The chimeracord is a hybrid acoustic instrument synthesizing string, reed, percussion, and brass families. This mutant monochord refracts its single string through an innovative brass resonating chamber that also superposes reed, brass, percussive elements in innovative polyphony. This concatenated choir of entangled voices is amplified not only by the chimeracord’s hourglass body and vertical bell, but also by a pair of unique sympathetic resonators that add complexity, directionality, and spatialization to this entirely analog, acoustic instrument. Designed for a single performer, the chimeracord seamlessly braids a multitude of disparate acoustic families into a unitary hybrid body.
Kevin Toksöz Fairbairn is a performer, sound artist, and scholar working around the edges of installation, improvisation, composition, and craft. He has been building traditional, experimental, and invented instruments for decades and currently presents concerts and installations with a series of hybrid acoustic instruments developed and constructed over the last five years. He is a regular guest of premiere new music ensembles, such as Klangforum Wien and Talea Ensemble, with whom he performs at preeminent festivals and concert halls worldwide, and is a founding member of experimental chamber music groups hoodwink (with Winnie Huang), Blechtrommel (with João Carlos Pacheco), and les Trombones de Bâle. He publishes about sound studies, artistic research, and musicology, and has given masterclasses and lectures throughout Europe, Asia, and North America. His book, dis/cord: Thinking Sound through Agential Realism, was published in 2022 by Punctum Books.
