Sonic Entanglements
John McCowen is a clarinetist, composer, and educator based in Reykjavík, Iceland. He teaches music improvisation at the Iceland University of the Arts and is the Artistic Director of the arts space Mengi. In his work, he is dedicated to discovering a polyphonic language on a historically monophonic instrument—the clarinet. This exploration has led him to develop a unique acoustic vocabulary, often compared to a shifting soundscape of electronic feedback. His approach explores multiple tones at once—drones, harmonics, and overlapping pitches—to reveal the compositional potential within a single acoustic sound source.
He has collaborated extensively with composer and instrumentalist Roscoe Mitchell, orchestrating, arranging, and transcribing his works for orchestras and ensembles, as well as performing in a duo with bass saxophone and contrabass clarinet. McCowen has been artist-in-residence at Headlands Center for the Arts (Sausalito, CA), Lijiang Studio (China), and ISSUE Project Room (NYC).