The long string instrument holds within it the strength to overtake a room. But at first glance, it’s just some strings pulled from one wall to another and they’re so fine they blend into the walls surrounding them. Its creator and practitioner, the composer Ellen Fullman, plays it with the utmost care: The smallest change in her hands can completely shift the instrument’s vibrations. It’s a marvel of subtlety and of contrast, an entity that can conjure the force of the universe or be content in silence, and Fullman has the restraint to know exactly when to unleash its might or let it fade away.
The long string instrument is on display at Artists Space from April 24–May 3, where it sits in the venue’s lower level just beneath Cortlandt Alley. On Friday, April 26, Fullman performed solo and premiered a work-in-progress with JACK Quartet (in a free concert, which was a treat for New York show-going/goers). When I entered, I was again struck by the instrument’s weighty presence, even when it’s idle. It’s clear to me that I’m in its space and not the other way around—as the instrument sits, lights glinting off its razor-edged strings, it has the room’s attention (and there was a more than decent crowd in attendance). I situated myself on one of the square navy blue pillows just a few feet from the instrument and quickly learned that sitting so close is less like watching and more like being part of the action; it was akin to entering the instrument’s body, just as Fullman does.
For more than 40 years, Fullman has made the long string instrument the center of her practice. It combines a range of musical and scientific ideas into one site-specific installation—just intonation, deep listening, acoustics, architecture, experimentation and improvisation—acting as an extension of the artist’s own interests and philosophies. Her care for the instrument comes across in how she plays it so meticulously, how with each installation she painstakingly tunes its strings to the space in which it lives. It is, after all, alive, and each time I hear it, I hear something new within its heavenly resonances.
At Artists Space, I was struck by its clarity. Though the long string instrument filled up the room, here Fullman focused on its softness. She methodically paced back and forth, pulling her rosin-dusted fingers across its strings. Its nasally timbre and sparkling overtones whispered for much of the set, but it gradually crescendoed into a radiant chord that shattered the walls; at that moment, Fullman pulled the strings so far upward they looked like they could snap. It was a show of restraint, though: She could have entered the room and played the instrument with searing loudness, but instead she chose to show its gentler, more contemplative side, like stewing in quietude until you have to scream. As she played, I sat with my head down, hugging my knees folded tight to my torso, and let the sound wash over me and into me. I wanted to feel like another part of the long string instrument’s puzzle, and that close to it I almost could. The experience of the long string instrument, perhaps even more than auditory, is physical—it’s about feeling the instrument’s resonance and seeing where it may take you as much as hearing its tones as they emanate.
Fullman asked for more reverb after her solo set, which garnered a chuckle amongst the audience (I didn’t find it particularly surprising considering how dry the instrument sounded in the room). And then, JACK Quartet emerged from the back, taking their seats to premiere a work-in-progress with Fullman. The piece had some striking moments—JACK’s ability to play chords in near-perfect intonation with no vibrato always amazes me, a violinist—but much of the piece felt like two entities at-odds with each other rather than in collaboration. JACK’s airy melodies felt half-baked and didn’t add much to the already captivating long string instrument; moments of microtonal crunch felt like mistakes more than spaces for exploration. But in the phrases in which the two parts found common ground, there was a hint of magic—say, at the beginning, when JACK unleashed a chord that filled all the empty spaces of the long string instrument’s shiny strings and the room fell hauntingly still.
In that stillness, I like to think I am being invited into a portal that will take me into another dimension. Imaginary forces like time aren’t so strong in that other world, and everyone else who comes with me seems to be a hologram rather than a human. That’s the potential of drone, and why I come back to it—to feel something I can’t feel without the hum of noise resonating in my core, to dissolve the minute matters that never feel tiny enough. Fullman’s music extends an invitation into that other place, where it’s just us and the long string instrument and whatever time it is somewhere else. When I exited the room on April 26, I had no idea what the clock said, and I’d like to think that’s as close as a mere mortal can get to bliss.