Jon Rose

Jon Rose at 60.

For nearly 40 years, Jon Rose has been at the sharp end of experimental, new and improvised music on the global stage. Central to that practice has been 'The Relative Violin' project, a unique output, rich in content, realising almost everything on, with, and about the violin - and string music in general. Most celebrated is the worldwide Fence project; least known are the relative violins - over 20 home experimental string instruments, created specifically for and in Australia.

In the area of interactive electronics, his work is considered exemplary, having pioneered the use of the MIDI bow in the 'Hyperstring' project in the 1980s with the Steim Institute, Amsterdam - and with whom he continues to collaborate often in interactive projects involving sport, games or the environment.

Apart from Europe, considerable interest in Rose's output currently comes from California where he was recently offered the David Tudor Residency at Mills College and completed a concert and lecture tour of all the major UC campuses and The Juilliard School of Music & New York and Washington Universities.

Jon Rose has appeared on more than 60 albums and collaborated with many of the mavericks of new music including Kronos String Quartet, John Cage, Derek Bailey, Butch Morris, John Zorn, Alvin Curran, Fred Frith, George Lewis, Otomo Yoshihide, Christian Marclay, Eugene Chadbourne etc. at festivals of New Music, Jazz, and Sound Art world wide such as Ars Electronica, Festival D’Automne, Maerzmusik, Dokumenta, North Sea Jazz Fest, Leipzig Jazz Fest, European Media, New Music America, the Vienna Festival, the Berlin Jazz Festival etc.

Recently Jon Rose was commissioned by the Kronos String Quartet to write and build “Music from 4 Fences” for the Sydney Opera House; realised his bicycle powered “Pursuit” project at Carriage Works (Sydney) and The Mona Foma Festival (Hobart); performed a completely new and improvised solo part for the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra; created two major radiophonic works for the BBC on the first Aboriginal string orchestra and the history of the piano in 19th century Australia; toured in Europe with his current improvisation groups 'Futch' and 'Strike'; produced his interactive Ball project at The Melbourne Festival, Gallery of New South Wales, Sounds Outback, and Mona Foma; performed his interactive multi-media composition “Internal Combustion” for violin and orchestra at The Philharmonic, Berlin; and been apprehended by the Israeli Defence Forces at the Separation Fence near Ramallah in the occupied territories.
 
In 2007 he gave the Peggy Glanville-Hicks address - Listening to history: some proposals for reclaiming the practice of music. It has been published in over six journals, including The Leonardo Music Journal of MIT Press. This journal just published his personal but definitive history of the interactive violin bow – Bow Wow.

He holds 3 passports, one of which declares him a 'Berliner for life'.