"Pathbreaking experimental Swedish musician, artist, and polymath Catherine Christer Hennix, whose mesmerizing drone compositions embodied her vision of music as endless, died of an undisclosed illness November 19 at her home in Istanbul. She was seventy-five. Her death was announced by arts organization Blank Forms, which distributed her work. Hennix in such pioneering compositions as
The Electric Harpsichord and
Central Palace Music (both 1976) welded mathematics and tone to offer listeners what she
cast as 'a sustained out-of-body experience in an altered state of consciousness.' ... Around this time, thanks to Stockholm’s vibrant jazz scene and her mother’s role in it, she saw such greats of the era as multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy, saxophonist John Coltrane, trumpeter Miles Davis, and pianist Cecil Taylor perform live; Coltrane especially would loom large in the formation of her sound. While studying first biochemistry, then theoretical linguistics, and finally mathematical logic at Stockholm University, Hennix began composing works for the massive mainframe computers at Stockholm’s Elektronmusikstudion, working in the vein of Karlheinz Stockhausen before abandoning the complicated avant-garde style. ..."
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