“For multimedia, the idea comes from processes: what types of processes can I use? With gesture control, what can I do with the gesture, and how can technologies or multiple mediums shape the performance and structure?”
Inga Chinilina
Inga Chinilina is a multimedia composer based in Minnesota, working across concert pieces, dance, film, and installations. Inga’s creative and research practice investigates how cultural context shapes our perception of sound, often translating personal stories and everyday auditory experiences into sonic expressions that reflect on immigration, womanhood, and the environment. Inga’s music has been performed by ensembles such as the JACK Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, Dal Niente, and Talea Ensemble, and at festivals such as Darmstädte Ferienkurse, Mise-En Festival, and many others. Inga was a Fromm Foundation Composer Fellow at the 2024 Composers Conference, a composer fellow at Mizzou International Composers Festival 2026, and recently received a Fromm Foundation Commission for Switch~ Ensemble in 2027. Inga is currently Assistant Professor of Composition at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota; she holds a BM in Composition and Jazz Piano Performance from Berklee College of Music, an MFA in Theory and Composition from Brandeis University, and a PhD in Music and Multimedia Composition at Brown University.
As part of PRX.LIVE, PRXLUDES and Standard Issue gave the UK premiere of Inga’s work ‘Whales Whisper’ on 16 October at Chats Palace, London, with a subsequent performance with Chichester Festival Theatre on 7 November. Ahead of these performances, Finn Mattingly spoke with Inga over Zoom about whales, sonic gestures, perception, and music as an act of translation…
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Finn/PRXLUDES: To kick things off, Inga, you possess a diverse experience with emphases on multimedia composition and research-based practice. Tell me about your background, how you came across composition in the first place, and your musical journey in general.
I started as a jazz pianist and initially came to the United States to study jazz piano performance at Berklee College of Music. During undergrad, I discovered that I really enjoyed composition. Before Berklee, I didn’t realise that there is a process for becoming a composer: studying, composing, and having musicians perform your work. After Berklee, I completed an MFA in music composition and theory at Brandeis University, and then I moved into a PhD in music and multimedia composition at Brown.
You mentioned you started as a jazz pianist. How do these two genres — concert/contemporary music and jazz — interact in your path?
For me, improvisation and composition are very similar creative processes. The biggest difference for me is that when I compose, my music is meant to be performed by others, whereas when I improvise as a jazz pianist, my music is inseparable from me.
In your artist’s statement, you describe music as an act of translation. What does that mean for you? Is it about music as a linguistic concept or method of communication, or is it about artistic translation? Where does this translation manifest itself in your work?
For me, music speaks beyond its lyrics. As a child, I could not understand the lyrics of the jazz tunes I listened to, but the power of it stretched beyond words. Being a foreigner in this country, I relied a lot on music to communicate thoughts and feelings across language and cultural barriers, and I believe it is possible to communicate lived experiences through music. When developing a composition, I often work with archival and field recordings that are important to me and aim to bring these voices to life through music. I incorporate these recordings into my work as fixed media or reimagine them through the use of acoustic instruments. In this process, my goal is to amplify voices that might otherwise remain silenced and to witness how familiar stories become new again when presented through a different medium. For example, hearing a whale song in a recording and hearing a transcription of whale song performed on a cello may open new facets of that encounter with nature.
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Let’s turn to Whales Whisper, the work for PRXLUDES and PRX.LIVE. You credit the inspiration of New England’s whaling history as inspiration for this piece, particularly in regards to the narratives found in whaling logs. What stuck with you?
Now that we talk about it, that is where my thinking about whales and marine mammals started, and it grew into many whale-related works. I have been in communication with the New Bedford Whaling Museum, because they have the Watkins Marine Mammal Sound Archive, which spans more than 50 years — and contains more sound than a human can listen to while maintaining a job and a life.
It all started with this piece when I looked into whale logs at the Providence Public Library and began thinking about the history — how humans treated whales and what was occurring. As far as I remember, this piece does not use any of the technical analysis methods I developed later. Back then, it was simply my artistic rendition of whales’ conversations in the ocean.
Turning back to your multimedia work, where did this interest start? How did you transition from jazz piano to piano composition and acoustic composition, and where did the multimedia aspect come in?
It was always somewhat a part of me; I remember liking to make things. In elementary school, I made an electric matchbox lightbulb socket where, if you positioned the wires and aluminum foil correctly with a battery, the lightbulb would light up. That interest went into the background for a while, though I remained interested in programming. During my master’s degree, I started working with live electronics. I created my first installation using IRCAM-built Arduinos as sensors to create interactive objects. That is where multimedia elements started to kick in; once I got into Brown, I developed it further. Now I think I have reached my ceiling as an engineer — I peaked during the first year of my PhD — so now I collaborate with people who help me build things.
What role does collaboration play for you in the compositional process behind these works? Does it start with your idea and then finding collaborators, or does it start with someone you really want to work with and building something together?
I particularly enjoy working with people when, through conversation or playing together, we find little sonic moments that excite us and that I later structure into a musical work. Recently, I started making performer-specific index cards that catalogue sounds. I use them to catalogue sounds and group them by my collaborators. For example, I am currently working on a new viola concerto. When preparing the materials, I met with the soloist, Elsie Bae Han, and asked her to show me sounds that excite her. We grouped them into several categories and recorded a video for each sound. For each of the recorded sounds, I made an index card with notation and recording number so that I can refresh the sound later when I work on the composition. This becomes a catalogue of performer-specific sounds, a dictionary of sonic possibilities that I use when I work on a commission. Afterwards, any performer can take the finished scores and perform them, referring to the videos if needed.
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As an example, I was looking at your work Weird’s Tale — a large installation with a dancer, motion sensors, and electronics that dramaturgically represents human impact on nature through a combination of pre-recorded sounds, gestural control, and acoustic instruments. How did you arrive at this project?
This project involved an established artistic duo: Julie Dind and Rolf Gerstlauer, a Butoh dancer and an architect with whom I had worked previously on a film score. A few years later, we received a grant for a work, setting off the collaborative process.
This collaboration was different for me because it spanned different disciplines. I did not know what to expect from an architect; I assumed they build huge structures in their practices, and we were confined by an already existing performance hall. What emerged exceeded anything I could have created on my own. Working with people from different areas of expertise and artistic backgrounds created something remarkable. Looking back at it, I wonder how I became part of it. I think I did a decent job, but it is also great to meet people who carry you into areas you have never explored before.
Turning to the acoustic side of your work, I looked at In den finsteren Zeiten. I noticed your use of careful microtonal and chromatic shadowing, gradual development, and expansion, along with textural elements in the piano. How do you approach acoustic music differently from multimedia projects, or is the thought process similar? Where do your acoustic artistic kernels come from?
I think it is similar in the larger scheme of things, though different in a more granular approach. For multimedia, the idea comes from processes: what types of processes can I use? With gesture control, what can I do with the gesture, and how can technologies or multiple mediums shape the performance and structure? For acoustic music, it usually comes from the sound of the instruments — perhaps spectral influences — and I look at how the acoustic sound affects the structure, harmonies, and melodies, not that there are many melodies.
Would you say sound can also carry a sort of gesture?
For that, we need to define “sound”, and we need to define “gesture”.
How would you define sound and gesture in your practice?
Sound can be defined in many ways. Sound is something we hear: it can be a physical phenomenon, or it can be a perceived phenomenon distinct from acoustic, physically measured phenomena, because it is rendered through our perception. Psychoacoustics plays a role, so which sound are we talking about?
The sound that you start with for acoustic works — the sound as a kernel. Where does its significance come from? Can it be gestural?
In what sense, gestural?
That’s a broad topic — let’s say movement more than reactionary in nature with some element of implicit or explicit meaning. What does gesture mean to you?
For me, it is easy to see or attribute meaning to sonic gestures that already exist within a sound. For example, when I hear a saturated timbre or a multiphonic, this sound already contains harmonic information, and I easily imbue it with meaning. In the compositional process I use this gesture as a structural unit that I amplify and develop further. One can think of it as discovering something within the sound and amplifying it.
Do you try to craft the atmosphere and mood of the sound first, or the direction of the sound, musical motif, and movement from A to B? Is one more important than the other, or is the overall mood and feeling of the sound most central?
I like to think that I focus on the overall mood, but in practice, I often become focused on tiny details. Working second by second, it can take me a whole day — or several days — to compose eight seconds, which might then end up in the trash bin. Then I will create a carefully crafted 30-second section which I am happy with, step back, and not fully understand how it happened, before revisiting it in the future.
So it comes retrospectively, in a sense.
Yes, and that is where I run into problems. I might really like what I created and the atmosphere it conveys, but it might differ from my original intention. Then I have to consider how to expand or alter it to align closer with the initial idea, if that is still desired.
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A lot of your research interests revolve around how we hear, perceive, and interpret sound, with studies of perception and compositional uses of bell-type sounds. How does this intertwine with your compositional practice? How do the scholarly and compositional aspects inform each other?
The idea that we do not hear the same thing when listening to the same sound seems obvious, but focusing on it was eye-opening. While my dissertation does not focus heavily on the cultural aspect, culture plays a role. Sources I consulted noted how the sound of a specific bell may be pleasant in one culture and harsh in another, demonstrating that sonic preferences are culturally dependent.
In a practical sense, I focused on a few specific bells to examine what happens acoustically. Out of curiosity, I asked different people what they heard when listening to a specific bell. I noticed two things: first, people hear the bell differently and focus on distinct aspects of the sound; second, if someone in the room suggests a specific pitch, everyone starts hearing that pitch. I learned to ask people not to hum, because once someone hums, everyone leans into that note. When people test this at home and they can use any devices to help them recognise the pitch (for example, tuner to check their hummed pitch), individuals recognised a variety of different notes, even [though] all of them listened to the same bell recording.
In my research, I was primarily interested in what happens acoustically within a bell and how composers represent that sound in their scores — what elements they keep, omit, or add through instrumentation, and how those instrument choices affect the overall timbre. As for how this influences my music, I think it brings self-awareness. There is no universal truth about sound; much of it is personal perspective and taste. While studying sound scientifically is fascinating, there is no single ideal to achieve after years of research and postdocs. It is an endless journey, and hopefully along the way, a few works are created that are worth listening to.
Are there any upcoming projects you are excited to share?
I am excited about an upcoming work for Switch~ Ensemble that explores a post-human world in which nature resurges, shedding the remnants of human presence. When composing, I met with the musicians individually and listened to recordings of sea mammals from William A. Watkins Collection of Marine Mammal Sound. After listening, the musicians developed ways to mimic those sounds — often using unconventional techniques that they came up with on the spot. These instrument techniques form the vocabulary for the piece.
The work depicts a post-human world where nature reclaims the planet and human remnants fade away. To represent the urban aspect, I am working with an engineer — Eli Backer — who helps me build small motors that act as metronomes to guide the performers’ tempos on stage. Musicians were divided into three groups with each group following a different tempo. Mathematically, there are two groups that align every 8 and 10 seconds and all three align every 40 seconds, but in the physical world with mechanical beaters, physical variations prevent exact alignment, creating a complex polytempo scenario.
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Catch PRXLUDES’ second performance of Inga Chinilina’s Whales Whisper at PRX.LIVE with Chichester Festival Theatre on Saturday 7 November:
Learn more about Inga Chinilina and her practice:
References/Links:
- William A. Watkins Collection of Marine Mammal Sound Recordings and Data, New Bedford Whaling Museum
