Julia Eckhardt: Blanca

Julia Eckhardt was born in 1985 in Berlin, Germany, but later became Belgium-based. She is a renowned classical and orchestral musician who plays viola and has made a name for herself in the music industry. An organiser in the field of the sonic arts, she is artistic co-director of Q-O2 workspace for experimental music and sound art, as well as of the Oscillation festival in Brussels. She has performed and released internationally, and has been engaged in a number of artistic collaborations. Eckhardt has co-authored books such as "The Second Sound—Conversations on Gender and Music," and "Grounds for Possible Music." She is a researcher at the philosophical faculty at Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB) and has been teaching and lecturing on topics related to sound, music, gender and space.

If the paragraph above makes Eckhardt sound rushed off her feet, that view is soon supported by the scarcity of her album releases but not by their quality, particularly the quality of the musicians she plays with. Her very first recording was made in April 2004, before she was twenty years old, and was released the next year. It was Amber (Creative Sources, 2005) and Eckhardt on viola was joined by Lucio Capece on saxophones, Rhodri Davies on harp and Robin Hayward on tuba -an impressive line-up. Eckhardt's second album Wedding Ceremony (Cathnore Recordings, 2009) was as impressive as the first, with Eckhardt and Capece being joined by Taku Sugimoto on electric guitar, Radu Malfatti on trombone.

For her sixth album release, -and her very first on Another Timbre -Eckhardt has taken a different route to those above. Here is her own description of its creation; "In November 2022, I spent a month as an artist in residency at Centro Negra in the small town of Blanca in the South-East of Spain. I undertook a daily protocol of walking without plan or destination which took me into the wide, majestic and slightly intimidating hills outside the town. Each day, after a set amount of time I stopped to make a field recording and a detail photo [a booklet of the eight photos that Eckhardt chose to use is included in with the CD], and upon my return to Centra Negra, recorded an improvisation on the viola echoing the energy of that accidental place. Recording, image and improvisation became three ways of creating imprints of memory. Improvising felt similar to walking into the unknown, adventurous and slightly fearful at the same time, with the wind in the wide and karstic landscape, unhampered by the sparse vegetation, being a constant presence. Eight of these improvisations became the compositions on this release in which the wind patterns of Blanca are a guiding presence."

The results of Eckhardt's combination of field recordings, photographs and viola improvisations are testament to her diverse talents and imagination.