Samuel Reinhard

• Discography

  • Interior

    2021, Praesens Editionen, Vinyl + Digital
    On Interior, his follow-up to 2020’s “Miniatures”, Samuel Reinhard excavates intricate resonances at the periphery of our attention. Read More
    Across four movements of near-equal length, Reinhard once again follows a process whereby he layers and loops fragments of piano improvisations, imposing an asymmetric system that generates an unending growth of sound. “Interior” complicates its own systematicity, however, by using samples that are not only recognizable as piano notes, but as live recordings of a piano being played.
    As such, the experience of hearing these “Interiors” is driven by the delicate timelessness of a pried-open piano chord: one is invited to tender stillness, even reverence. And yet Reinhard composes from traces both analog and digital, leaving the seams of his work exposed. Texture arrives in the form of static hiss and clicks, but also the soft trace of a finger pressing a key, the shuffle of a body shifting position in the close architecture of a small room. Having already stalled and stretched our sense of time, Reinhard asks us to think about where we are, and how close we are willing to look, feel, and listen. Over the course of these four movements sounds return again and again, familiar but transformed. What sounds like repetition is something more like accumulation, a thickening of space. Whether regarded at intimate range or from a distance, these compositions reveal more the longer we linger in the presence of each. Read Less

    1. I
    2. II
    3. III
    4. IV

  • Miniatures

    2020, Praesens Editionen, Vinyl + Digital
    On Miniatures, Samuel Reinhard looks to indeterminate techniques of mid-century experimental composers to produce a sonic path forward that’s as refined as it is evocative. Read More
    While Miniatures is built from recordings of short piano gestures decaying towards silence, amid the four movements that comprise the suite, something else grows. Notes cycle, collide, and wash away within boundaries the artist has set, but in their wake new processual textures develop. A hiss blankets the harmonic material, and clicks that once marked sharp cuts between repetitions become a percussive undercurrent.
    Working with digital tools, Reinhard conjures the interior of an animate environment and extends an invitation to notice the small stuff that swells when we settle in with duration. Read Less

    1. 1st Movement
    2. 2nd Movement
    3. 3rd Movement
    4. 4th Movement

• Commissions

  • Music For An Elevator

    2016, Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland
    John Armleder and Stéphane Armleder commission original compositions to be played as background music in the elevator of the Centre d'Art Contemporain. Read More
    This play on the aural experience traditional to the space of passage and waiting is reminiscent of Erik Satie and his music d'ameublement or else “furniture music.” Samuel Reinhard contributed the aptly titled composition, Music For An Elevator. Read Less

    1. Music for an Elevator Audio

  • Objects

    2015, Espace Libre / Centre Pasquart, Biel, Switzerland
    Algorithmic composition for samplers and improvised woodwind. Read More
    An array of digital samplers draws from an extensive library of square–wave samples of various pitches and combines them indefinitely without ever repeating any of the combinations. For the premiere, renowned Swiss woodwind experimentalist Hans Koch performed bass clarinet and soprano saxophone improvisations, exploring and interacting with Samuel Reinhard's algorithmic composition. Read Less

    1. Objects

  • Untitled0000001

    2013, PROGR, Bern, Switzerland
    Single-channel video developed in collaboration with Sinae Yoo Read More
    In their collaborative single-channel video and audio work Untitled0000001, Sinae Yoo and Samuel Reinhard explore the idea of creating a contemplative space within a pattern of visual repetition versus sustained sonic transformation. Read Less

• Installations

  • Anima

    2017, Studio 301, Brooklyn, NY, United States
    Sound and light installation developed in collaboration with Nitemind. Read More
    Samuel Reinhard's second US show is a play on the archetypical mode of performance within electronic dance music. As with previous work, Reinhard borrows and deconstructs familiar elements from traditional club settings, reassembling them in a gallery environment.
    
For Anima, a Brooklyn gallery space was transformed into a quasi–club, where recipients were exposed to a multiple-hours long “ambient build up”, occasionally broken down by brief “drops”, culminating eventually in a “performance.” The artist played a live set from behind stage lights and fog machines that were directed at onlookers – effectively rendering the performer and his act invisible. Read Less

  • Patterns

    2016, SIGNAL, Brooklyn, NY, United States
    Sound and light installation developed in collaboration with Nitemind. Read More
    Samuel Reinhard's debut US show is based on a series of seven compositions. The pieces are an examination of the principles and constraints of club music – a series of experiments with divergent ideas of rhythm, bass, and sound design. The resulting sonic world encapsulates the artist's interests and ethos – testing the boundaries of where sound becomes music and music dissolves into sound.

    For his show at SIGNAL Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, the Swiss artist collaborated with Brooklyn-based artist collective Nitemind, to translate the seven compositions into a sound and light installation. By borrowing and deconstructing familiar elements from the club and reconfiguring them in a gallery environment, Reinhard adds a spatial dimension to his sonic research. The recipient is invited to experience the compositions in a physical space, as part of a dialogue with a large-scale neon sculpture. Read Less

  • 333 – Sample

    2015, Schwarzwaldallee, Basel, Switzerland
    Sound and video installation developed in collaboration with Jeff Rossi and Dominik Hodel in situ during Sample, a month-long exhibition at Schwarzwaldallee in Basel, Switzerland. Read More
    333 is based on a video that was shot in the exhibition space preceding the opening. The interplay between the sound and objects in the room, and their virtual representation in the video make for uncanny shifts in perceived time and space. Read Less

  • First Smell of the Moon

    2015, Space O'NewWall, Seoul, Republic Of Korea
    Sound and video installation developed in collaboration with Sinae Yoo. Read More
    First Smell of The Moon is based on a video shot on location in Seoul-Itaewon. The film follows a young man whose perceived reality seems to seamlessly shift between a dream state and actual circumstances. In their work Yoo and Reinhard explore the subjectivity and frailty of perception and consciousness and the interplay of inner and outer realities. Read Less

    1. First Smell of the Moon Audio

• About

  • Samuel Reinhard is a Swiss composer of electroacoustic music (b. 1980). Guided by minimalist and aleatoric tenets, Reinhard's work emphasizes repetition and extended duration. His compositional practice is driven by an interest in the physical and spatial properties of sound, as well as the timbral and textural qualities of recorded material and the recording technologies employed to capture said material. In his work, Reinhard engages with sonic matter and musical ideas on a granular level while interrogating and exploring the intricacies of perception and the act of listening itself. In addition to his recorded output, Reinhard maintains a practice of interdisciplinary collaborations and commissions. He earned his MA in Contemporary Arts Practice (Music & Media Arts) from Bern University of the Arts in 2015, and has been awarded grants and artist residencies from the Swiss Arts Council, the Music Commission of the City of Bern, the Department of Culture of the Canton of Bern, and others. Reinhard lives and works between Bern and Brooklyn, NY.

    
    
    

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    Site Credits
    Miguel Gaydosh, Mackenzie Davidson, Design
    NULL1, Development