I first met Tom around 1999 when he played his Chord Catalog on piano in the Insel Music Festival in Berlin. He gave a nice short talk before playing the piece. Afterwards Viviana and I spoke with him and his wife, the artist Esther Ferrer, and they invited us to visit them if we would happen to come to Paris, which we did. Tom cooks well. I asked Esther which of Tom's percussion solos she likes best, to which she answered Nine Bells, so I decided I would learn that one first.
I knew that Tom had used fire alarm bells and Matthias Kaul had used hand bells for the piece. I couldn't find alarm bells with the right notes, I didn't think I would get a good sound from tubular bells, and I wanted a long resonance. I decided I would make my own bell plates and shine them up so that they make nice reflections, either of me as I walk by or especially of the light and shadows, which would move when I hit the bell plates. In my version, since the bell plates are basically only "two dimensional," it is best if the audience is only at the front and back of the piece. Using bell plates means some of the movements are more difficult since one cannot play the instruments from an angle or from the side. However, they allow me to get different sounds from them so that I can distinguish the separate patterns by a characteristic sound, as well as the tempo and dynamics that Tom writes.