Christoph Schiller, Morgan Evans-Weiler

Spinet & Violin captures an extended, unedited improvisation by Christoph Schiller and Morgan Evans-Weiler, recorded at Schiller’s workshop in Basel during Evans-Weiler’s European tour. In this single-track work, the duo operates with rare intensity and mutual instinct, favouring gradual permutations of pitch and the slow revelation of timbre. Schiller’s prepared spinet, played with plucking, muting, and inside techniques, forms a delicate alloy with Evans-Weiler’s violin, which hovers between fragile drones and faint melodic traces.

From the start, the focus falls on the intersection of pitch and texture: each note is placed with care, and the interaction unfolds as a patient, collective exploration. The pair avoids spectacle, giving space for minute inflections, subtle counterpoint, and sudden shifts in dynamic - moments that feel less like planned drama and more like organic evolution. As the improvisation deepens, stillness and quiet interaction alternate with passages of layered sound, resulting in music that inhabits a “state halfway between definite pitch and indeterminate sound.” Both artists cite the influence of Magnus Granberg and their shared background in graphic scores, open-notation work, and exploratory chamber music.​

What stands out is not virtuosity, but a rare equilibrium - restraint and expressive openness, a refusal to settle into patterns, a sense of peripatetic listening. Over nearly an hour, Spinet & Violinbuilds and dissolves tension in a gradual arc, ending in near silence and gentle transformation. The album stands as an exemplar of contemporary chamber improvisation: acoustically raw, unabashedly intimate, and a testament to the transformative power of attentive encounter.​