22/11/2023
Catherine Christer Hennix passed away at her home in Istanbul, Turkey yesterday. Since the late 1960s, she has created a massaive and innovative body of work spanning minimal music, computer programming, poetry, sculpture, and light art—pushing the technical and conceptual boundaries of these media toward singular ends. She was part of the downtown music school in New York and has worked extensively with some of its key figures, including Henry Flynt and La Monte Young. In the ’70s, Hennix studied the nature and use of harmonic sound as a disciple of Pandit Pran Nath, a master of the Kirana tradition of classical Hindustani music.
For much of her life, Hennix was an enigmatic figure in musical minimalism, primarily known for her “billowing cloud” study The Electronic Harpsichord (1976). Her resurgence and later artistic activity can in many ways be credited to the advocacy of Henry Flynt, who would present the piece at tape concerts throughout the ’70s and ’80s. In 2003, Hennix returned to producing computer-generated sound works, initiating a productive two-decade run. After a long hiatus from leading ensembles, she formed the Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage in 2005 after meeting the trombonist Hilary Jeffery, and later led the just intonation group the Kamigaku Ensemble. She toured internationally, released several archival recordings, circulated her poetic and theoretical writing, and exhibited her artwork in surveys such as Traversée du Fantasme at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and Thresholds of Perception at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong, in 2018.
While a student of Pran Nath, Hennix was introduced to Sufism—first in the Chishti Order, and later taking hand with Sheikha Fariha in the Nur Ashki Jerrahi Order—and has been dedicated to its practice ever since, integrating the devotional dimensions of Islam and Sufism into all of her work with poetry and sound. Hennix formally converted to Islam before relocating to Istanbul, where she spent the final years of her life in a wondrous immersion in the call to prayer, the sound of the One.