Axehole

Cristiano M.L. Forster is an inventor, builder, composer and musician that manages to create outside the context of most modern music.

The Chrysalis, shown above, was Forster’s first concert-sized instrument. According to Foster, it was inspired by a huge, round, stone-hewn Aztec calendar. Forster has spent the past 26 years designing and building an orchestra of original acoustic instruments, then using their unique timbres and expanded tunings to compose a contemporary American music. He has written a book, Musical Mathematics: A Practice in the Mathematics of Tuning Instruments and Analyzing Scales, which builds a bridge science and art.

The Chrysalis Foundation site is dedicated to Forster’s instruments and music, and has photographs and sound examples of a variety of instruments that are beautiful to both the eyes and the ears.

Forster explains the origin of the Chrysalis instrument:

I asked myself, “What if there were a musical instrument in the shape of a wheel? And what if this wheel had strings for spokes, could spin, and when played, would sound like the wind?”

The Chrysalis has two sides, or two circular soundboards, and 82 strings on each side. The wheel, which sits on the crest of a wave-like stand, may be freely spun in either direction.

The Chrysalis Foundation