Chamber Cartel concert took some instrument construction, too

Playing contemporary music can be pretty challenging, but at the very least, most musicians don’t have to build their own instruments. That’s not always the case with 20th-century Greek composer Iannis Xenakis’ work “Pléïades,” which requires the construction of a special set of six instruments called the sixxen.

The Atlanta-based contemporary chamber ensemble Chamber Cartel will perform the work at the Goat Farm Arts Center on Oct. 3. The group's founder Caleb Herron took on the task of building the sixxen, believed to be the first time a set has been made in Georgia.

“It was an interesting project,” Herron says. “You have to figure this thing out and bring it to life.” Xenakis originally wrote his percussion sextet in 1978 as a commission for the ensemble Les Percussions de Strasbourg. The composer, who often experimented with different types of musical scales, gave instructions for the creation of a special set of six identical instruments, each with a slightly different tuning, to be used in two of the piece’s movements.

Herron says creating the six instruments, collectively called “the sixxen,” was an unusual challenge. He’d never taken on such a project before, and Xenakis’ instructions were just an outline, specifying things like tuning but not providing basic details like the type of metal or other materials to be used.

Herron started his research a few years ago, experimenting with different types of metal from the Atlanta store Metal Supermarkets. He came across an article in the scholarly publication Percussive Arts Society that included a blueprint for building a set of sixxen. He finally settled on aluminum channel as the best material because he wanted to keep his sixxen light and portable. Other items for the instruments, like treated pine for the frames, paracord string to hold up the bars and plastic tubing to go around the posts to avoid contact noise, were bought at home supply stores like Home Depot.

Each of the six instruments of the sixxen is laid out like a xylophone keyboard, about 4 feet long and a little more than 2 feet wide at thickest. The six musicians strike the six instruments with mallets during two movements of the 45-minute piece, which also requires the use of drums, bongos, congas, tom-toms, bass drums and tympany, as well as other keyboard instruments like the vibraphone and marimba.

A total of 54 drums and six mallet instruments, including the set of sixxen, are used during the piece, but Herron says it’s the singular sound of the sixxen that gives the piece its most unique aspect. Musicians strike the keyboards simultaneously and continuously, providing a shifting sound that slowly morphs from one note to another.

“What you get is this microtonal, really wondrous sound,” he says. “It’s really quite beautiful. I can’t even describe it. It’s so weird.”

Herron says the set could potentially be used again by other groups for performances of “Pléïades.” “It will open up the avenue for others in Georgia and the Southeast to play this work,” he says. “It’s so gratifying to perform. I think it’s interesting for the listener, too, because there’s elements of ‘groove’ in there in a very odd way. It’s not like a jazz band or anything like that, but it does have these elements of rhythm that are really just primordial.”

Herron, who grew up in Atlanta and studied music at Georgia State University and the University of Alaska, founded Chamber Cartel in 2012. He says the ensemble’s frequent performances of experimental and contemporary works like “Pléïades” at the Goat Farm Arts Center have been unexpectedly popular, but that this is likely the last time he’ll construct an instrument for a performance.

“I’ve learned from this experience I am not an engineer,” he says with a laugh. “I should mainly stick to playing things that are already made.”