Catherine Christer Hennix (1948, Stockholm) is an artist, poet, composer and philosopher with a strong interest in logic and formal music theory. She was among the pioneers in Sweden experimenting with main-frame computer generated composite sound wave forms in the late 1960’s and in the 1970’s she was a key protagonist in the Downtown School along with La Monte Young and Henry Flynt, with whom she has collaborated with on numerous occasions. She pursued studies with raga master Pandit Pran Nath and led the just intonation live-electronic ensembles Hilbert Hotel and The Deontic Miracle, the recordings of the latter are presently being released by Important Records. She was a professor of mathematics and computer science and assistant to and coauthor with A.S. Esenin-Volpin for which she was given the Centenary Prize Fellow Award by the Clay Mathematics Insitute in 2000. Hennix’s interest in drone music and the meditative, trance-like state it induces is apparent in her exploration of similar music in many other cultures and traditions, drawing inspiration from the Japanese Gagaku music and the early, vocal, thirteenth-century music of Perotinus and Leoninus, for example.
In 2003 she returned to computer generated composite sound wave forms now called Soliton(e)s of which Soliton(e) Star was the first result. Subsequently she formed the just intonation ensemble The Choras(s)an Time-Court Mirage which performs Blues Dhikir al- Salam (Live at the Grimmuseum, vol. 1, Berlin, 2011, Important Records 2012). In 2012 Henry Flynt asked Hennix for a new, expanded realization of ISE for an installation at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany, to be featured in his retrospective/ prospective show Henry Flynt Activities 1959 – at ZKM. In response Hennix realized a 4-channel composition, Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis, her first 4-channel computer assisted composition since 1969.
Live At Issue Project Room by Catherine Christer Hennix was published by Important Records.
