Caterina Barbieri: Minimalism, Modular and Live

Caterina Barbieri was one of the participants we were most excited about at Loop 2017. Her album Patterns of Consciousness had received much critical acclaim and is a favorite around the office. And so we jumped at the chance talk to her and have her perform live at the event.

The Berlin-based Italian artist likes to describe her music as “Ecstatic Computation”. It’s therefore no surprise that her performance setup involves both hardware and software, as she explains, "My current live rig is my modular setup going into Ableton for further processing, especially multi layered delay lines. I am a long-time fan of Ableton’s ping pong delay and reverb! Recently I’ve also added to my setup some Make Noise modules, which incredibly expanded the possibilities of sonic investigation. I am still exploring them because their capabilities are really impressive and can take you in so many different directions! But I am also working more and more with digital synthesizers. I work a lot with SuperCollider to find interesting ways of generating new music material in alternative tunings for example.”

There’s much more to dig into in the video below, as Caterina Barbieri talks to Ableton’s Dennis DeSantis about minimalism, subtractive composition, its relation to Indian classical music and more. After the discussion, Barbieri takes to the stage to give an enthralling performance that was a definite highlight for many Loop attendees.

Read a full-length interview with Caterina Barbieri at Sound on Sound.

Listen to Caterina Barbieri on Bandcamp and Soundcloud. Keep up with Caterina Barbieri on her website and Facebook.