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The Chrysalis Foundation Supporting a Musical Renaissance for the Twenty-first Century
Robert Henri, American painter and art teacher, wrote this passage in a 1915 letter
to his students: There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom. If one could but recall his vision by some sort of sign! It was in this hope that the arts were invented. Signposts on the way to what may be… Signposts toward greater knowledge…
We are drawn to the works of art left for us by past masters, even as we
continue to create new ones for our fellows and ourselves in the present. We go to these signposts for direction,
encouragement, inspiration. We long
for the glimpses they give us behind the material wall, into the intangible. We seek clues in them, like fingerprints of
the invisible. Through them, we sense
the mysterious fields and forces that infuse our physical reality, and continue to
exist beyond it.
This website is designed to
introduce you to the work of Cris Forster;
inventor, builder, composer, musician — creator of extraordinary signposts. He has spent the past 30 years designing
and building an orchestra of original acoustic instruments, then using their unique
timbres and expanded tunings to compose a contemporary American music. He has written a book, Musical Mathematics:
A Practice in the Mathematics of Tuning Instruments and Analyzing Scales, which
successfully builds a bridge between the lands of Science and Art. He is now in the process of composing a
major theatre piece for musicians and dancers, scored for the entire ensemble of
instruments, entitled Ellis Island/Angel
Island: A Vision of the American Immigrants.
The Chrysalis Foundation has championed Cris Forster’s work since 1982. In the fall of 2002, we entered a new phase
of our existence by signing the lease on a 2500 square-foot building in San
Francisco's SOMA district. The
Foundation's new studio is quiet, secure, well-lit, and wide open; a perfect home for the instruments. This is a place where Cris can compose,
musicians can rehearse, and you can gather with us to experience innovative and
enlightening music. Heidi Forster, President |