Conversation between Dirar Kalash and Richard Barrett and Performance by Sonology Electroacoustic Ensemble (SEE)

Dirar Kalash (MA Sonology, 2016) is a Palestinian pianist, multi-instrumentalist, and sound artist whose work spans free jazz, avant‑garde, and electro‑acoustic improvisation. Extending into interdisciplinary research, sound installations, and live audiovisual performance, Kalash often approaches music with political urgency. His latest release, Malcom X in Gaza, references Frantz Fanon and Malcolm X, asserting the bonds between Pan-Africanism, Black Liberation, and Palestinian Liberation. Recent performances include Le Guess Who? 2025, Utrecht; WORM Rotterdam; and Zaal 100 Amsterdam.

Richard Barrett is professor of Research in Creative Music at ACPA. He is internationally active as a composer and performer and teaches at the Institute of Sonology at KC. His research focuses on developing new concepts for relating improvisation to other compositional methods, both in pedagogical contexts – such as directing the Sonology Electroacoustic Ensemble – and within his own creative practice. His most recent book, Transforming Moments (Vision Edition 2023), is based on three years of research in the context of the KC Lectorate Music, Education & Society.

The Sonology Electroacoustic Ensemble (SEE) consists of an alternating line-up of between five and fifteen performers of both acoustic instruments/voices and live electronics, most of whom are students at the Institute of Sonology, although the SEE is also open to musicians from across KC, and indeed outside of it. The ensemble has given workshops and performances with guest musicians including Paul Obermayer, Evan Parker, Peter Evans, Marie Guilleray and Sarah Nicolls. Its work is based on a structural-compositional approach to freely improvised music, bringing together players/composers from diverse stylistic backgrounds to create a composite personality which is recreated in a novel way for each performance. SEE appears regularly at Sonology concerts and other events at KC, and in June 2014 performed three times in Amsterdam as part of the Holland Festival.

For this occasion, the ensemble consists of:

Niccolò Angioni – trombone
Richard Barrett – electronics
Karólina Einarsdóttir – electronics
Dirar Kalash – piano
Nicolás Kliwadenko – electronics
Martin Kosorín – electric guitar / electronics
Cláudio Pereira – saxophone
Jun Ryu – electric guitar / electronics
Milana Zarić – electric harp / electronics