★★★★★ Experimental violinist Jon Rose creates a terrifying performance that brings his museum of instruments to life.

Carriageworks, Sydney
October 28, 2016

A gritty buzzing came from the centre of the room, where a violin, expanded with machinery, produced a discordant, random-sounding music. The Data Violin – a robotic instrument that turns information from Wall Street into sound – was the centre-piece of experimental violinist Jon Rose’s Music for a Time of Dysfunction – Part 1.

The Data Violin intermittently whirred to life and fell silent. Sometimes it sustained tones from one or both of its strings and at other times frantic activity from the mechanical hooks that lined each side of the instrument threw out virtuosic flurries of distortion-heavy notes, the tone not unlike that of an overdriven electric guitar. Beneath the more violent sounds of the Data Violin, a softer tinkling of piano came from behind the audience – a player-piano performing a transcription of the sounds heard on a walk around the busy gaming room of the Sahara Casino in Las Vegas. The instruments are part of The Rosenburg Museum – Rose’s personal collection of violins and violinalia, which includes everything from bizarre instruments and images of...