Jordan DYKSTRA – Koen NUTTERS
“In Better Shape Than You Found Me”

‘In Better Shape Than You Found Me’ is a one-hour piece jointly composed and realized by American composer/violist Jordan Dykstra and Dutch composer/musician Koen Nutters in the year 2020.

Dykstra plays viola, pitch pipe, crotales, piano EBow, electronic programming, field recordings, and Nutters delivers the piano programming and field recordings. The two bring together their sounds and structures in very organic ways, merging into a single, intriguing sound world.

Sparsely created minimal sounds from various instruments and electronics intersect and move organically in a geometric pattern, linearly or ascendingly, while retaining calmness and a sense of spatial expansion over the subtle presence of field recordings, occasionally hovering at the edge of harmonies or assimilating into silences.

A quartet version of the piece was recently premiered by the ensemble of Dykstra, Manuel Lima, Lucy Railton, and Hannes Lingens at KM28 in Berlin on August 7, 2021. Further performances of different versions of the piece are likely to appear in Amsterdam and New York City in the near future.

Mastered by Taku Unami, photography by David Sylvian, design by Yuko Zama.