Name: Austin Larkin / John McCowen
Start: 2026-04-25T20:00:00+00:00
Location: Óðinsgata 2, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland

$Austin Larkin \/ John McCowen$

Saturday, April 25th
AUSTIN LARKIN - solo violin
JOHN McCOWEN - solo clarinet
doors 19:30 / show 20:00
2500kr / 2000kr students / pay what u can
Austin Larkin is a composer primarily working with violin, flute, bells, and sirens. His practice is informed by research into dimensions of vibrating bodies. Larkin's solo violin work stems from the physicality of the violin, a language of gesture unfolded in the shared space of the listener, conferring an intense gravity within performance. Preferring the experience of acoustic sound, the directness of these interlacing gestures carry the energy of its materialization. He studied sound with Eyvind Kang, Jessika Kenney, and Jarrad Powell, as well as karawitan at ISI Yogyakarta. Ongoing collaborations involve Tongue Depressor, Lori Goldston, Sean Meehan, John McCowen, and Matt Wellins in installation/performance as Echo Permanent Wave. His recent solo releases include "Melody enmeshes itself with the passing clouds" (2025) and "Violin Liquid Phases" (2022).
John McCowen’s musical life has become an obsession with discovering a polyphonic language on a historically monophonic instrument - the clarinet. This has led him to a unique acoustic vocabulary that is similar to a shifting soundscape of electronic feedback. John's multiphonic approach is based in drones, difference tones, and beating harmonics as a means to showcase the compositional potential within a single, acoustic sound source. His work has been described by The New Yorker (Steve Smith) as “the sonic equivalent of microscopic life viewed on a slide” and “an astonishing demonstration of pure sound and human will” by The Wire (Phil Freeman).