Sir Henry (alias John Henry Nijenhuis) is a Canadian pianist, composer, and computer programmer. In 1996 he was engaged as an interpreter and arranger for the Sonambiente Festival in Berlin. As a result, he was enlisted as a member of the Volksbühne’s ensemble, and since then, as musical director and composer, he has worked on around fifty productions, including eighteen by Frank Castorf, seven by Dimiter Gotscheff, and three by David Marton and Ulrich Rasche. His collaboration with Alexander Kluge has been shown at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, lit.COLOGNE, Belvedere 21 in Vienna, and the Venice Biennale. His solo installation Begone Dull Care, composed of musical instruments and image sequences generated by gaming cam­eras, was shown at the Volksbühne’s Grüner Salon in 2018.

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Documentation

Motion Tracking Performance P

Made using Microsoft Kinect V2, Processing 3.3.6, Three.js r116 and Ableton Suite 9 Recorded in the Berliner Volksbuehne, Spring 2020 Note: Because at this distance the HD camera only occasionally registers the single-pixel ‘stars’ gyrating along with the squares, this video falls a little short of the full bejeweled effect you’d get live. For an example in full detail purely of the graphics being projected, refer to  Sir Henry: Cosmic  I hope you get the idea though.

Part of a viewer-activated motion sensor installation “Travelogue of an Astrophysical Neutrino” Music: Thomas Tallis’ Spem in Alium

A Kinect v2 motion sensor camera acting as a theremin, directed by my left hand, plays up and down arpeggios of chords specified by my right, in the Volksbühne production Howl directed by David Marton, November 2019

Motion Tracking Installations

Begone Dull Care, composed of virtual musical instruments and image sequences generated by gaming cam­eras, was shown at the Volksbühne’s Grüner Salon in April 2018.

Generative AI

MidiMulch is an early AI program I wrote in 2015 that takes a set of MIDI files collected by the user (in this case MIDI files of Prokofiew orchestral works), slices them all up into tranches of a user-determined length, standardizes the instrument/channel allocation and then throws the tranches in the air like a deck of cards and rechains them together based on which notes end each tranch, or the instrument channels last used. The funny similarity to AI is that it’s based not on understanding the engine of the car, but simply imitating its exhaust.

The quirkier the tranch time length, as in the example here of 1.5 quarter notes, the more quirky and exciting and entirely original the result can be. The longer the tranch time length chosen, the greater the risk of spewing out entire passages of known Prokofiew tunes. Also, given only one MIDI file in the bank to go on, the program will spew out the original file — in light of the insufficient input we can then give it the mystifying attribute of ‘learning’. 

MidiMulch is being run on JGrasp through LoopBe30 out to my own synthestra on Ableton Live in this video.

Musical Direction and Composition

Directed and written by Amy Carolyn Stebbins. Music: Sir Henry Libretto: Amy Stebbins. Starring Patrik Cieslik, Claudia Renner, Sir Henry. Set and costume design: Belén Montoliú. Video design: Valle Döring. Dramaturgy: Änne-Marthe Kühn. Presented at the Neukoellner Oper, Berlin, Germany. Recorded on the 22.06,2023.

A musical reading of Offenbach’s operetta reduced to one hour, with special verses by Karl Kraus. Performed by Boris Eder and Sir Henry. Musical Direction and Arrangement: Sir Henry Dramaturg: Claus Philipp.
Performed in German at the Odeon Theater in Vienna for the Wiener Festwochen, the 9th of June 2024.



Filmed in 2008 at the Volksbühne, Berlin. Directed by David Marton. Arrangements by Sir Henry. Music of Alban Berg, Harold Arlen, Gary Numan. With Max Hopp, Jelena Kuljić, Sir Henry.

Wilhelm Meister: Eine Theatralische Sendung premiered in 2010 (Frankfurt). Directed by Ulrich Rasche. Musical Arrangements and M.D.: Sir Henry. Costumes: Bernd Skodzig Music in this fragment is a composite of Louis Bourgeois, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Hugo Wolf.

Actual music start: 0:55. Directed by Dimiter Gotscheff. Music Composition, Mus.Dir.: Sir Henry Set: Kathrin Brack. Hallein, Austria, 2007. I wrote this on a napkin in the cantine of the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg. I tried to make a sort of Baroque D Major Trumpet Fanfare as endless as possible. – Sir Henry

Piano Music

I arranged a Liberacified excerpt of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 for piano as the overture for Sartre’s ‘Dirty Hands’ under the direction of Frank Castorf, which premiered in February 1998 in the Volksbühne Berlin.

My absolute best piano mashups and transmogrifications of standards from the earlier part of the 20th century. At about the time of these recordings Eartha Kitt came up to me at the baby grand of Teddy’s, the King Edward Hotel bar in Toronto, and said, “I just want you to know that I truly appreciate what you’re trying to do”.

Excerpt out of Sardanapal, directed by Fabian Hinrichs – Sir Henry and members of the Georg-Friedrich-Händel-Gymnasium Youth Symphony Orchestra, Berlin. Conducted by Knut Andreas. Frédéric Chopin, Piano Concerto No. 1, I. ritenuto-agitato (finale). Premiere: Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 20.04.2023. Longer excerpt here.

For a more complete listing of Sir Henry’s work, please visit:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Henry

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