Energy Archive 4

About

Ellen Fullman’s Energy Archive 4 is a concert-length composition for her custom Long String Instrument (LSI) with the JACK Quartet. The LSI comprises rows of steel strings stretched over more than twenty meters, tuned in Just Intonation. Fullman activates the strings directly with her fingertips, while the quartet engages in dialogue with material developed from her sound-production recordings. The collaboration explores overtone structures and ratio-based harmonies through continual filtrations, modulations, and embellishments. For MaerzMusik 2026, Fullman extends her 40-year investigation of the LSI, drawing on influences from metalworking, Judson Dance Theater minimalism, and Alvin Lucier’s ideas. Body, movement, and architectural acoustics become compositional parameters, and the room itself functions as a co-player. The premiere in Berlin’s St. Elisabeth-Kirche leveraged the church’s resonant interior—its columns and nave—in shaping the sound.