (US), is a collaborative work that magnifies, deconstructs, and fantasizes about the gestures that pull sound out of the violin—that is, the movements of the bow. Envisioned as a 30- to 40-minute performance, Stringfigures proposes a kind of mechanical fantasy that features Gersten in musical dialogue with a collection of robotic partners: digitally-controlled kinetic sculptures of Lysne’s own subtle design, each bowing their own violin with movements that echo but ultimately elude human approaches. Gersten’s performance, both in sound and movement, is calibrated to echo and amplify these sculptures, and vice versa. The resulting scene, with its soft, slow, fragile music, contains an arresting, totally idiosyncratic gestural poetry that insists upon and rewards close attention.