Thomas Köner Tiento De La Luz
LP, 2016, Limited Edition, Gatefold, 180 Gramm Vinyl

A tiento is a form of keyboard music that originated in Spain in the mid-15th century. Thomas Köner's first encounter with this musical genre was initiated by an invitation from the Frankfurter Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (Frankfurt Society for New Music) to do a live performance. For this performance Köner chose to do an interpretation of Antonio Cabezon s "Tiento del primer tono" (1570), that he rearranged and played with gongs, keyboard and live-electronics in 2012. "Tiento de la Luz" is Köner's second tiento, succeeds "Tiento de las Nieves" (2014) and precedes the upcoming "Tiento de la Oscuridad". While "Tiento de las Nieves" is a work for solo piano and live-electronics, the instrumentation of "Tiento de la Luz" is more diverse: in addition to Köner's distinct live-electronics, there are two parts for keyboard, percussions, and viola da gamba. For Thomas Köner the difference between writing purely electronic music, like "Permafrost" (1993), and creating music with classical instruments and electronics is only gradual. The core of Köner's works is always a sense of place (topos) and tone colour. He often travels around the world and records sounds and images, and this can result in sonic topographies like "La Barca" (2009), a panorama of 22 locations on five continents, or "Novaya Zemlya" (2012), based on his engagement with an island in the Russian arctic. Köner experiences the colours of place and tone as unique voices of these locations, while being aware that these expressions are just surface effects. There is a sense of purity. Thoughts create resonance. Sounds create resonance. Resonance is pristine, detached of the object. Appearing as tone colour, sound has the potential to become its own resonance, effortless and luminous.