Madison Greenstone: sola mente

Madison Greenstone continues their sustained investigation into the unruly behaviors of the clarinet with the performance sola mente. Resisting classical impulses toward smoothness and solidity in melody, Greenstone instead probes the clarinet’s outermost possibilities, drawing the listener’s attention to the instrument’s heterogeneity. Though the clarinet is traditionally monophonic, Greenstone works in a fluent polyphonic mode, deploying psychoacoustic anomalies and extreme techniques to produce shrill sparks of flickering sound scattered over low, hooting pulses, or serene phantom tones that float over a cicada-esque droning. In Greenstone’s hands, the materiality of the clarinet’s components—reed and barrel, mopane and metal—becomes perceptible as a suite of distinct textures. These timbres collide and realign, alchemizing unpredictably to generate an evolving, volatile musical language.