At the Ramsgate festival of sound in Kent, composer and experimental musician Chase Coley presented a performance featuring a rare long-stringed instrument, captivating an audience with an unusual soundscape. The event took place in an outdoor square, where guitar strings were stretched from a piano to a nearby tree approximately 20 meters away, creating an unconventional setup that redefined typical musical expectations.

Coley, who described his planned performance as lasting 12 to 15 minutes followed by a question-and-answer session, began by manipulating the strings with violin rosin-coated fingers. Rather than producing traditional melodies, his technique generated eerie, resonant tones where the piano served as a large-scale resonator and the tree itself became part of the instrument’s physical structure. The long-stringed instrument, originally invented by American experimental luthier Ellen Fullman in 1980, remains exceedingly rare, with only a handful of people—including Fullman, Dutch musician Yuri Landman, and Coley—known to play it.

The interaction between performer and audience revealed widespread curiosity about the instrument’s mechanics and sound characteristics. Attendees asked whether plucking the strings produced sound, to which Coley explained the physics involved: the instrument operates with longitudinal sound waves rather than the more familiar transverse waves generated by plucking. Others noted the uncanny resemblance of the echoing tones to the Star Wars theme, a connection Coley attributed to the abstract and otherworldly nature of the sounds.

While Coley appeared to be the only long-stringed instrument player currently active in the United Kingdom, the audience’s inquiries extended to motivations behind the creation and performance of such an unconventional piece. The answer emerged through the music itself as an exploration of “just to see what will happen,” blending elements of music, science, performance art, and installation into a single experiential event. The performance’s ambiguity left it open to interpretation depending on one’s engagement, whether brief or extended.

One audience member humorously requested a rendition of “Wonderwall,” to which Coley responded with tentative willingness but the request was declined as a joke. The evening emphasized the spirit of curiosity and the willingness to embrace confusion and experimentation that runs through this niche field of musical artistry. Though the instrument remains challenging to master, the festival’s atmosphere underscored a collective participation in discovery—as vocalized by Coley’s final comment that while only he could play the instrument, everyone could contribute in their own way, akin to having “some maracas.”