CCA Events
Walter Kitundu
Furniture Lecture Series
Wednesday, October 3, 2007, 7 pm
Timken Lecture Hall, San Francisco campus
Raised in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Walter Kitundu is a visual artist who was introduced to music through the turntable. He soon began focusing his imagination on discovering the potential of the record player as a medium for aural and visual expression. The resulting invention, a multistringed musical instrument that he calls the phonoharp, can be powered by wind, rain, fire, earthquakes, birds, light, or ocean waves. The phonoharps are beautifully crafted by hand and made from turntables and other materials; they capitalize in various ways on the sensitivity of the record player needle to subtle vibrations.
Kitundu has performed and had residencies at numerous art centers and science museums: in San Francisco at the Exploratorium, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and as far afield as the Singapore Science Center. He has performed in venues from Carnegie Hall to a high school library in Iceland, with such diverse collaborators as the Kronos Quartet, bassist Meshell Ndegeocello, the electronic music duo Matmos, instrument builder and visionary Douglas Ewart, the legendary Marshall Allen, kotoist and composer Miya Masaoka, the Japanese sound artist Akio Suzuki, and the hip-hop band the Crown City Rockers. Kitundu also composes for dance, theater, and film, and he teaches multidisciplinary workshops on sound, imagination, and instrument building.
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