CHRIS RAINIER is a South-African born performer and composer from Melbourne, now based in London. The most recent release of his own music - Sorrowful Songs of the Silverswords [2023] - is a collection of semi-composed works and improvisations utilising his replica of Harry Partch's first Adapted Guitar 1, as well as various custom modified capos that enable harmonies and melodies ordinarily physically impossible on this instrument. In 2024 the Belgian label 'bwaa' released Chris Rainier Sings The Music Of Harry Partch - interpretations of the composer's early works for voice and two of the composer's microtonal acoustic guitars.
Rainier has also explored extending the sonic possibilities of the lap steel guitar - specifically the acoustic, hollow-neck Weissenborn - beyond its historical use and context. Drawing on the instrument's traditional techniques, he has integrated these with influences drawn from a variety of new musical territories. Some of these explorations can be heard on the albums man and the echo [2014] and ZOZOBRA [2018], as well as a forthcoming release (Everything Changes) scheduled for completion in 2025.
Rainier has performed both solo and in collaboration with others, in a diverse range of concert venues, festivals, art galleries and non-traditional performance spaces, often improvising live soundtracks to film. Solo tours in Europe, Japan, the USA and Australia have seen him share the stage with Masaki Batoh (Ghost/The Silence), Taku Sugimoto, Tetuzi Akiyama, Giovanni di Domenico (Jim O'Rourke), Angharad Davies, Juliet Fraser, Owen Gardner (Horse Lords), Yuri Landman, Julien Tassin, Andrew Tuttle, Mike Cooper and De Vlaamse Primitieven.
Rainier received his PhD in Music (by Research) from the University of Huddersfield in 2022, under the supervision of Philip Thomas. In addition to his thesis - The Letter : The Intersection of Biographical Context and Creative Process in the Music of Harry Partch - his research included outcomes pertaining to performance, recording, transcription and instrument-building. He has presented concerts and workshops relating to Partch's life, music and guitars at various universities and institutions around the world. These have included the Harry Partch Archives at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Slade School of Fine Art (London), the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (London), the Kunitachi College Of Music (Tokyo), the Orpheus Institute (Ghent), the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the Royal Conservatory of The Hague and the Mozarteum University of Salzburg.
As a long-standing member of the Dutch ensemble Scordatura, Rainier has performed much of Partch's early chamber music, as well as the work of numerous composers whose music explores tuning systems outside of equal temperament. Additionally, he has collaborated with various craftspeople in the UK, Europe and Australia to co-create replicas of a number of Partch's unique musical instruments.
