The International Nothing

The International Nothing is a Berlin-based duo of clarinetists Kai Fagaschinski and Michael Thieke, active since the mid-2000s. Their practice is defined by an extreme reduction of means: the duo plays only long, sustained tones on clarinet, working with the micro-differences in pitch and timbre between the two instruments to produce slowly shifting interference patterns and acoustic beating.

Their music is not improvised in the conventional sense — performances are structured through careful pre-planning and attentive listening — but it achieves an openness and fragility that aligns it with the tradition of lowercase sound.