World premiere of Cory Arcangel's 'Chord Memory' in Strasbourg

29 September 2021

On Thursday, 7 October 2021, Cory Arcangel will premiere his latest work, Chord Memory (2021) at the Musica Festival Strasbourg. This new work for a pipe organ, performed by Hampus Lindwall, will debut at 8pm local time.

In the 1980s, synthesizer producers like Korg and Roland made a function which lets the synth memorize a chord played on the keyboard. When chord memory is active, the synth will play this chord when playing just one note, and transpose it respectively to the tone being playing. As in much of techno and house music from the 1990s and early 2000s, the protagonist of the piece Chord Memory is the Major Seventh Chord. The different movements, or ‘Exports’, are generated by an algorithm that can be found on Arcangel’s GitHub, where a visitor can generate thousands of these 'Exports'.

This also marks the first time that Musica Festival will join forces with Météo Festival to embody the perspectives of musical experimentation. Learn more about the festivals and world premiere of Arcangel's piece here.