Eyvind Kang Biography 2004
"To hear Eyvind Kang play violin is a powerful experience. His solo performances interweave scalding-hot improvisations and a rainbow of dissonant colours."
(Andrew Bartlett, Sidewalk)
Violinist Eyvind Kang was born in Corvallis, Oregon, but lived in several different cities, mostly in Canada, throughout his childhood. He began studying violin in ‘Suzuki’ method classes in Regina, Saskatchewan at the age of six, and learnt tuba in his school band at Winnipeg, Manitoba. He attended senior school in Edmonton, Alberta, and spent two years at the University of Alberta as a philosophy major before relocating to Seattle, where he has based
his life for the past ten years. He studied music at Seattle Cornish College for the Arts between
1992 and 1994, in addition to further studies of the violin with Michael White. While still at Cornish College, Kang travelled to New York where he was introduced to John Zorn and was able to perform and later tour with Zorn’s game piece Cobra. Through this
connection he met many artists whom he still works with today, including Trey Spruance and Bill Frisell.
In 1994, Kang received an Artist Support Programme grant (by the Jack Straw Foundation) and used it to record the first seven of his series of musical compositions called "NADEs." This recording, 7 NADEs, was released on Zorn’s Tzadik label in 1996, followed two years later by his Theatre of Mineral Nades. In 2000 he released The Story of Iceland, again on Tzadik,
which was inspired by his time spent in Iceland as a child.

Kang has travelled to the far reaches of this planet: places like India, Italy, Iceland and Australia, composing and playing his own material and working on countless other projects. He has played violin with John Zorn, Bill Frisell’s Quartet, the Sun City Girls and Wayne
Horvitz’s 4+1 Ensemble. Kang has also recorded and toured with Trey Spruance’s Secret Chiefs 3, and performed on Mr Bungle’s California.
Virginal Co-Ordinates is Kang’s sixth record - an excursion into minimalist territory that nods to Terry Riley and Tony Conrad. Recorded live in Bologna, Italy in 2000 at the Angelica Festival, the compositions combine a written musical score with subtle improvisation. The glide of Kang’s smooth violin presides over a 22-member orchestra (The Playground Ensemble - a loose collection of European musicians), which includes Mike Patton on vocals and electronics. The compositions work as full-bodied excursions, parsed out in minimal doses that glide toward stunning emotional grandiosity.

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