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| ACKAMOOR,
IDRIS ADAMS, JOHN LUTHER ALBERTS, ARMENO ALBERTANO, LINDA ALBURGER, SCOTT ALLEN, BUKKA ALLEN, JO HARVEY ALLEN, TERRY ALLISON, JAY ALLS, JAMES ALLYN, JERRI AMIRKHANIAN, CHARLES APPLE, JACKI ARCOS, BETTO ARS ACUSTICA ASCHAK AUINGER, SAM |
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| ACKAMOOR, IDRIS | |
| See Jones, Rhodessa, "Big Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women." top | |
| ADAMS, JOHN LUTHER | |
| Earth
and the Great Weather (1990)
A work about the sonic geography of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
in northeastern Alaska, and about the voices of the elements. From the
texture of wind, rain and melting ice, flowing water, animal cries and
birdsong, emerges the sound of drums playing the pulsing 5/8 and 7/8
beats of Inupiaq Eskimo drumming. At other times, the deep whooshing
of bullroarers and the ethereal voices of aeolian harps grow out of
the sounds and recede again. And within this sonic space, the voices
of a woman and two men talking and reciting in English, Latin, and Inupiaq—leading
us toward the Eskimo shaman's song from which the piece derives its
title. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
JOHN LUTHER ADAMS has made his home in the boreal forest near Fairbanks, Alaska for the past 20 years. From there he has created a unique musical world grounded in the elemental landscapes and indigenous cultures of the North. Adam's music embraces a wide
range of media (including works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, radio,
film and television) and is recorded on the Cold Blue, New World and
New Albion labels. Three new recordings are scheduled for release in
2002-03 on Cold Blue, New World and Mode.
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|
| ALBERTS, ARMENO | |
| Reminiscence
de la Musique Concrète (1990)
An homage to some of the masters of musique concrète. Composed
of processed excerpts from such works as Etudes des bruits by Henry
Schaeffer, Diamorphoses II by Yannis Xenakis and Exit Music II by Kenneth
Gaburo, the piece is shaped into a surreal voyage through the early
days of electronic music. It features two "story lines" that interact
and complement one another: a machine sound line—evolving literally
from machine sounds into more instrument-like elements; and a human
voice line—evolving from nonlinguistic sounds to a "conversation."
Commissioned by Dutch National Radio (NOS).
ARMENO ALBERTS (Hilversum, Holland) studied piano at the Conservatory in Arnhem and electronic composition at the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht. An editor for contemporary music at Dutch radio VPRO's Channel 4, Alberts also composes music for traditional instruments, and creates electronic tape compositions and radio pieces. Currently, his main interest is in the relationship between music and visual arts. He is the artistic director of VPRO's International Audio Art Project. top |
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| ALBERTANO, LINDA | |
| See Apple, Jacki, "Redefining Democracy in America, Parts 1, 2, and 3: Episodes in Black and White." top | |
| ALBURGER, SCOTT | |
| A
Sound Education (1990)
(20:00) With visual artist Ward Tietz. The work contains humorous and
informative lessons on speaking and writing English; on whistling as
a forgotten form of communication; on the past, present, and future
tenses. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
SCOTT ALBURGER (Philadelphia, PA) is a video and performance artist. He studied independently with composer Pauline Oliveros, performance artist Carolee Schneemann and sound artist Jackson Mac Low. For years he has made the human whistle an integral part of all his performances and video work. WARD TIETZ (Philadelphia, PA) is a visual artist who developed his concept of "word sculpture"—i.e., the objectification of words as sculpture which lexically addresses its environment—while an undergraduate in the creative writing department at Carnegie-Mellon University. He has received two commissions from the City of Providence, Rhode Island, to create temporary word sculpture installations in a large public park. The first of these was selected for a major retrospective exhibition on installation art in New England. top |
|
| ALLEN, BUKKA | |
| See Allen, Jo Harvey, "Every Three Minutes." | |
| ALLEN, JO HARVEY | |
| Every
Three Minutes (1989)
With Bukka Allen. Every three minutes in the U.S., a child is abused;
each day three children die from abuse. This is the story told by the
Allens, mother and son, making use of many hours of authentic material:
interviews with abused teenagers, statements by their abusers, stories
of neglected children recorded by themselves. The materials are combined
with statistics and original music by the two artists to shape a powerful
plea for humane treatment of children. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN
RADIO.
JO HARVEY ALLEN (Santa Fe, NM) came to national attention as a playwright/performer while touring her critically acclaimed plays Counter Angel, Hally Lou, and her one-woman show As It Is in Texas; and as actress and co-writer in her co-starring role as "The Lying Woman" in David Byrne's film True Stories. Her other film credits include Cold Sassy Tree, Fried Green Tomatoes, and The Client. Her most recent plays include collaborations with her husband, multimedia artist Terry Allen, in the opera Pioneer and in the avant-garde country and western musical Chippy, presented at the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia and at Lincoln Center in New York City. BUKKA ALLEN, a musician and songwriter, collaborated with Jo Harvey, Terry and Bale Allen in the critically acclaimed family play, Do You Know Where Your Children Are Tonight? He is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, and is currently the keyboard player for the highly acclaimed rock and roll group, The Ian Moore Band. top |
|
| ALLEN, TERRY | |
| Bleeder
(1990) A fictional audiobiography
of an enigmatic Texas gambler, religious fanatic, possible gangster,
magician, and hemophiliac. With a riveting voice performance by actress
Jo Harvey Allen and original music by Terry Allen. Commissioned by NEW
AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
Dug-Out (1993) The fictionalized history of two people: a man born in the late 1800s who runs away from home to play baseball, and a woman born in the early 1900s in a half-dugout (a small house partially built into the side of a slope or hill), who grows up to be a piano player and a beautician. Told by Terry Allen, Jo Harvey Allen, and Katie Koontz, with music by Terry Allen. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] Reunion (A Return to Juarez) (1992) Written as a movie screenplay, this work entails a series of simultaneous events — described from a variety of vantage points. Its four main characters: a Texas sailor, a Mexican prostitute, a Mexican-born pachuco (gangster) and his girl friend, an enigmatic "witch." Moving in violent motion through the modern-day American West, they are as much atmospheric conditions hurtling through space as they are human beings of flesh and bone. Told in a sonic environment of raw musics and sound effects, Reunion is a desperate journey across the borderlands of the American psyche, the dreams of surviving it and passing through the wilderness to the promised land . . . that hopeless rapture. Told by Jo Harvey Allen with music by Terry Allen. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] Torso Hell (1987) Written as a movie screenplay, Torso Hell's darkly surrealistic plot centers around the fate of four soldiers blown to pieces in Vietnam and brought back to life by "some weird miracle." The hero is literally a torso. A radio horror movie, Torso Hell is also a commentary on Hollywood Vietnam films. With voice performance by Terry Allen and Jacki Apple and original music by Allen. Created for Soundings, KPFK-FM, Los Angeles (host: Jacki Apple), and High Performance. [Listen] TERRY ALLEN (Santa Fe, NM) was born in Wichita, Kansas; raised in Lubbock, Texas. He studied at Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles and received a B.F.A. in 1966. He has been an independent artist since 1966 pursuing a wide variety of artistic interests, including musical and theatrical performance, sculpture, painting, drawing, video, radio works and installations that incorporate any and all of these media. From 1983-86 he worked almost exclusively on a body of work called Youth in Asia-pieces on the collective trauma we know as the war in Vietnam. His solo exhibits include: Big Witness (living in wishes) at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1989; A Simple Story (Juarez) at the Wexner Center for the Visual Arts, Columbus, OH; Publik Works at the Laumeier Sculpture Galley, St Louis, MO (1998); and Study Drawings by Terry Allen, Gallery 68, Austin TX (2001). His performance, Warboy (Dugout, Part 3 work-in-progress) was presented at the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX in 2002 and will be shown concurrently at L.A. Louver Gallery, Santa Monica Museum of Art & LACMA Institute of Art & Culture, Los Angeles, CA in 2004. Dugout (Part 1), an installation, was exhibited at Pillsbury/Peter Fine Art, Dallas, TX (2002). In addition to his numerous one-man and group exhibitions, stage performances and music recordings, Allen produced four major works for NEW AMERICAN RADIO. He is the recipient of National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in 1970, 1978, 1985; Awards in Visual Arts (AVA), 1982; Guggenheim Fellowship, 1986; Bessie Award, New York, 1986 and numerous others; and was inducted into The Buddy Holly "Walk of Fame" Lubbock, Texas in 1997. (12/02) top |
|
| ALLISON, JAY | |
| Hide
and Seek (1989)
(3:04) With Christina Egloff. A dreamlike encounter with a chimpanzee
who communicates in sign language.
Killer Whales (1989) (1:26) With Christina Egloff. Killer whales and what they sound like. Noah's Ark (1989) With Christina Egloff. And the question is: do animals suffer when they die in the slaughterhouse or don't they? And who's to say? JAY ALLISON (Woods Hole, MA) is one of the country's leading independent radio producers. Over the last eighteen years, often with his partner Christina Egloff, he has created hundreds of radio documentaries, dramas, special series, and audio art pieces for national and international broadcast, most often for National Public Radio's All Things Considered. Allison has won most of the major awards in the industry, including two Peabody's and the duPont-Columbia. He teaches radio production around the United States, helped create the Association of Independents in Radio, and is the founder and host of the Radio Producers Forum on the WELL computer conferencing system. He is also president of Cape and Islands Community Public Radio, an organization he founded to build a new community public radio station in his hometown on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Allison's essays have appeared in the New York Times Magazine and he is a special producer/reporter/ cameraman for ABC News Nightline. CHRISTINA EGLOFF (Woods Hole, MA) is a longtime producer for public radio. Often working in partnership with Jay Allison, she has created dozens of documentaries and special series for National Public Radio and other venues. She also works as a consultant and editor for other public radio producers. Her collaborations and productions have won numerous broadcasting awards, including the Clarion, CPB, AIR, and Ohio State. Egloff also writes, produces, and consults in film and television. top |
|
| ALLS, JAMES | |
| Oppidan
Skew (1992-93)
(20:00) A sound exploration of a uniquely Philadelphia phenomenon: "From
Alexis de Tocqueville to W. C. Fields to David Lynch, people have come
away (from Philadelphia) with such strongly negative impressions that
it hardly seems reasonable to blame it on the city alone. Yet they do—even
the people who live here. New Yorkers may hate the fast-paced enormity
and danger of their city, but they take pride in the fact that they
endure it. In Philadelphia you see intense loyalty to the neighborhoods
that make up the city, but a distinct loathing for the city as a whole."
(Alls) An eerie and humorous sound composition. Commissioned by NEW
AMERICAN RADIO.
JAMES ALLS received his B.A. in communications from Temple University in 1990. Since then he has collaborated with a number of independent media producers in various aspects of sound production, and produced music for various community-based organizations in the city. He is currently employed as technical coordinator at the Neighborhood Film/Video Project, a media arts center in West Philadelphia. Opidan Skew is his first work for radio. top |
|
| ALLYN, JERRI | |
| American
Dining: A Working Woman's Moment (1989)
Drawing from her own experience as a waitress, Allyn creates song-narratives
that offer fascinating insights into a world usually unnoticed by customers—the
bizarre and very human world of the over-worked waitress. It's a world
of men showing off their improvisational genius for sexual word play;
of ambiguous relationships to the union; a world where an old and forgotten
lady, who once introduced American radio audiences to broccoli is rediscovered.
Combining perceptive writing with a skillful delivery, a folksy sound
score by Bob Davis of Earwax Productions, and a delightful sense of
down-home humor, this work will change your image of American diners
and their waitresses forever. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
American Dining: A Working Woman's Moment (Part 2) (1991) Jerri Allyn returns to bring us more stories about waitressing. Perceptive and skillful, with a delightful sense of humor. Angels Have Been Sent To Me (1991) With soundscore by Helen Thorington. Poignant and humorous stories about Allyn's ninety-year old immigrant grandmother, Maria Alvarez, and her cronies in a critical care home. Interwoven with music and hospital sounds: wheelchairs, medical equipment, alarms, and the voices of patients and staff. Allyn's insightful writing and skillful delivery, and Thorington's imaginative sound score are reminders that there are human beings behind the health care budget. And that they are as alive and passionate about their existence as any one of us. [Listen] Religious Obscenity (1991) (5:17) A selection from Allyn's series of performance commentaries on censorship. Allyn reflects on the contradictory relations between Christian worship, art censorship, and bilingual education. With sound by Helen Thorington. JERRI ALLYN (New York, NY) creates interactive installations and performance art events that become a part of public life and build connections with various audiences and the art world. An artist and educator with 20 years of experience introducing contemporary art to new publics, the artist develops structures that allow for participation and a spectrum of opinions to be voiced. Raised in the North East and trained on the West Coast, Allyn has been influenced by the Art / Life Performance School of Thought that seeks to blur the lines between high art and real life. Allyn has additionally embraced the objectives of the Feminist Art Movement, which strives to raise issues, invite dialogue and ultimately transform culture. Grant funded and commissioned for 20 years, most
of Allyn's work is in a narrative or storytelling form and deals with
communication theory. The artist strives for aesthetic innovations,
incorporating historical facts, contemporary insights, community views
and a satiric wit. The adage "the personal is political" continues
to fuel her work - the synthesis of "lived experience" resonating
with timely social concerns. In allegiance to no particular medium,
Allyn uses the most appropriate form, depending on the ideas and intentions
of a piece, working extensively in site specific public performance
and installation art; audio, video, electric signs, and billboards;
artists books, graphic multiples and page art. Brought up a Quaker, the artist continues to be an
activist, most recently advocating for national policies on culture
and art education. Allyn received a Masters of Art in Art and Community
from Goddard College, Vermont, through an independent study at the Los
Angeles, California campus. Two years were spent on studio art, research
about new forms, and 20th century art and community art movements through
The Feminist Studio Workshop at The Woman's Building: A Public Center
for Women's Culture. The program included a cross-disciplinary, multi-cultural
pedagogy in Women's Studies. In her third year, Allyn participated in
an innovative Teacher
Training Program that introduced progressive methodologies
and strategies to have students realize their creative potential by: drawing
out the individual voice and rich variety of multi-cultural experiences
among students through experiential exercises. |
|
| AMIRKHANIAN, CHARLES | |
| Mental
Radio (1994)
Classic radiophonic proto-rap with America's lost practitioner of text-sound
composition. The work includes a 100th birthday salute to musicologist
Nicolas Slonimsky, who achieved the century mark on 27 April 1994 in Los
Angeles. Mental Radio is a retrospective of Amirkhanian's classic analog
speech tapes along with some recent Synclavier digital updates: Radii
(1971), Chu Lu Lu (1991), Just (1972), Heavy Aspirations (1973), Vers
Les Anges (1990), Dot Bunch (1981), and Mugic (1974). Produced especially
for NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] Miatsoom (Reunion) (1997) Miatsoom explores the composer's ancestral roots and American heritage through the eyes of his 77 year old father, Benjamin Vresh Amirkhanian, who visited the ancestral home with his son for the first time in 1995.Incorporating many sounds recorded in Armenia, and manipulated on a Synclavier digital synthesizer, Miatsoom is a sound-music composition akin to an oriental carpet of textures and images from this ancient culture. [Listen] Pas de Voix (Portrait of Samuel Beckett, 1987) (1986-87) "An impressionistic, cyclical, narrative sound portrait, touching on various aspects of Samuel Beckett's life." (Amirkhanian) Created from ambient recordings of the lobby of Beckett's apartment building, the open-air Metro stop across the street, the bells of Notre Dame, a sound sculpture, plus some extended-technique electric guitar sounds and a selection of sonic bodily functions. Commissioned by Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne, Germany. Politics as Usual (1989) A series of audio explorations incorporating both abstract (instrumental) and representational (ambient) sounds, processed in the synclavier studio of Henry Kaiser. Featured are the gong collections of Lou Harrison and Toni Marcus and an assortment of talking parrots. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] Walking Tune (A Room-Music for Percy Grainger) (1986-87) An homage to Australian-American composer Percy Grainger. Grainger's Walking Tune for solo piano was conceived in 1900 during a tramp through the Scottish Highlands. In this work, Amirkhanian uses the Synclavier digital synthesizer—a tool Grainger would have embraced eagerly—to combine sounds recorded out-of-doors (tramping in Utah; the shriek of geese; a swarm of humming birds)with musical sound. And he shapes a sensual and powerful sound-music piece that is true to Grainger's own song of praise to the natural world. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] CHARLES AMIRKHANIAN (El Cerrito, CA) was born January 19, 1945, in Fresno, California, composer, percussionist, sound poet and radio producer Charles Amirkhanian is a leading practitioner of electroacoustic music and text-sound composition. He is widely known for his live and taped works utilizing speech (or sound poetry) elements in rhythmic patterns resembling percussion music. His Ka Himena Hehena (The Raving Mad Hymn, 1997) for tape and four voices speaking in classical Hawaiian was premiered by the Ensemble Intercontemporain at Cité de la Musique in Paris on December 19, 1998. In his recent works, produced with the Synclavier and Kurzweil digital synthesizers, Amirkhanian incorporates sampled acoustic environmental sounds (which he calls "representational sounds") and traditional musical pitched sounds ("abstract sounds") to develop dreamscapes which act as disjunctive narratives, evoking a world of memory-triggers which induce a trance-like listening state. Sounds are chosen both for purposes of reference to a subject and for their sculptural and gestural beauty. His Walking Tune (A Room-Music for Percy Grainger), is perhaps the most important example of this genre, combining natural sounds recorded in Grainger's native Australia with haunting violin melodies and fragments of a J.C. Bach aria. The piece was commissioned by New American Radio in 1987 and released by Starkland Records on Amirkhanian's first solo CD in 1998, along with four other selections. Other works have been commissioned by the West German Radio (Cologne), the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio VPRO (Netherlands), New American Radio, Swedish Radio/Fylkingen, the 1984 Summer Olympics, Radio Luxembourg, the Arch Ensemble, and choreographers Anna Halprin, Bill T. Jones, Margaret Fisher, Nancy Karp, and Richard Alston of Ballet Rambert (London). His music has been recorded on Starkland Records,
Centaur, 1750 Arch Records, CRI, Perspectives of New Music, Giorno Poetry
Systems, Fylkingen Records (Sweden), S Press and Wergo (Germany), OU
Records (England), Ars Electronica (Austria), Baobab and "Music
for Swimming across the Pacific" (Italy) and Empreintes Digital
(Canada). |
|
| APPLE, JACKI | |
| The
Amazon (1985)
(13:08) From The Amazon, The Mekong, The Missouri, and The Nile, a four-part
work exploring language and colonization. This collaboration between
audio/performance artist Jacki Apple and composer Bruce Fowler is a
rich mix of "animal" vocalizations, human incantations, Brazilian instrumentation,
and Fowler's haunting trombone. A powerful evocation of the destruction
of nature and culture. (#15,90 with Moss and Whitehead)
Fluctuations of the Field (1989) (10:20) Drawing upon texts by leading theoretical physicists, this piece is a hypnotic incantation that transforms scientific theory into a poetic cosmic narrative, a fluctuating field of sonic waves and textual particles in which form and content, matter and mind are interchangeable. With music by Ruben Garcia, and Harold Lott's Spirits of the Drum. Frenzy in the Night (1990) With writer, performer Keith Antar Mason. Frenzy in the Night is about growing up black and male in America, finding your own voice and becoming an artist, the pain of racism, and the dream of freedom. It is a spiritual quest for cultural and personal affirmation. A poetic suite in three parts, it traverses the American landscape from the "banks of the muddy Mississippi" of Mason's St. Louis boyhood, through a mythical "free state of Illinois," to his artistic coming of age in the "boom box of L.A." Mason's provocative, emotionally charged text is set in Apple's lush cinematic sonic landscape of West African tribal drums and wailing jazz saxophones, riverboats, police sirens, street rappers, birds, all caught in the ebb and flow of the river that is replaced by the freeway, as it travels from a bittersweet blues in the night to an urban frenzy. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] One Word at a Time (1993) The Traveler "clicks" through twenty three "stories" set in sonic spaces that shape a virtual journey exploring consciousness, life, art, language, the universe, and the whole ball of wax. . . Composed of discrete yet linked vignettes, geographies, inhabitants, information, instructions, conversations, and cross referencing wordplays, situated in real and imaginary time, real and virtual space, that can be traveled through along any number of paths as we explore how thought materializes in the world, how we perceive, understand, and communicate the nature of our existence and what we define as "reality." This solo piece evolved from the narrative work, Going Between, by Helen Thorington which became Going Between\One Word at a Time\Docs**, a collaborative performance duet with Helen Thorington at the 1993 On The Air Festival, Transit Art/ORF, Austria. Palisade: A Cliffhanger in Five Acts (1987) Set in the precarious emotional terrain between the thought (the disembodied voice) and the act (the vocal body), a fractured "narrative" traverses male-female relationships on the edge of a cliff. Accounts assemble and reassemble as remembered, as imagined, as desired, as perceived, as experienced. In riveting vocal and musical performances Jacki Apple, Jeff McMahon, and David Moss create a quick-cutting montage of cinematic images counterpointing evocative interior texts set in a dissonant soundscape. Produced and directed by Jacki Apple as a site specific performance spectacle commissioned by the Santa Monica Arts Commission for the 1987 SMARTS Performance Festival, Santa Monica, California. Redefining Democracy in America, (1991-92) A six-part series confronting the deep schisms and contradictions in an America in crisis: includes, Parts 1, 2, & 3: Episodes in Black and White (1991) With collaborating writer/performers Linda Albertano, Keith Antar Mason, and Akilah Nayo Oliver. Raises questions about who speaks, who is listened to, who is heard, who is silenced, and how that has shaped our present social reality. In various poetic and narrative forms underscored by sound and music, the two black and two white Los Angeles artists explore issues of race, sex, money, power, drugs, family, children, violence, language and censorship. Interior voices of hope, rage, despair, tenderness, indignation, pain, pride, fear, desire, angels, and madmen are juxtaposed against the exterior voices of "the witness," "the reporter," and "the judge." The social and creative process of making art together played an important part in the development of this powerful and uncompromisingly honest multicultural piece. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. Parts 4 & 5: The Voices of America 1992 (1992) With KPFK-FM, Los Angeles. Posed the questions "What would you say to your fellow citizens if you were running for president? What should we aspire to and how should we get there?" In the fourth and fifth parts of this series, Americans across the political and cultural spectrum speak out on education, the environment, racism, greed, government, the power elite, spiritual values, and more, as they struggle to articulate a vision for our future. Their voices, compiled from two months of on-air listener call-ins at KPFK (before and after the L.A. "uprisings") with additional contributions from KPFT, Houston, orchestrated into a multilayered montage of hopes, dreams, frustrations, angers, and fears, spanning the distance from utopian ideals to cynical pessimism. Part 6: A Leap of Faith (1992) With writer, performer Keith Antar Mason. A (white) Euro-American woman and a (black) African-American man born in America in the middle of the twentieth century on opposite sides of the dividing line, take us on an imaginary journey through time as they wait for the ghost train in the place where our dreams are born and die. They traverse a landscape that reveals the schisms between official history, memory, and experience, as we eavesdrop on their private conversations in post-rebellion Los Angeles. . .This piece is, in part, a personal response to the conditions, events, and rhetoric surrounding the L.A. "uprisings" of 1992, and an attempt to place such events in both a broader historical and intimate personal context. [Listen] Soundings (1993) A portrait of Apple's long-running (1986-95) weekly one-hour live radio show, featuring performance and audio art at KPFK-FM, Pacifica Radio, Los Angeles. With commentary by Apple and the voices of Anna Hommler, David Moss, Meredith Monk, and others. Swan Lake (1989) A satiric, ironic film noire "ballet" for radio, the original Swan Lake narrative is recast and resituated amidst the glittering surfaces and dark underside of late eighties Los Angeles where dreams are manufactured in medialand, art and entertainment tongue kiss, the third world coexists in a parallel realm, and the weather is unnatural. Using radio as a cinematic medium, Apple's remake employs various pop genres including Raymond Chandler's detective novels, TV fashion commercials, and a sensational murder trial. This filmic version is about seduction, voyeurism, and the consumption of images, with the Swan playing the part of Art. The lush romanticism of Tchaikovsky's original ballet music is juxtaposed against a percussive, techno-eclectic, edgy filmscore by L.A. composers Joseph Berardi and Kira Vollman. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] The Culture of Disappearance (1991) A radio "opera" about extinction, and the conditions of loss and denial endemic to industrial and post-industrial society. It is a dirge for the exterminated species of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a grieving. It raises questions about the terms of human survival in a social order that defines us as "separate," and reveals how those values are manifested in our socio-economic and political relations -- i.e., conquest vs. cohabitation, consumption without regeneration. We eradicate cultural memory just as we eliminate species. The sung "mass" of names of the dead from insects to languages is sometimes obliterated by the relentless pounding of machinery. Embedded in the litany are anecdotes of annihilation. The Garden Planet Revisited (1982/1992) Past and present history resonate through ruins of the future as American astronaut Captain Charlie, a paragon of late twentieth century technological man, hurtles through time and space. Stranded on a station, abandoned and alone, he is on a mission without end. Simultaneously, the Inhabitants of an unnamed place search amongst the architectural remains, gather stories, rumors, myths from Messengers and Witnesses, as they try to reconstruct what happened in the time before "the cities shifted and the Earth turned." Is it a memory, a dream, a hallucination, a prophecy? Originally presented as a thirteen scene, hour-long multimedia performance written, with music by trombonist Bruce Fowler, the audio was edited and remastered by Apple as a twenty-eight minute work for radio in 1992. [Listen] Voices in the Dark (1991) A radio work for outer and inner space, in four sections. The cosmos is an audio archive of information broadcast to the stars, a repository of human (and perhaps other) histories in which time melts and language dissolves into signals. All those "voices" traversing the universe looking for a pick-up! Imagine gridlock in the big data bank in outer space. Voices in the Dark is about interstellar conversations, radio waves, and sonic archaeology. Is there anyone listening and how do they interpret what they hear? How do we/they distinguish between real events and people, and media-generated fictions? Are we the "they"? We say we want to make contact with the Other, when in fact what we search for is a mirror of ourselves. This composition combines a narrative text with various musical, vocal, and sound components snatched from the airwaves, overdubbed, sampled, remixed, and electronically orchestrated. [Listen] You Don't Need A Weatherman (1997) was inspired by the great floods of the past four years, particularly those in the heartland of the midwestern United States; by images of Grand Forks, North Dakota, and by Mississippi blues. "You don't need a weatherman, when the ram's a comin down, and the street is like a river, runnin through the town ... " The physical forces of nature slam headlong into human will and the constructs of our imagination from Noah to the Red River to Europa, from lost Atlantis to the southwest desert. Along the way, the artifacts of lives and cultures float to the surface like pieces of a picture puzzle. Read the signs, listen to the wind, and watch the skies. JACKI APPLE (Los Angeles, CA) Spanning more than three decades, the 70s in New York and the 80s and 90s in Los Angeles, visual, performance and media artist, audio composer, writer, director, and producer Jacki Apple's diverse artistic career has encompassed a wide range of media and forms—interdisciplinary performance, multimedia installations, audio, radio, video, film, photography, artist books, drawings, conceptual works, and commissioned public art works. Her works have been performed, exhibited, and broadcast in art spaces, galleries, museums, theaters, festivals, on radio and cable TV throughout the United States and Canada, and in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. In addition to creating her
own pieces, Apple has also produced other artists works. From 1982-95,
she was the independent producer/ host of Soundings, a weekly one hour
radio show featuring performance and audio art, new music and interviews,
at KPFK-FM, Pacifica Radio, Los Angeles. In 2000 she conceived and produced
EARJAM Music Festival, which has since become an annual festival.
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|
| ARCOS, BETTO | |
| See Gomez-Pena, Guillermo, "I Don't Speak English Only, Vato!"; "Menage-a Trade"; and "Temple of Confessions." top | |
| ARS ACUSTICA | |
| ARS ACUSTICA SPECIAL #1 is comprised of two sound works that deal with the theme of 'water': Water Memories (16:30) by Nicola Sani was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's "Pensieri", a painting that expressed an idea of the rapport between the life of man and the passing of time, symbolized by the continuous flow of water. The acoustic material of this radiophonic composition consists of electronically altered water sounds, and other natural and electronic instrumental sounds that are reminiscent of the sound qualities of water and its particular timbre. A metaphorical story emerges. It is as if on its endless journey through history, the flowing water collected sounds - that were transformed into poetic vision by the composer - and can now be relived by his listeners. My Whale Is Still Alive (9:30) is created from the sounds of water, whales, wind and musical instruments. "My life, food and medicine: my whale. As long as my whale is well and alive so am I. My whale is still alive." NICOLA SANI was born in Ferrara, Italy, in 1961. His compositions include instrumental and electronic works as well as operas and multimedia projects on which he has collaborated with many of today's leading directors and visual artists, such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Nam June Paik and Mario Sasso. From 1986-88, Sani organized the music section of the Electronic Arts Festival in Cameriono, Italy, and since 1993 he's directed the electronic arts program of the Roma Europa Festival in Rome. He presently hosts a series of classical music programs for RAJ Radio. MIKKO LAAKSO (Helsinki, Finland) has been a sound engineer in television for 20 years and a sound designer and creator of special effects for Yleisradio's Special Productions Department since 1981. Laakso has also realized several performances with the sonic arts group, ProTon, in Finland and abroad, and participated in the European Broadcasting Union's Ars Acustica Program Exchange. ARS ACUSTICA SPECIAL #2 is comprised of the following two works: Working Day (5:50) by Igor Lesnik is a musicalized sound-picture of a day in a musician's life: from waking and morning rush hour to the evening concert and cleaning-up sounds late at night. A commission of HRT, Radio Croatia. Shifted Spirits (21:00) by Ragnar Grippe is a composition that uses words and phrases spoken by people who escaped persecution in their own countries and came to Sweden in order to survive. They had no knowledge of their new homeland's language, and it had no inherent meaning or semantic value for them. In Shifted Spirits, the composer alludes to this experience by exposing the listeners of his work to languages they do not understand. In the process, the words take on a musical quality which only the lack of understanding can give them. IGOR LESNIK (Zagreb, Croatia) was born in 1956. The founder and leader of the "Supercussion" and "Jazzbina" ensembles, he is also an orchestral musician, solo performer, producer and composer. Lesnik teaches percussion at the Zagreb Academy of Music, and is a member of the Croatian Radio and TV Symphony Orchestra. RAGNAR GRIPPE (Stockholm, Sweden) was born in 1951. He studied cello and music history in Stockholm and composition in Paris and Montreal. His compositions range from electroacoustic music in conjunction with ballet and feature films, to chamber music and symphonies. ARS ACUSTICA SPECIAL #3 is comprised of two works that deal with water-related themes: Gefion (11:10) (1997) by Morten Carlson was first performed as a sound installation at the Gefion Fountain in the center of Copenhagen, Denmark. It illustrates an old Nordic legend: After the god Odin had settled on a Danish island, he desired more land. He sent his young daughter Gefion north to search for it. When Gefion came to the court of the Swedish king Gylfe, the king promised her as much land as she could plough in one day and one night. The goddess transformed her four sons into oxen, who ploughed out a patch of king Gylfe's land. This the goddess cast into the sea, where it became known as "Sealand" or Denmark. Composed of the sounds made by the Gefion Fountain, the radio version presented here, includes brief texts about the Gefion myth, performed in Old Norse and in Danish. Gefion is beautifully recorded and produced, and resonates with the spirit of the medieval myth. Ponte Del Molino (10:50) (1997) is a collaboration between Goetz Naleppa, Germany, and Inge Faarborg, Denmark. It tells of the destruction of a bridge near Naleppa's house in Italy during a flood and its subsequent reconstruction. The work is also a reflection on bridges build between people and on their destruction. With brief texts in German, English and Danish, and with the sounds of the river Prino in Liguria, Italy. Preceded by a brief interview (in English) with Naleppa. MORTEN CARLSON: bio not available at this time. GOETZ NALEPPA (Berlin, Germany) has been a freelance radio playwright and director as well as a staff editor at the radio drama department of DeutschlandRadio Berlin (formerly RIAS Berlin) for many years. INGE FAARBORG (Copenhagen, Denmark) is a staff editor at the radio drama department at Danish Radio. She is a member of the group overseeing the recently established radio art series at her station. Horizontal Radio #1 and #2 presents some of the most exciting samples from more than one hundred hours of radio programs produced and distributed world-wide in 1995. "Horizontal Radio" was a media art event organized by the Ars Acustica Group of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and developed in cooperation with TRANSIT (Austria), the radio art series "Kunstradio/ Radiokunst" (Art Radio/Radio Art) at Austrian Radio, and with many other international radio centers. The aim of this telematic simultaneous event was to clear the EBU broadcasting radius for a period of 24 hours in order to allow artists from all over the world to communicate through all currently available electronic means: satellite, internet, short wave radio, telephone etc. The underlying theme of the event: "Migration". More than 200 artists from Australia, Europe, and North America participated. "Horizontal Radio can neither be reconstructed nor documented. It is fleeting and unrepeatable. What remains is the memory in the minds of the participants/ users." (Heidi Grundmann, Austrian Radio). And yet, there is an imprint of acoustic memory in the samples presented here: Hearing them two years after the original event, they still convey a vivid sense of artistic possibility, playfulness and connection. |
|
| ASCHAK | |
| Theme—Repairing
the Elements of Rust (1993)
With poet Mbali Umchlaba Umoja and pannist Collin Mauge. Blends chants
and wails, rap music and the rhythm of steel drums, and poetry to celebrate
music and words as tools for cultural survival and healing. Commissioned
by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. (#6,93 with Levin, Postcards)
ASCHAK (Philadelphia, PA) is a painter, poet, and performer originally from Trinidad/Tobago. He has appeared as a performer throughout the United States, in South Korea, Germany, and Russia. He is co-founder of several artist organizations that promote art as a tool for affecting positive change. Collaborators: Trinidad born COLLIN MAUGE (Philadelphia, PA) is a pannist, who for the last twenty-seven years has developed both the art and concept of steel drum music. In Trinidad, he performed with such bands as The Silvertones, Motown, and most notably, The Steel Kings. Mauge has also toured the United States and Canada. More recently he has been involved in experimental work fusing steel pan with other musical instruments and voices. MBALI UMCHLABA UMOJA (Philadelphia, PA) is a poet whose work has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary magazines. She is also an art therapist. Mbali's stage performances include Tomorrow the Whirlwind, directed by Amira Baraka in New York City. She is the former host of The Spoken Word radio program on WXPN in Philadelphia, and she has been heard nationally on Pacifica Radio and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. top |
|
| AUINGER, SAM | |
| Resonance
(1995) With composer, musician Bruce
Odland. A fascinating series of short sonic compositions that make the
hidden hearable. Works include: (1) Rome: Traffic Mantra—"In an
installation in the Trajan Forum, three Roman amphorae were used as
resonators to transform the sounds of passing cars, busses, trucks,
and motorcycles into melodic pools of harmonics. A microphone inside
sent the real-time sound to a solar powered planet speaker placed in
the archway over an old Roman road." And, (2) Yampa—"On a rafting
trip down the Yampa River in Colorado we collected oar strokes, and
many types of wind, through the interface of a small wind harp." (the
artists) Uniquely expressive sound-music, with commentary by Bruce Odland,
edited and produced by Regine Beyer.
King of Time (1992) With composer, musician Bruce Odland. Explores different types of time: car time, metal time, water time, people time, linear and non-linear time. It communicates in the international language of sound. Recordings of the crumbling infrastructure of modern cities become a rhythmic alphabet spelling out the dance of metal time. Reiterative syllables of water strain at the strings of a demon harp interface, singing a song of water and stone time. Time tumbles like a fractal tree, backwards and forwards, through an electro-acoustical alphabet of sound removed from the impact of its function. King of Time is based on Russian futurist Velimir Khlebnikov's sound language of the future. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] SAM AUINGER (Linz, Austria) is a composer, musician, and conceptual artist who has realized many projects under the name of SWAP with Werner Pfeffer. Auinger has also presented several major installations, including, an interactive Sound Cosmology at Linz Castle on the Danube; and a Sonic Drama for the City of Salzburg on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Mozart's death—both with long-time collaborator, Bruce Odland. [see Odland, Bruce] top |
|
| B | |
| BACZEWSKA,
CHRISTINE BARBER, LLORENC BARNES, DAVID BARNETT, BONNIE BASSENGE, ULRICH BELGUM, ERIK BEYER, REGINE BIMSTEIN, PHILLIP KENT BOOK, LYNN BREITSAMETER, SABINE BRUNSON, WILLIAM |
|
| BACZEWSKA, CHRISTINE | |
| Radio
Alarm (1987) A "colloquial operetta"
commissioned by David Moss for his OpeRadio project in 1987 (with Thorington
and Whitehead). See How She Sorrows (1998) is "a colloquial operetta, drawing on events from my own life and on my acquisition of a Haitian Loa flag, a piece of religious folk art made of beads and sequins, visually representing a Loa (god/spirit). The Loa of my flag is Erzulie Danthor who, as I understand it, is the goddess of love in her dark incarnation. Though I relate to the flag as a piece of art, I cannot help but be affected by its visual imagery of hearts, knives and blood and by the almost palpable energy that emanates from the object. As well, the piece uses imagery relating to the Catholic female icon, the Virgin Mary, to address the larger issues of the personal nature of religious expression, succor in emotional turmoil and the reclamation of traditional elements in an idiolectic spirituality." - the artist Musically the composition explores the relationship between multiple vocal lines which build upon each other to form a textual audio landscape punctuated by loosely narrative lead voices. A stunning and deeply moving piece of music ritual. [Listen] Yoga (excerpt) (1998) is a choral piece that features the artist and members of her yoga class. It uses stringing pearls as a metaphore for breathing: each breath is a pearl. Optimally, a fine round, even parl, yet none canbe discarded no matter how rough or uneven. Like life... CHRISTINE BACZEWSKA (New York, NY) is a composer and vocal performer who uses the multitrack capabilities of the recording studio as an added compositional tool to produce solo, primarily vocal works. top |
|
| BARBER, LLORENC | |
| Vivos
Voco (1988)
An excerpt from Barber's composition for five bellfries. Commissioned
by the town of Valencia, Spain.
LLORENC BARBER (Spain) Biography unavailable. top |
|
| BARNES, DAVID | |
| Survivors
of Hama (1992)
With writer Martin Hebel. A docu-fiction with an original sound score
about the bombing of the Syrian city of Hama by its president Hafez
al-Assad in 1982. This massacre, which was intended to stop rebellious
dissent, killed thousands of innocent civilians and went almost completely
unnoticed by the Western media. The story is told through four fictitious
interviews with survivors and with Assad himself. The instrumentation
for the sound score includes experimental home-made percussion instruments,
Middle Eastern folk instruments, and electronic instruments. Commissioned
by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
DAVID BARNES (Philadelphia, PA) is a musician and composer who specializes in studio recording. He has written and recorded many scores for modern dance and theater groups, including Philadelphia's ZeroMoving Dance Company and Mum Puppet Theater. Barnes has also released ten albums of his compositions and songs. Many of his recent compositions include experimental percussion instruments which he designed and constructed from industrial materials such as PVC tubing, threaded rods, springs, and conduit piping. MARTIN D. HEBEL (Philadelphia, PA), writer. Hebel attended orthodox Jewish schools until he was seventeen, where he developed a strong interest in the politics and government of the contemporary Middle East. He has since studied art history at Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed a master's degree. Hebel spends a great deal of time grappling with issues of cultural identity and morality, and now and then he attempts to address them by writing about Middle Eastern matters. He has traveled and worked in Israel. top |
|
| BARNETT, BONNIE | |
| Goat Cheese (2:07) represents the artist's "foray into the duo format. .. " (Barnett). Playful and surprising. BONNIE BARNETT (Los Angeles, CA) teaches voice, tours with the Barnett Band and The Zone, and continues to produce such public events as her legendary "Tunnel Hum" . Barnett has toured Europe extensively playing at festivals in Germany, Holland and Switzerland. Her most recent works are duets with musicians Richard Wood and Nels Cline. |
|
| BASSENGE, ULRICH | |
| Euroanthem
(1990) (10:00) With playwright Herbert
Kapfer and students from twenty-nine countries. A composition that uses
as its raw material the names of leading politicians, greetings, currencies,
sayings, tongue twisters, and folk songs spoken in many European languages.
A witty and concrete pan-European vocal composition. Commissioned by
Bayerischer Rundfunk, Munich, Germany.
ULRICH BASSENGE (Germany) Biography unavailable. HERBERT KAPFER (Germany) Biography unavailable. top |
|
| BELGUM, ERIK | |
| Blodder
(1994) An experimental music/theater
piece for radio that exploits the untapped theatrical and musical potential
of a form of solo speech that gives the effect of simultaneous speech.
It presents multiple narrative views and repetitive narration in the
description of a convenience store robbery.
Blabber Mouth (1994-95) Live electronic music based on the counterintuitive notion that intelligible speech emerges from noise by continually increasing the restrictions placed on the sonic raw material of human vocal cords. Beginning with a wash of sound, the raw materials of my speech gradually transform from walls of phonemic screams into random linear combinations, from there into some semblance of words and, finally, into actual English words. Bounced Around (1995) (22:00) Tells the story of a head-on collision between an idealistic law student and a veteran policeman. It is another exploration of what Belgum calls "polyphonic storytelling," a technique that reveals multiple narrative aspects simultaneously. ERIK BELGUM (Minneapolis, MN) is a writer of experiential fiction and an audio artist. His fiction has been published in many literary journals, among them Chicago Review, Black Ice, and Caliban. Belgum's literary/audio/ soundtext works have been played throughout the United States, in concert, on radio, and on the CD audio magazine, Aerial. In 1994, he curated a concert of spoken word performance at the Walker Art Center. His international residencies include STEIM in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and the Banff Center for the Arts in Banff, Alberta, Canada. top |
|
| BEYER, REGINE | |
| Families
We Choose (1992)
Glimpses into the arrangements made by gays and lesbians of all ages and
ethnic backgrounds, who are living in long term relationships. A colorful,
poignant and humorous mosaic of voices, music, and sounds that reflect
on the home environment of its interviewees, the work deals with the myth
that gays and lesbians are "by nature beyond the family." It looks at
the reality of homosexual couples who are redefining kinship and constructing
new parenting models—in the context of the overall changing make-up
of the American family.
The Deaf Way, Parts l & 2 (1990) A look at another culture, another language, another way of life. In these programs, deafness is presented as a variant of the human condition with its own remarkable history, achievements, and resources and not as a pathological problem, or inferior existence. The producer talked with deaf people of all ages and professions. Some chose to use their voices, others preferred to use a sign language interpreter. She visited schools for the deaf, deaf clubs, and churches for the deaf, and she participated in many activities related to deafness, among them the conference and festival, The Deaf Way, held in Washington, D.C. in July 1989. In The Shadow of the Rings, Parts l & 2 (1997) traces the story of women in the Olympic (Summer) Games and in the Olympic Movement. Like snapshots in a personalized photo album -from Olympia, Greece, to Atlanta, Georgia -from one woman to another... Part 1: The Pioneers begins with a visit in the ancient stadium at Olympia, Greece, and a recollection of pioneering women athletes. It moves on to the modern games and stories told by the athletes themselves about training conditions for women in the 1920s; gender issues in the '40s; and life after the Games. Emotionally charged and reflective, informative and entertaining, The Pioneers includes the late U.S. gold medalist Helen Stephens (1936), Great Britain's Dame Mary Glen-Haig (1948), and the Dutch track and field legend, Fanny Blankers-Koen (1948). Part 2: The Next and the Now Generations follows the evolution of women athletes and officials on the Olympic playing fields from the 1950s through the volatile '60s and '70s to the current scene. An inspirational collage of voices from several countries, this program introduces administrators from the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland; and US gold medalists Sheryl Swoopes (basketball) and Dominique Dawes (gymnastics). Tunnel Works, Parts 1 and 2 (1998) is a docu-meditation on three related issues: on New York City's third water tunnel that will eventually replace the existing two; on water as a powerful, but finite resource; and on the nature of work as the construction of the tunnel powerfully reveals the ability of people in our society to work together and to cross lines of race, gender, and class as they accomplish tremendous tasks. With stories written and performed by 1997 Obie Award-winning artist, Marty Pottenger. REGINE BEYER (Berlin, Germany) was born and raised in Germany, where she produced over thirty documentaries for various public radio stations. She lived and worked in the U.S. as Associate Director of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. and Associate Producer of the NEW AMERICAN RADIO series from 1981 to 2002. While she continues to produce cultural documentaries (distributed independently and by National Public Radio), Beyer also gives workshops, curates radio art exhibits, and participates in international radio competitions and conferences. top |
|
| BIMSTEIN, PHILLIP KENT | |
| Garland
Hirschi's Cow (1994)
(11:58) "I awoke one morning to the sounds of cows mooing in the pasture
next to my home. Music to my ears, the moos became the inspiration for
a concerto in three 'moo-vements'. . . . The piece also includes the
voice of the cows' owner as he tells the story of growing up with cows
and what makes them moo." (Bimstein)
PHILLIP KENT BIMSTEIN (Rockville, UT) is a graduate of the Chicago Conservatory of Music. Stimulated by the Talking Heads and Elvis Costello, he formed his own new wave rock group Phil 'n the Blanks, and produced three albums. After further musical studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, Bimstein now lives next to the Zion National Park. Fascinated by language and the ability of music to tell a story, he frequently incorporates text in his music. top |
|
| BOOK, LYNN | |
| Electric Lady (7:35) Performance art-storytelling from a decidedly female perspective that expands into soundscape and song forms. LYNN BOOK (New York, NY) is an interdisciplinary performance artist, vocalist and composer recently transplanted from Chicago to New York City. Her performance work has evolved over the past 15 years from a very physical and visually charged form to include a broad repertoire of vocal activities ranging from textual play and Dada scores to more free-form musical and extended vocal territories. |
|
| BREITSAMETER, SABINE | |
| Sender
Freies Berlin Presents (1995)
An audio essay on Sabine Breitsameter's show International Digital Radio
Art on the multicultural channel of the radio station, Sender Freies
Berlin, Germany. With comments and observations by Breitsameter, edited,
mixed, and intercut with examples from some of her most recent shows.
Produced by Regine Beyer.
SABINE BREITSAMETER (Berlin, Germany) is an independent feature documentary producer, curator of sound art events, critic, and the originator and host of the Sender Freies Berlin show, International Digital Radio Art. She is also one of the most knowledgeable German experts on the national and international radio/audio art scene. top |
|
| BRUNSON, WILLIAM | |
| Inside
Pandora's Box (1991) (16:00) Makes use
of the myth of Pandora, the most beautiful woman in the world, who opens
a box placed in her trust releasing all the plagues and suffering in
the world. The box in this composition is the television set. The script
for Inside Pandora's Box may be viewed as a collection of shards excavated
from the TV medium, including real and fake commercials, jokes, excerpts
from series, and commentaries. Musically speaking, the work straddles
the fence between "serious" electroacoustic music and popular music,
especially TV music. Formally, it is an attempt to apply film/video
editing concepts to the structure of music. Commissioned by the Swedish
National Institute for Concerts.
WILLIAM BRUNSON (Stockholm, Sweden) was born in Dallas, Texas, and has been living in Sweden since 1980. He is a composer, freelance music producer, and recording engineer for film, radio and record productions. Brunson is best known for his electroacoustic music (Tapestry II, Unseen, An Open Place, and others) which has been widely performed in Europe and the United States. top |
|
| C | |
| CALEB,
J. RUFUS CARLSON, CALEB CARNAHAN, MELODY SUMNER CARRIER, SCOTT CASPAR CELLI, JOSEPH CHANG, DIANA CHENEY, ROSLYN COLEMAN, CONNIE COLLINS, NICOLAS COMPILATIONS CURRAN, ALVIN |
|
| CALEB, J. RUFUS | |
| The
Ballad of Mistuh Jack (1992) A
nonlinear narrative that unfolds in patterns similar to those of blues
lyrics. There's a bar on the outskirts of a small Northeastern town.
A bottle smashed against a table. A gun cocked. And for the first time
Mistuh Jack, former steel mill worker, bar owner finds himself poised
to do what he has always said he would do—shoot anyone who disturbs
the peace of his bar. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
J. RUFUS CALEB (Philadelphia, PA) received his Master of Arts from John Hopkins University and joined the english department at the Community College of Philadelphia in 1975. His plays have been produced for television, radio, and for the stage. He has also published poetry and short fiction in various magazines. He serves on the boards of the Philadelphia Young Playwrights Festival and the Theatre Association of Pennsylvania. top |
|
| CARLSON, MORTEN | |
| Gefion (11:10) (1997) was first performed as a sound installation at the Gefion Fountain in the center of Copenhagen, Denmark. It illustrates an old Nordic legend: After the god Odin had settled on a Danish island, he desired more land. He sent his young daughter Gefion north to search for it. When Gefion came to the court of the Swedish king Gylfe, the king promised her as much land as she could plough in one day and one night. The goddess transformed her four sons into oxen, who ploughed out a patch of king Gylfe's land. This the goddess cast into the sea, where it became known as "Sealand" or Denmark. Composed of the sounds made by the Gefion Fountain, the radio version presented here, includes brief texts about the Gefion myth, performed in Old Norse and in Danish. Gefion is beautifully recorded and produced, and resonates with the spirit of the medieval myth. MORTEN CARLSON: bio not available at this time. |
|
| CARNAHAN, MELODY SUMNER | |
| Manananggal
(1994) With Laetitia Sonami and Marie
Goyette. Carnahan's story is about two powerful women who come under
each other's influence, thereby releasing unconscious contents. Each
begins to see the other as evil, bringing to life a type of vampire
—a woman who can cut her body in half—the once-metaphorical
beast known in Philippine folklore as "the manananggal." During the
unraveling of their history, the two women again draw close, the leitmotif
of each is firmly underscored as she projects onto the other woman emotions
and elemental forces she has repressed in herself. Originally commissioned
for stage by STEIM in Amsterdam. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
[Listen]
The Bench (1995) With Laetitia Sonami. This story takes place in a city square, depicting an episode in the lives of two street people, a man and a woman, as observed by a narrator who watches from her hotel balcony. Focusing in, the narrator begins to "hear" fragments from the minds of the lovers: The young man, once a classical pianist, now produces a hellish blues, which fuses with the courtyard's musique concrète, with shards of his narcissistic dreams, and with dehydrated strings of the older woman's distorted understanding. The narrator doesn't move to interfere, yet she is compelled by what she witnesses: Is the woman rescuing or destroying the man? Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] MELODY SUMNER CARNAHAN (Santa Fe, NM) received an M.F.A. in writing from Mills College where she began working with composers, including Robert Ashley. The author of story collections, The Time Is Now and Thirteen (Burning Books), and a Tibetan man's biography, In the Presence of My Enemies (Clear Light), she has published thirty works of fiction and essay in periodicals and anthologies including the San Francisco Chronicle and the City Lights Review. Experimental Intermedia Foundation commissioned a one-hour radio program featuring her collaborative works with composers, and other programs featuring her writing have been aired by KPFA, Berkeley, WEVL, Memphis, and CFUV in Victoria. LAETITIA SONAMI (Oakland, CA) Originally from France where she studied with composer Eliane Radigue, Sonami moved to the U.S. in 1976, and has since been composing and performing live electronic solo works in numerous venues in the U.S. and abroad, including The Kitchen (NYC) and Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria. For three years she was awarded residencies at STEIM in Amsterdam, where she developed and adapted new gestural controllers for musical performance and composed works with them. Her compositions have been recorded Imaginary Landscapes (Electra Nonesuch), Jewel Box (Tellus 26), and Another Coast (Music & Arts). Collaborator: MARIE GOYETTE (Berlin, Germany) Co-composer/co-producer Manananggal. Goyette, originally from Montreal, studied piano at McGill University and with Radu Lupu in London. Since 1989 she has been working in the field of electronic music, collaborating with dancers, artists, and performers. She developed her interactive electronic shoes and belt—used in creating her vocal and musical composition for Manananggal—during a residency at STEIM in Amsterdam. top |
|
| CARRIER, SCOTT | |
| Battle
Mountain (1991) is the story of an attempted
ski trip in Nevada at the time of the Gulf War. That year there was
hardly any snow at all and the trip turned into an extended drive through
the state’s mountain ranges and basins. As the producer encountered
scene after scene of violence – cowboys cutting off the testicles
of cattle and branding them, the ear-shattering noise of military jets;
a drunken sledding race turned bloody – the CNN coverage of the
Gulf War blasting from the tv screens in local bars took on new meaning.
[Listen]
SCOTT CARRIER (Salt Lake City, UT) has produced documentaries, essays, commentaries, and sound portraits for public radio since 1983. His work has been broadcast by NPR on "All Things Considered," "Weekend Edition," and "Soundprint." His stories have also been aired by the BBC and the ABC, Australia, as well as “This American Life” (WBEZ, Chicago), Radio Smithsonian, NEW AMERICAN RADIO and "The Ossgood Files." (CBC Radio Network). Battle Mountain was premiered by NPR’s "Soundprint" in 1991. top |
|
| CASPAR | |
| Hommage
to D.G. (1992)
Metal pipes, pneumatic tubes, radio and television recordings, vocal
articulations, processing equipment—all combine to shape impulsive
and aggressive sound textures with great impact. (#18, 93; #23, 95 with
Messina and Rydberg)
CASPAR (Germany) Biography unavailable. top |
|
| CELLI, JOSEPH | |
| World Soundprint:
Pacific (1993) With composer/performer
Jin Hi Kim. Two widely traveled musicians and well-known new music artists
combine their creative sensibilities in search of the indigenous "soundprint"
of four Asian countries. Many location recordings, such as, of aboriginal
drones, the clanging cymbals of Korean shamans, the double reeds of
Japan, the winds of New Zealand, sounds from airports around the Pacific
Rim, and overheard conversations, identify and capture an aspect particular
to and characteristic of a site or location on the composers' travels.
Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
JOSEPH CELLI (Connecticut) is the only oboist in America who has devoted his career to the performance of new and experimental music. For the past eighteen years Celli has commissioned and collaborated with composers to create an extensive body of new work for oboe and English horn. These works range from solo acoustic works to works with ensembles, live electronics, multimedia works and improvisation. Over the past decade Celli has studied and worked with the musics of Africa, India, and recently, Asia. JIN HI KIM (Connecticut) was trained as a traditional musician in her native Korea. She came to the United States in 1980. She is a pioneer in the fusion of traditional and contemporary music in both her komungo (a six-string instrument) improvisations and her compositional activity. Kim has given solo concerts in the U.S., Canada, Belgium, Holland, Germany, and South America. She has worked with such contemporary improvisers as Elliott Sharp, Malcom Goldstein, and Henry Kaiser, and she has been commissioned to compose works for the Kronos Quartet, the California EAR Unit and other ensembles and soloists. top |
|
| CHANG, DIANA | |
| Falling
Free (1989)
In a curious repeat of the history of Asian immigrants, this work focuses
on an elderly Chinese-American woman left behind in an American suburb
by a husband who wishes to return to his native China. More Americanized
than he, her solitude proves a liberation. Told as a monologue with
flash-backs to scenes from her earlier life, Falling Free is a delicate,
poetic rendering of ambiguities: the ambiguity of the Chinese-American
experience, and of human desire. An adaptation of a short story by the
same name. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] DIANA CHANG (New York, NY) , the daughter of a Chinese father and Eurasian mother, was born in New York City, but spent some of her childhood in Beijing and Shanghai as well as in the United States. She has taught creative writing at Barnard College, exhibited paintings in solo and group shows, and edited The American Pen. She is the author of A Woman of Thirty, The Only Game in Town, A Passion for Life, Eye to Eye and A Perfect Love, and the poetry collections The Horizon Is Definitely Speaking, What Matisse is After and Earth Water Light. top |
|
| CHENEY, ROSLYN | |
| New
and Curious Subjects (1994)
(13:00) Using recordings of animals at Sydney's Taronga Zoo, this work
is an "animal performance piece" that seeks to provide the quintessential
zoo experience: curiosity, a feeling for the exotic, entertainment,
and reflection. Cheney's outstanding sound recordings and studio mix
were created with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's award-winning
producer/engineers Phillip Ulman and John Jacobs. [Listen]
The Listening Room Presents (1995) A portrait of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Listening Room series, which, since 1988 has commissioned and aired an amazing variety of sound expressions under the guidance of Roz Cheney. This program features an interview with Roz Cheney about the series' concept and most recent activities, along with excerpts from award-winning productions, edited and produced by Regine Beyer. ROSLYN CHENEY is a founding member of Double Jay, Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Sydney station of contemporary music, cultural ideas, and politics, which began broadcasting in 1975. A former producer and director with the drama and features department as well as the comedy unit, Cheney is currently executive producer of the experimental audio/radio series, The Listening Room. top |
|
| COLEMAN, CONNIE | |
| Borderland
(1990) With Alan Powell. An exploration
of a psychic aural space just south of our consciousness. That very
special location defined as "between the GRASS and where the GRASS is
always greener" . . . Borderland . . . plotted by scientific method
and the Western white male gaze . . . that ever so elusive place of
American media myth." (the artists) A collage that blends stories and
found sounds in a contrapuntal assemblage of gender encounters and questions
of "otherness." The stories include R. Gordon Wasson's recounting of
his first psychotropic mushroom experience with the Mexican-Indian shaman,
Maria Sabena, and Rosemarie Waldrop's tale of Washington, D.C., and
the sacrifices of younq Aztec virgins. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN
RADIO. [Listen]
Ground Wars (Parts 1 and 2) (1991) With Alan Powell. An experiment with real life stories from neighbors and friends who knew soldiers in the Gulf War, juxtaposed with military statements taken off the air. Part 1: "The Interior" (internal/being within). The combat of daily living in a free and open society wherein politics and technology draw the lines of battle and everyone chooses sides. Part 2: "The Exterior" (outward/ foreign). Has the Third World War finally begun, or have we only just noticed the battle that's been raging for some time? Language appears to be the ultimate camouflage. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. CONNIE COLEMAN (New Jersey) received her education at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she majored in textile design. She is currently a lecturer at the University of the Arts, photo/film/animation department, in Philadelphia. As a video artist, Coleman has worked collaboratively with video artist Alan Powell for well over a decade. Their work has been presented in numerous exhibitions nationally and internationally. ALAN POWELL (New Jersey) is currently an assistant professor in the radio/television/film department at Temple University. Coleman's and Powell's work has been presented in numerous exhibitions nationally and internationally, and has been shown on Swiss television, Montreal Cable TV, Swedish television, the Learning Channel, and WHYY-TV 12, among others. top |
|
| COLLINS, NICOLAS | |
| The
Spark Heard 'Round the World (1989)
A sonic portrait of the world as revealed through electromagnetic phenomena.
It is shaped out of the tremendous buzz, hum, and squawk of the international
communications systems: commercial FM and AM, short-wave and long-wave
transmissions, HAM and CB radio, public service bands, Morse code, telex
and other coded signals. A frenzied noisy striving for communication
that thickens into an almost tangible morass of sound, then loosens
into sound patterns and light textures. The human voice and its messages
seem strangely lost in this environment—distorted, barely audible—while
the transmission system itself sounds vibrant and amazingly alive. Commissioned
by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
NICOLAS COLLINS
(Chicago, Illinois) Nicolas Collins is currently Assistant Professor,
Chair, Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Born in
New York City in 1952, he began composing in 1972. He attended Wesleyan
University (BA, 1976 and MA, 1979), and worked for several years with
David Tudor. An heir to Tudor's school of "home-made" electronic
circuitry, and a pioneer in the use of microcomputers in live performance,
Collins has also made extensive use of radio and found sound material
in his compositions and sound installations.
|
|
| COMPILATIONS | |
| CHRISTINE
BACZEWSKA, LYNN BOOK, CELIA, ANNA HOMMLER, ELYSE KERMANI, and the QUBE
CHIX New Voices and Sounds is an inspired collage by NEW AMERICAN RADIO producers Helen Thorington and Regine Beyer, created from audio art works, improvisations, and compositions by women composers from across the country. Listen to the playful, punk-influenced avant-cabaret song, "I want a bald boyfriend" by the Qube Chix juxtaposed with Celia's surreal music/poetry influenced by the mysticism of her Aztec background (San Francisco). Hear Anna Hommler's pseudo-language explorations (Los Angeles) echo against the delicately meditative "Clearing, Mode of Dream" by Lynn Book (Chicago). Get into the spirit of Christine Baczewska's silly lyricism in "Letter From Home" and the wild and angry vocalizations of Elyse Kermani (New York). These artists have something to say, and they express themselves with passion, intelligence, and sensitivity. |
|
| CURRAN, ALVIN | |
| A
Beginner's Guide to Attracting Birds
(1995) A tone-poem for radio that
draws on a number of never used sounds from the composer's archives,
as well as newly recorded materials such as the magical singing tones
of high-tension wires in the wind, and the elusive musical hums of the
Bay of La Speza (Italy). These sounds are as much about acoustic spaces
as they are about geographical ones, and while all vastly different,
are powerful sources of natural melody, rhythm, and harmony. Above all
they are sounds that suggest the presence of "voices," human, ghostly
or otherwise. The definitive character of A Beginner's Guide to Attracting
Birds is given by the gradual and continuous digital transformation
of these sounds into those of human voices. The work culminates in the
slow emergence of John Cage's voice, based on fragmented samples of
his Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard (1988-89). Commissioned
by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
ALVIN CURRAN (New York City/Oakland/ Rome) Alvin Curran is known internationally for his compositions, solo performances, and large scale sound installations. Inspired by the legacy of the American experimental music tradition, his 100 plus works embrace all the "contradictions." From these he forges a very personal musical language from all the "languages." He is dedicated to the restoration of dignity to the profession of making non-commercial music as part of a personal search for future social, political and spiritual forms. Curran has been the Milhaud Professor of Composition at Mills since 1992 where his seminars and private lessons embrace every aspect of being a professional in today's new-music world. Curran's work is recorded on CRI, New Albion, Catalyst/BMG, Tzadik, Centaur Wergo, Ellipsis, BTC, Music from Mills. top |
|
| D | |
| D'AGOSTINO,
PETER DALO, ROBERTO PACI DARA, OLU DAVIDSON, TINA DAVIES, SHEILA DAVIS, BOB DECSENYI, JANOS DENIO, AMY DEJONG, CONSTANCE DONG, KUI DOVE, TONI DRIZIN, JULIE DUFTY, ALISON DUMAS, CHANTAL DYSON, FRANCES |
|
| D'AGOSTINO, PETER | |
| Conundrums
(1990) (13:00) A work reflecting aspects of the paradox of personal
and cultural origins. Weaving together experiences from daily life and
of the mass media, D'Agostino explores the soundscape around us all—its
direct information and subliminal suggestions. Commentary challenges
the assumptions of the listener in tying sound references to particular
places. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
PETER D'AGOSTINO (Philadelphia, PA) was born in New York City in 1945 and educated at the School of Visual Arts, where he studied painting and sculpture. In the 1970s he began to work with video and video installations. Since that time, he has created works for numerous exhibitions, including the 1981 Whitney Biennial, and the 17th Biennial in Sao Paulo, Brasil, in 1983. Currently an assistant professor in the radio/television/film department, School of Communications and Theater at Temple University, Philadelphia, D'Agostino is widely recognized as one of the most important figures working in the video medium today. top |
|
| DALO, ROBERTO PACI | |
| Napoli
(1993) (12:00 excerpt) In spare,
deliberate "snap shots," Napoli explores the sounds of one Italian city:
steps and screams, songs and invocations, a celebration at Mount Vesuvius,
traffic noise. . .At times, the microphone is used as a lens to enlarge
acoustical fragments otherwise almost inaudible. In this way, micro-listening
and macro listening exist side by side, adding to a sense of mystery:
An immersion in the city through the mystery of hearing. Originally
produced as an 8 channel sound installation produced for Kunstradio/ORF,
Vienna, in collaboration with Audiobox/RAI, Rome. [Listen]
ROBERTO PACI DALO (Rimini, Italy) A musician, composer, theater playwright and director, Dalo is considered among the most innovative contemporary European clarinetists. His composition Nodas was commissioned and premiered by the Kronos Quartet at the Vienna National Opera in 1993. His radio art works and audio installations have been presented in Austria, Italy, and Germany. top |
|
| DARA, OLU | |
| Natchez
to New York (1989)
It's one of those quiet evenings on the front porch in Natchez, Mississippi.
Just crickets, the distant sound of a few cars, and a bluesy song for
harmonica and guitar—as sweet as the sugar shack it talks about.
But there's trouble ahead as Neville, a down-home juke-joint man and
Diana, who pursues a career at New York's Metropolitan Opera, collide.
In Neville's words: "Good Lord woman, send Madam Butterfly back to bed.
What's left to eat? I can't stand no opera on no empty stomach." They
sing and fight and sing and fight until eventually, they go together—from
Nachez to New York. An improvisational work in a fixed form! Commissioned
by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
OLU DARA is a jazz innovator who has been described as "part band leader, part jazz soloist, part soul singer, and part West African storytelling bard." (Village Voice) Dara leads two New York groups that serve as backdrop to his bluesy humor and upbeat antics: the Okra Orchestra and the Natchezsippi Dance Band. Whether on cornet, harmonica or Tupperware, Dara's philosophy is to keep his approach to music within the traditions he learned as a child in Mississippi. He has recorded and performed with such talents as David Murray, Brian Eno, TaJ Mahal and Nona Hendrix. top |
|
| DAVIDSON, TINA | |
| Requiem
for Something Lost (1990)
(7:00) The opening sketch for a larger musical work-in-progress. A child
is being taken up the stairs by an older person. "Although the work
is about some sort of abuse, I am not interested in what will happen
but what is happening. At the given moment there are sounds of ascent:
the dry scratch of the little shoes, the creak of wood, the smooth varnish
of the banister, the gentle insistence of the adult's voice, the nonspecific
reluctance of the child. The moment is one of sadness, loss, and anger."
(Davidson) Requiem for Something Lost is a piece for solo saxophone,
multiple saxophones, and sounds set within a sound environment created
by Gregory Whitehead. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
TINA DAVIDSON (Philadelphia, PA) was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1952 and raised in the United States. She has written for orchestra, mixed instrumental and vocal ensembles, soloists, live performers, and prerecorded tape. Her music has been performed throughout the United States and parts of Europe by many orchestras and ensembles, including the Kronos Quartet, the Relache Ensemble and the Mendelsohn String Quartet. top |
|
| DAVIES, SHEILA | |
| The
Opponent's Queen: Detail (1990)
A strategy of moves between two players who are interested in preserving
passion through competition. Speculations, emotions, and philosophies
are developed through meetings and endings as the opponents struggle
to attain their highest forms. (Derived from the epistolary novel, The
Opponent's Queen, written in collaboration with Melody Sumner Carnahan.)
Created especially for NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
What Is the Matter in Amy Glennon? (1989) "A magnificent postmodern alchemical opus, the story of Amy Glennon who faces the dark ground of herself and thereby transmutes her bitterness into wisdom, who unites her matter and mind, and who redeems a human soul from the body of a putrefying snake—all toward the fruitful marriage of pure science and mythological philosophy." (from the work) Winner of a Special Commendation at the 1991 PRIX FUTURA Berlin. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] SHEILA DAVIES (Berkeley, CA) Sheila Davies studied short story writing at the University of Oregon, San Francisco State University, and Mills College. She is a past member of the vocal trio Girls Looking for Husbands. Her work as an experimental writer, singer, and radio producer has been aired on KPFA-FM (Berkeley), and through National Public Radio. Together with her husband, graphic designer Patrick Sumner, Davies also created One of One (Burning Books), an art book in magazine form. She has completed two works for New American Radio: What Is the Matter in Amy Glennon? (1989) and The Opponent's Queen: Detail (1990). After an eleven year break (1991-2002), Davies is now beginning new work in fiction and memoir. top |
|
| DAVIS, BOB | |
| See Allyn, Jerri, "American Dining: A Working Woman's Moment"; and Earwax Productions' "Bloody Angle," and "Ecomania, Parts 1 and 2."top | |
| DECSENYI, JANOS | |
| Birds
of the Cathedral (1993)
(14:10) A musical exploration of man's relationship to birds. Specifically,
it deals with the age-old connection between those birds living in the
vicinity of the Budapest cathedral and the human inhabitants of the
city. The two basic sound layers are sounds from the world of man and
from the world of birds. They can be heard separately from each other,
entwining and "rhyming" with each other, and contrasting each other.
Ultimately, with the help of computer programs, they are transformed
and completed in a synthetic world of sounds. Produced for Magyar Radio.
Is It Better To Leave With The Cranes? (1998) is a symphony composed of sounds and music from Hortibagy, the Hungarian Plains or Pussta. A work from the multi-part series "Hungarian Soundscapes" produced by Hungarian Radio, it is deeply rooted in the composer's cultural heritage and personal experience: "I spent many hours at Hortobagy, in the silence of people, animals and lakes - paying close attention to the constantly blowing wind, the pounding of hooves, and the screaming of migratory birds ... " (the artist). The sound materials recorded on the Pussta are supplemented with Hungarian folk songs, violin tunes and a 16th century verse-chronicle and composed into soundscapes of great suggestive power. JANOS DECSENYI (Budapest, Hungary) is a composer whose interests cover a wide range of musical ground. He has composed symphonic and chamber music, chorales, film music, electroacoustic music and incidental music for radio and theater. Since 1951 he has been on the staff of Magyar Radio, Budapest. Among his many awards are the Erkel Prize (1975), the prize of the Hungarian critics (1981 and 1991) and Honored Artist (1986). top |
|
| DENIO, AMY | |
| The
Seattle Sound (1994)
(14:20) "When I was asked to do a segment for AUDIOBOX/ RAI, Italy, with
a special theme, I decided to work with the cliché "The Seattle
Sound." There is so much hype and media attention given to the music,
fashion, and "Generation X" attitude coming from the grunge phenomenon
in Seattle. But Seattle has many other subcultures and forms of expression
from the streets. . .So one day, I took my tape recorder and walked around
. . .I found many natural rhythms and interesting tones in the streets,
and so I constructed a piece of "music concrète". . .To complete
the work, I composed and played music on alto saxophone, accordion, percussion,
guitar, bass guitar, voice, and Celtic harp." (the artist) AMY DENIO (Seattle, WA) is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and composer. A founding member of the rock groups Tone Dogs and Nudes (with Chris Cutler and Wadi Gysi), she regularly tours with the all-female Billy Tipton Memorial Saxophone Quartet. Denio also composes for theater, dance, cinema, and television. top |
|
| DEJONG, CONSTANCE | |
| Vanishing
Act II (1993)
(10:00) With sound design by Brenda Hutchinson. A woman journeys from
the inner city to the country—to return a lost pet to its eighty-four-year-old
owner, Alice. A journey through memories takes place as Alice searches
among her possessions for an appropriate reward. Her voice and the sounds
that accompany memory bring life to a collection of inanimate objects.
Their invisible pasts and unseen meanings, good and bad, are released
like genies from the lamp. Co commissioned by Harvestworks, Inc., the
Wexner Center for the Arts, and NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
CONSTANCE DEJONG (New York) is an award-winning author who has made performance a natural extension of her writing. Since 1977 she has toured extensively in the U.S., Canada, and Europe presenting oral adaptations of her texts. She was the librettist for the Philip Glass opera Satyagraha and has recently collaborated on several video works. top |
|
| DONG, KUI | |
| Flying
Apples (1995)
(10:10) An algorithmic composition that takes the listener into the
colorful, playful, and fantastic realm of an unfinished childhood dream.
Programmed in Small-talk language, using extremely nested patterns based
on a repeated three-note motive, the work was completed on newly developed
software operating on a Mac workstation at the Computer Center of Research
in Music and Acoustic, Stanford University. [Listen]
KUI DONG was born in Beijing, China. Her compositions and commissions include a 3-act ballet for orchestra, chamber works, and works for Electronic-acoustics. Between 1988 and 1993 she also produced a number of scores for Chinese film and television. Kui Dong has received performances from Other Minds Music Festival, Bonk Festival, Festival Synthèse 99, Bourges, France, Composers Inc. (SF), Pacific Contemporary Music Festival (LA), Alea III (Boston), Central Ballet of China, Music From China Inc., The New York New Music Ensemble, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Earplay, Windsor Symphony (Canada), Society of Composers Inc. (Miami), Soundbox 2.0, Beijing Dance Institute, Meridian Gallery (SF), Visual Symbols (SJ), LIMP (Argentina), among others. Her music has been broadcast on KPFA, New Radio Performing Art Inc., (New York) and the European Broadcast Union and among others. Her honors include first prizes from 1994 Alea III International Composition Prize, Boston, National Art Song Competition, Beijing, National Dance Music Competition (Beijing), Diploma of 1999 International Competitions of the Val Tidone for Composer, Italy, Honorary mention at Ars Electronica (1996), as well as awards from The Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust Commissioning award (1999-2000) Meet The Composer/USA Commissioning Award (1997-98), Dickey Foundation (1998), ASCAP (1995), the Djaressi Foundation for Art (1995), Santa Clara Art Council (1995), Asia-Pacific National Fund (1993). She has been to Djaressi artist residency program and will be in Bellagio this summer. She is currently writing a few chamber works for pianist Sarah Cahill, Dale Singers and Music from China as well as performing with Larry Polansky and Christian Wolff. Kui Dong is an Assistant Professor at Dartmouth College. top |
|
| DOVE, TONI | |
| Mesmer—Secrets
of the Human Frame (1991)
Both abstract and sensual, sci-fi and reality, Mesmer traces the way
we construct human identity and subjectivity, and reflects the images
we have created of our relationship to technology: "There was a story
to tell, and the story was about the century we're about to exit. It
starts with Thomas Edison, the birth of cinema, the phonograph. With
Freud and psychoanalysis. With the gothic novel and the Industrial Revolution.
And the story is about how we changed as the century changed. This story
is about building an Android." (from the work) With a soundtrack by
the artist composed entirely from electronically processed vocal sound.
Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
The Blessed Abyss—A Tale of Unmanageable Ecstasies (1991) A composition that began with the idea of the popular song as a story or narrative of romantic love. "I then started applying one of my favorite themes to the topic: our changing social constructions of identity in an era of transition (technological revolution) and the dialectic between private intention and social narrative." (Dove) The result: a sensual and powerful series of narrative songs that deal with desire and repression and the return of the repressed in the form of excesses and ecstasies. Composed from a variety of texts— ecstatic Persian poetry, erotic literature, snips of film dialogue, excerpts from nineteenth-century American writings on sexual and social mores, and lyrics from opera and contemporary song—The Blessed Abyss includes a duet between "Repression" and "Desire," and a polyvocal chorus of "Rapture and Ecstasy." Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] TONI DOVE (New York, NY), originally from Boston, began her career as a painter. In the 1980s she started to work with electronic media—visual and audio. Her credits include one-person exhibits in San Francisco and Brookline, Massachusetts; group exhibits at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, and the David Adamson Gallery in Washington, D.C. Her first major radio work, Mesmer was originally presented in 1990 as an installation in Brooklyn, New York, commissioned by Creative Time, Inc. for Art in the Anchorage. top |
|
| DRIZIN, JULIE | |
| After Roe
(1992) A blend of documentary and
fiction, in which everything is true and false, credible and incredible,
real and imagined. The work explores the social and cultural consequences
of the criminalizing of abortion in America. It not only looks back
at life before Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion, but projects itself
forward into an imaginary near future when the U.S. once again denies
women the right to legal abortion. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
[Listen]
JULIE DRIZIN (Washington, DC) has been producing news and information programming for public radio for 18 years. Her most recent position was Senior Producer of NPR's Justice Talking (www.justicetalking.org). Prior to that, Julie was the Bureau Chief and Executive Producer of National Programming at Pacifica Radio (www.pacifica.org) in Washington, D.C. where she launched the award-winning Democracy Now! (www.democracynow.org) a daily public affairs and investigative journalism program which was named in the April 11, 1999 New York Times Magazine as "Talk radio worth talking about." She started her radio career at WXPN in Philadelphia. (11/03) top |
|
| DUFTY, ALISON | |
| Killing
the Cat (1990) (10:00) A sound story
about Dufty's family's contradictory history of one-upsmanship and secrecy
about disease, and the endless battle of choosing to act or flee when
faced with the necessity of decision. The title refers to the culminating
moment in one week of Dufty's life, when, in the space of a few days
"I got mugged, then attacked, and then discovered that my mother had
an incurable cancer, her secret. After an all-night drive to confront
her, and just a few miles before arriving, I ran over a cat. Stopping,
I sat in the darkness next to it, waiting for it to die." (Dufty) Commissioned
by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
ALLISON DUFTY (San Francisco, CA) received her B.A. in English with honors from Temple University, Philadelphia. She is the president and founder of Talk/Story Productions, and has supported a habit in radio as a waitress (retired), fashion model, and radio feature reporter/producer for Philadelphia station, WHYY-FM and the nationally syndicated public radio program, Fresh Air. Dufty is currently with San Franciso's Magic Theater. top |
|
| DUMAS, CHANTAL | |
| Les frontieres (14:25) (1996/97) is part 3 of Dumas' radio art trilogy "The Perfume of Women" commissioned by the German radio stations, SFB and DeutschlandRadio, Berlin. At a time when globalization takes hold of economics and communications, the geopolitical frontiers are shut tight. From the point of view of migrants, borders are not stopping and crossing points anymore, but fortresses. This piece offers migrant perspectives from four countries: Germany, Algeria, Switzerland, and Mexico. CHANTAL DUMAS (Montreal, Canada) was born in 1959. After her musical studies, she took part in the promotion of new music by organizing concerts and presenting shows as a freelance journalist for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and on community radios in Montreal. In 1993, she began her career as a radio artist, creating commissioned work for public radio in Germany and France that have been presented throughout Europe. Her most recent awards includes first prize in the 1997 HEAR festival sponsored by Hungarian Radio. |
|
| DYSON, FRANCES | |
| The
Logic of Waste (1990)
How does Japan dispose of the tremendous amount of waste its gift wrapping
tradition creates? What proposals have been developed in the Soviet
Union to eliminate nuclear missiles? And what methods seem to help Anglo-Saxon
middle-class Canberra, Australia deal with the uncomfortable culture
of its Hispanic immigrants? These questions are pursued in this audio-art
documentary with remarkable subtlety and intelligence. Commissioned
by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. [Listen]
Voices Lost and Calling (1989) A highly original and intriguing radio art suspense story. It opens with a woman friend telling the narrator that she'd been hearing voices in the middle of the night but that no one was there, and that she had the uncanny feeling that it was she herself who was speaking, but in a voice not her own. The narrator does not know how to respond and is relieved when the telephone rings. But as soon as she picks up the phone the call is terminated. More terminated calls follow. "Voices without bodies. Calls without callers. I had the impression of a massive but anonymous switchboard dialing in, perhaps to check on my continued existence." Will she be able to listen and thus be truly "called"? Who is the voiceless caller from the other side? Commissioned by The Listening Room, Australian Broadcasting Corporation. [Listen] FRANCES DYSON (Davis, CA) is a writer, media artist and associate professor in Techno-Cultural Studies at the University of California at Davis. Her writing has been published nationally and internationally, with book chapters in Catherine Richards - Excitable Tissues (Ottawa Art Gallery); Uncertain Ground, (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales) 2000, The Virtual Dimension: Architecture, Representation, and Crash Culture, (New York: Princeton Architectural Press)1998, and Immersed in Technology (Massachusetts: MIT Press) 1996; and articles in journals such as Les Cahiers de L’Herne, (forthcoming) Circa, Leonardo Music Journal, Artbyte and World Art. She was recently awarded a Researcher in Residence from the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology for 2004-5. Dyson has exhibited installation/performance works in the US, Canada, Japan and Australia and for over a decade has been a regular contributor to Australia’s premier audio arts program, The Listening Room (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), where she recently completed Fur and Sheen – an experimental fictional series based in the near future, comprising “Static”, “Drift” and “Sheen”. She currently serves on the board of Davis Community Television and is active in community media projects. top |
|
| E | |
| EARWAX
PRODUCTIONS ECKERT, RINDE EGLOFF, CHRISTINA ERICKSON, STEPHEN |
|
| EARWAX PRODUCTIONS | |
| Audiographs:
Songs from the Tenderloin (1987)
Barney Jones, Marcos Kounilakis, and Jim McKee. Condensed and dramatized
portraits of people living on the streets of San Francisco. Recorded
interviews form the basis of this work, but interviews set in alternating
environments: in the street and within a musical score. In the music,
the edited and repeated voices become part of the rhythm: recurring
beats that intensify the toughness and tenderness of the people's reflections—
the pain, humor, and ethics that govern their lives. Commissioned by
NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
Bloody Angle (1990) Bob Davis with Naut Humon. On 5 May 1864 Generals Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant commenced a bloody and relentless struggle that would finally end eleven moths later at Appomattox Court House. The climactic point was reached on 12 May at the Bloody Angle, where the longest sustained hand-to-hand combat in recorded history was fought. In 1989 the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park sponsored a series of lectures, tours, and symposia in commemoration of the battle. Naut Humon, leader of the industrial culture band Rhythm and Noise, attended and recorded these events. With sound designer Bob Davis, he created an astounding, larger-than-life acoustic spectacle that echoes the inhuman mania of war. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. Ecomania, Parts 1 and 2 (1992) Barney Jones and Bob Davis with students from the Redwood High School's Ensemble Theater. Addresses the complicated and controversial issue of commercial logging in Northern California, its long-term effects on the communities involved and the planet. Students from the Ensemble Theater Company conducted numerous interviews with members of lumber companies in Arcata and Eureka, California, with loggers, housewives, protesters, business people, Earth Firsters, hippies and foresters, as well as recording their own impressions of the people and the area. They then made the material into a stage play excerpts of which are woven into this documentary. Ecomania is musical, dramatic and informative, and takes an open-minded approach to its subject matter. Metal—Views from the Karamozov Vista (1989) Jim McKee with Andy Newell. A curious, sympathetic glimpse into the heavy metal music industry and its social environment: the music, the artists, the producers, the fans, the parents, the opposition. Meet Sandy Pearlman who coined the term Heavy Metal. Listen to bands like "Exodus" and musicians like Joe Satriani. Hear what Debbie Abonos, at sixty-four the oldest female roady in the business, has to say. Never mind you don't like the music and you're strictly anti-violence, anti-Satanic cult, anti-Nazi cult. Metal offers some unexpected observations and is presented with a remarkably artistic/digital touch. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] Virtual Paradise—The Reality Tape (1992-93) With David Lawrence. An exciting production created in the spirit of the technology it focuses on. Virtual Paradise examines the ideas, issues, and attitudes that currently surround virtual reality. As this technology evolves, it brings with it the potential for redefining our most basic assumptions about media, experience, and reality. Virtual Paradise features many voices recorded at Cyberthon, a 24-hour virtual reality event presented by Whole Earth Institute in 1990. It also includes interviews with such visionaries as science-fiction author William Gibson, VR architect Jaron Lanier, artificial reality pioneer Myron Krueger, and Timothy Leary—all intercut with music and sound effects and shaped into a highly entertaining and insightful "virtual" tape composition. Virtual Paradise was the winner of the 1994 AIR Award for Innovation and Excellence. Production assistance by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] Wake for Tom (1991) A follow-up on Audiographs—Songs from the Tenderloin created in 1987. Using the techniques developed for the earlier work, Wake for Tom takes interviews with people living on the streets of San Francisco and sets them in alternating environments: in the street and within a musical score. It explores the lives of the same close-knit group of alcoholic panhandlers. Many have died in the intervening four years, including Tom Scanlon, one of the principal voices in the earlier work. Interviews with him made just before his death are intercut with interviews with his friends and with the professionals whose job it is to deal with the death of indigents. A moving continuation of a sad, humorous, and virtually untold story about America's homeless. Barney Jones and Jim McKee are the producers. [Listen] EARWAX PRODUCTIONS, an award-winning sound design facility in San Francisco, founded in 1984, produces original sound design and music for all media. In addition, it offers a wide array of professional recording studio services (recording booth, CD mastering, audio clean-up, voice editing, etc.). Its group of designers and composers, along with the company's owners, Barney Jones and Jim McKee, work in film, television, radio, multimedia, as well as design/provide audio for tours, museum and theme park installations, toys and electronics, and the Internet. Their projects range from major Hollywood features to educational CD-ROMs, and from online cartoon episodes to interactive museum installations. Earwax Productions Inc. was voted best sound design team in San Francisco and has won honors in The Bay Area Critics Circle awards, Northern California Broadcasters, Association of Independents in Radio, as well as the Academy Award for Francis Ford Coppola's production of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Composers/Sound Designers/Engineers: BOB DAVIS (San Francisco, CA) has worked as a composer and musical director with San Francisco-based SOON 3 Theater since 1980; during 1982-83 he was sound engineer for over seventy-five performances of Laurie Anderson's "United States." Davis has also collaborated with dancers Karen Epperlein, poet G.P. Skratz, and cartoonist Dori Seda. BARNEY JONES (San Francisco, CA) is a composer and sound designer, and a partner in Earwax Productions. He is also a conductor. For over fifteen years he has been the principal conductor of the Chicago Light Opera Works. He has produced numerous radio dramas for public radio, including the Sheila Davies production, What Is the Matter in Amy Glennon? for New American Radio. JIM MCKEE (San Francisco, CA), a partner in Earwax Productions of San Francisco, is a composer and sound designer. He worked on such Antenna Theater productions as Amnesia and Russia, which were presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's "Next Wave" festival. McKee has also worked on many large-scale radio drama productions with Eric Bauersfeld for KPFA, Berkeley, and National Public Radio. ANDY NEWELL (San Francisco, CA), a visiting professor of composition at the University of Illinois for three years, and the producer of several rock groups in the Chicago area, is also one of Earwax's principal composer/ producers. He has recently completed work for Apple's Multi Media Group, and a new song demo with singer/writer Sheila Riley. Collaborators: NAUT HUMON (San Francisco, CA) collaborator: Bloody Angle. The leader of Rhythm and Noise, an industrial culture band featuring a combination of state of the arts technology and original percussion creations. R&N works to understand the harmonics of noise as well as its dissonance. Their live performances are startlingly grand in gesture: big dissonant sounds and a choreography in which every movement is related directly to the production of the sounds. DAVID H. LAWRENCE (San Francisco, CA), collaborator Virtual Paradise—The Reality Tape. Lawrence is an independent designer and producer. From 1986-88 he worked with the San Francisco-based Lukas Film Education Group in interactive media. He also produced a series of interactive video discs that teach American history (Geography Society), and produced The Mystery of the Disappearing Ducks (for the Audubon Society). In 1991 Lawrence was an Artist-in-Residence at San Francisco's Exploratorium. top |
|
| ECKERT, RINDE | |
| Cold
War Diary (1990) A thought-travelogue.
Somewhere in Europe a woman stands at her hotel window. She looks out
over a public square, contemplates the monuments, writes mental postcards,
and more importantly, asks about a person apparently missing. An intriguing
blend of new music/audio art and performance. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN
RADIO. [Listen]
Four Songs Lost in a Wall (1995) An elaborate multi-vocal and instrumental piece based on the story of the famous eighteenth century castrate Carlo Broschi Farinelli. In 1737 Farinelli was commissioned by King Philip V of Spain to sing the same four songs every night. Philip reigned nine years thereafter! Four Songs Lost in a Wall evolves around the repetition and evolution of those songs, ranging from the sentimental ballad to aria to contrapuntal choral arrangements to processed voice overlays. The piece focuses on Eckert's own exquisite falsetto voice, which over the years has become a major aspect of his musical life. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] Shoot the Moving Things (1987-89) The story of an early morning hunting trip, told by the artist using electronic voice manipulations, evocative sound, and his exceptional singing voice. The music is Eckert's own—original new age, rap, rock, and country gospel. It drives his narrative along giving intensity and passion to its unfolding. Shoot the Moving Things was created for Soundings (KPFK-FM, Los Angeles, Jacki Apple host) and High Performance in 1987 and reworked in 1989 especially for NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] RINDE ECKERT (Santa Monica, CA) Rinde Eckert is a singer, writer, composer, actor, and director known internationally for the remarkable flexibility and inventiveness of his singing voice. His solo pieces and collaborations with other composers, dancers, and musicians have been performed throughout North America and abroad. Long celebrated for his performances in multimedia with the Paul Dresher Ensemble and the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, his more recent work as a solo artist has won him wide acclaim. Described as "the most exciting performance artist this writer has encountered since the early days of Laurie Anderson" by John Rockwell, critic for the New York Times, Eckert's musical approach transcends stylistic pigeonholes. He is a classically trained singer who has expanded his vocabulary to reflect a wide range of contemporary musical styles. This modern treatment of a variety of vernacular and classical music straddles the boundary between the time-honored and the new, the mysterious and the familiar, taking the listener on an uncommonly fascinating journey. top |
|
| EGLOFF, CHRISTINA | |
| See Allison, Jay, "Hide and Seek," "Killer Whales," and "Noah's Ark." top | |
| ERICKSON, STEPHEN | |
| Brick
Bread Oven (1989)
Quality bread, the product of an old world craft is a commodity much
sought after by today's health-conscious new world consumers. But what
of the way it is made? What of the brick oven in which it is baked.
Tucked away in the tenement basements in New York's lower Manhattan,
the brick bread oven is still the heart of some small bakeries. This
work presents a night and day in the life of a 100-year-old coal-fired
oven in one of these family businesses. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN
RADIO.
STEPHEN ERICKSON is a radio producer, sound recordist, and audio engineer. For ten years he has produced news, features, documentaries, drama, sound installations and books-on-tape. Among his most notable documentary productions for radio are two works for the series, The Territory of Art: Radiowaves and The Exile of Breyten Brextenbach. Erickson has also collaborated with award-winning playwright/composer Elisabeth Swados on the radio production of Jerusalem, an oratorio for twenty voices and percussion. His work, The Undead, recently won a Special Commendation at the 1995 PRIX FUTURA Berlin. Erickson now works in New York City and in Berlin, Germany, where he has audio studios. top |
|
| F | |
| FAHEY,
SHANE FANATIC FNT-CORA FORNES, MARIE IRENE |
|
| FAHEY, SHANE | |
| See Rue, Rik, "The World Behind You." top | |
| FANATIC | |
| Opera
(1987) A long-form musical work,
composed of such operatic elements as arias and choral presentations.
But a FANATIC opera is not a traditional opera. Imagine a dense bassey,
enveloping fabric of industrial sounds with patterns of whispering,
non-narrative singing, utterances, jingling keys, seagulls' cries, boat
horns, and the passionate statements of Jon Rose's home-made violin-like
instruments. A fascinating meditation for radio! [Listen]
FANATIC (Holland) is an art ensemble composed of Willem de Ridder, Cora de Ridder, Hessel and Nicole Veldman, and visiting friends. De Ridder is known for his unconventional approach to radio. Since 1972 he has developed a number of different forms of interactive Transmission Art for official and illegal radio stations. A 3-hour nighttime program for listeners willing to follow instructions put thousands of cars on the road headed for an unknown destination as part of the denouement of a radio theater play. Together with the members of FANATIC, he produces ritual concerts, audio cassettes for Walkman Theater, alternative Museum and City Walks; one-of-a-kind pieces like the different lip-sync soundtrack for "Dynasty"; and All Chemix Radio, a series of free-form plays recorded in real time. top |
|
| FNT-CORA | |
| Kali
(1989) An unusual sonic meditation.
Kali invokes the Hindu goddess associated with death, destruction, and
disease. Though often represented as a terrifying monster, garlanded
with skulls and bearing a bloody sword in one of her many arms, Kali
is also worshipped by many as Mata, the Divine Mother. Kali was originally
produced for the All Chemix Radio Series at the Radio Art Foundation
in Amsterdam, Holland.
FNT-CORA, the Dutch improvisational radio art ensemble is composed of Nicole and Hessel Veldman, Cora and Willam de Ridder, Andrew McKenzie, and Ben Uijtjens. (see FANATIC) top |
|
| FORNES, MARIE IRENE | |
| Hunger
(1989) A poignant chronicle of the dehumanizing process that accompanies
homelessness. Told through the lives of four people—two men and
two women, related by blood and family ties -- who with every reason
to expect more of their lives find themselves together in a city shelter.
Fornes's language and direction convey the slow withering away of energy;
the loss of memory and personality that afflict the homeless. Hunger
is a work of stark realism—an intensely quiet work from one whom
Susan Sontag has described as "conducting with exemplary tenacity and
scrupulousness a unique career in the American theater." Commissioned
by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
Cuban-born MARIA IRENE FORNES (New York, NY) is one of America's most distinguished playwrights. The author of more than two dozen works for the stage, Fornes has received six Obie awards in recognition of her sustained achievement in the theater. Hunger, her first radio work, was adapted by the author from a larger theater piece dealing with the same family in three different epochs. top |
|
| FOWLER, BRUCE | |
| See Apple, Jacki, "The Amazon." top | |
| G | |
| GALÁS, DIAMANDA GAUTHIER, MARIO GILL, JOSEPH P. GOLDING, BARRETT GOMEZ-PENA, GUILLERMO GRESHAM-LANCASTER, SCOT GRIMES, EV |
|
| GALÁS, DIAMANDA | |
| Schrei
27 (1994)
Consists of several short performances over the space of twenty-seven
minutes alternating extreme high-energy vocal work with absolute silence.
The performances are chapters of a confession which might have been
induced through a chemical or mechanical manipulation of the brain.
There is a high density of speech-sound over time which is often machine-like
in its velocity. The work employs the atypical speech and vocal signal
processing that Galas has been researching since 1979. A co commission
of the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) and NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
DIAMANDA GALÁS (New York, NY) "She plays the piano like driving rain slapping on concrete, and she sings like a demon going to war, a valkyrie scatting, a lizard queen seeking revenge for the dead... Galás is profound, rigorous, vocally unlimited, terrifying and utterly compelling. To hear her is to have your soul scoured clean." Diamanda Galás is an internationally acclaimed vocalist, pianist, composer and poet. Raised in San Diego, California, she was born to Greek Orthodox parents who always encouraged her gift for piano. She studied a wide range of musical forms, as well as visual-art performance, and then moved to Europe where she made her performance debut at the Festival d'Avignon in France in 1979. Galás' numerous musical and theatrical works include the pivotal "Plague Mass" (1990), a haunting mass for People with Aids, "Vena Cava"(1992), the solo voice and electronic work concerning AIDS dementia and clinical depression, Schrei 27 (1996), which deals with torture in isolation, She is currently working on the composition and commissioning of the opera "Nekropolis." top |
|
| GAUTHIER, MARIO | |
| Ouverture
No. 1 (1994) (4:00) Realized as
a teaser for a series of French radio dramas on Societe Radio-Canada.
Out-takes from studio recordings, the voices of various announcers,
fragments from drama productions, are mixed into an expressive and musical
minidrama that, while conceived as a way of getting listeners interested
in an actual drama series, can easily stand on its own. (#41,95 with
Jovanovic and Zwedberg)
MARIO GAUTHIER Biography unavailable. top |
|
| GILL, JOSEPH P. | |
| Come
Straight (1989)
With Progressive Life Center, Inc. This radio play provides a glimpse
into the psyche of drug-involved black youth. It explores the drives,
motives, and social rewards that precondition illicit activity and alienate
these young people from traditional support systems. The work develops
on three interlocking levels: a radio news broadcast presents factual
information; dramatic scenes reveal the attitudes and activities of
dealing teenagers; and a real-life interview with a young man who was
a dealer and whose best friend was shot by another drug dealer brings
the terrible truth of drug dealing home. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN
RADIO.
The Force (1990) A look at student activism in the nineties from an Afro centric point of view. A creative documentary, the work focuses on Black NiaForce, a freedom organization for racial and cultural enlightenment that grew out of the efforts of students like Ras Baraka, the son of poet Amiri Baraka, at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Uncomfortable with the apathy of Howard students they organized themselves to share their knowledge and to re-educate themselves and their fellow students in pursuit of liberation for black people worldwide. Producer Joe Gill, himself a Howard graduate, returned to Howard to take a close look at this group and to become a part of its on-going effort. Gill's production is a vivid picture of concerned brothers and sisters preparing to take an active role in the shaping of their country's future. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. JOSEPH P. GILL, a native Washingtonian, received his Bachelor of Arts in Broadcasting Production from Howard University's School of Communications. While at Howard he served as production assistant on three radio plays produced by Judi Moore Lata. Gill also interned for National Public Radio's Morning Edition, and did freelance sound gathering for the program Crossroads. PROGRESSIVE LIFE CENTER, collaborator Come Straight. A private, minority-owned facility for mental health services in Washington, D.C. top |
|
| GOLDING, BARRETT | |
| Dreamtime
(1994) unfolds as a collaged narrative teeming with themes, drama,
comedy, and possibility: A woman makes love to a whale—a man listens
to the heartbeat of the world on a mountain top through a giant stethoscope—a
dead father appears to his son pleading for communication. . .Evocative
descriptions combine with reflections on dreams, and with original music
that invite the listener into a "dreamscape" that is both real and surreal,
insightful and entertaining.
BARRETT GOLDING (Bozeman, MT) is a producer of documentary features and audio art. His work regularly airs on both National Public Radio and Public Radio International. Golding has received production awards and grants from various organizations, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Montana Broadcasting Association, and Harvestworks/Studio PASS, New York City. top |
|
| GOMEZ-PENA, GUILLERMO | |
| I
Don't Speak English Only, Vato! (1995)
Challenges the notion of English as the official language of the United
States, in light of the growing population of Spanish speakers and the
xenophobic backlash against bilingualism. Artists Guillermo Gomez-Pena,
Sergio Arau, Yareli Arizmendi, Betto Arcos and Ellen Klaver humorously
criticize the easy "love for the exotic" tendencies of American society,
and its rejection of otherness and complexity when it appears to threaten
U.S. values and culture. [Listen]
Menage à Trade (1994) With radio journalist Betto Arcos and Yareli Arizmendi, Sergio Arau, Mireille Perron and others. An experimental multilingual radio program created in response to the increasing economic and cultural ties between Mexico, the United States and Canada in the wake of the North America Free Trade Agreement. Humorous, satirical and a critical exploration of culture, language, and nationality, it questions the real issues before us in NAFTA: cultural homogenization, economic dependency and human displacement. [Listen] NAFTAZTEC (1994) A bilingual work on NAFTA produced in the tradition of Gomez-Pena's radio performance interventions. Taped live at KPFK-FM, Los Angeles, during Jacki Apple's weekly show, Soundings, especially for NEW AMERICAN RADIO. Temple of Confessions (1995) Documents the performance installation series by Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Roberto Sifuentes. Radio journalist and producer Betto Arcos and soundscape composer Rona Michelle join the end-of-the-century Santos in their exposure of America's obsession with public and private confessions. Participants reveal their most intimate feelings, fantasies and memories of Mexico, Mexicans, and Chicanos. GUILLERMO GOMEZ-PENA (San Diego, CA/Tijuana, Mexico) is a performance artist and writer. He was born in Mexico and arrived in the US in 1978. Since then he has investigated border culture and trans-cultural identity. Through journalism, performance, radio, video, poetry and installations he has explored the relationship between Latinos and the US. From 1984 to 1990 he founded and participated in the "Border Arts Workshop", and contributed to the national radio program "Crossroads." He was one of the editors of "High Performance" magazine and the "Drama Review." He has received the Prix de la Parole at the International Theatre Festival of the Americas (1989), the Bessie prize in New York (1989) and a MacArthur Fellowship (1991), among other awards. He is author of the book "Warrior for Gringostroika" published by Graywolf Press in 1993 and "The New World Border" (1996), which received the American Book Award, and “Mexican Beasts and Living Santos” (1997) Collaborators: BETTO ARCOS (Los Angeles, CA) Co-producer, I Don't Speak English Only, Vato!, Menage-a-Trade, and Temple of Confessions. A border crosser since 1977, Arcos crossed into the United States in 1985 and lived in Colorado until March 1995. He makes a (difficult) living as a freelance radio producer, as a regular contributor to NPR's Latino USA and Radio Bilingue's Noticiero Latino. In 1986 he began producing a weekly bilingual program on KGNU-FM (Boulder, Colorado). In 1993 he received a degree from the School of Journalism at the University of Colorado. In 1994 he began producing radio programs with Guillermo Gomez-Pena, including the satirical work on the North American Free Trade Agreement, Menage-a-Trade, which received a 1995 Golden Reel Award from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters for best radio drama production. RONA MICHELE (San Francisco, CA) Soundscape composer for Temple of Confessions. A soundscape composer and co-founder of Michele-Shine Media in San Francisco, Michele received a B.F.A. from Massachusetts College of Art in Boston in 1987 with a major in painting and computer generated music. She taught at the Montrose School in Westwood, Massachusetts, where she was head of the arts department, before moving to San Francisco in 1980. She has collaborated with such groups and artists as Earwax Productions, Elbows Akimbo, Chris Shine, and Guillermo Gomez-Pena developing works for theater, radio, film and video. Her recent works include presentations at Mobius (Boston), Theater Artaud and the Magic Theater (San Francisco). Michel-Shine Media is currently working on a series of performance installations that are meditations on interactivity. Michele is also designing sound for an upcoming production at the Magic Theater. ROBERTO SIFUENTES (New York, NY) Co-writer and co-director, Temples of Confessions. An interdisciplinary artist originally from Los Angeles, Sifuentes utilizes performance and installation. He has performed and exhibited in Santa Fe, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit, and New York, as well as in Mexico and Canada. He recently completed his participation in a bi-national project "Terreno Peligroso/Danger Zone," a month-long exchange of performance art and ideas that took place in Los Angeles and Mexico City between U.S. Latino and Mexican performance artists. top |
|
| GOYETTE, MARIE | |
| See Carnahan, Melody Sumner, "Manananggal." top |
|
| GRESHAM-LANCASTER, SCOT | |
| Times
Remembered (1995)
A non-narrative sound-music journey that evokes an idea Blue Gene Tierny
once introduced the artist to: that music derives from a memory of place.
The harmonic structure of the work comes directly from the spectrum
of the original environmental sound sources. All musical materials are
resonant chords based on that spectrum. Harmonically based on the beautiful
chromatic Bill Evan's ballad "Time Remembered," Times Remembered then
creates an artistic bridge between sound and music.
SCOT GRESHAM-LANCASTER (Oakland, CA) has been active in electronic and acoustic music for over twenty years. A composer, performer, and instrument designer, he has performed with Alvin Curran, John Zorn, and John Cage, and worked as a technical assistant to Iannis Xenakis, David Tudor, and Pauline Oliveros among others. Gresham-Lancaster is a founding member of the interactive computer music network band, the HUB. He has been a composer-in-residence at Mills College and at STEIM, Amsterdam, and a recipient of a fellowship from the Djerassi Residence Artist Program (Woodside, CA). Gresham-Lancaster is currently a lecturer in computer and music studies at California State University at Hayward. top |
|
| GRIMES, EV | |
| Sic
Transit Gloria Bossie (Thus
Passes the Glory of Bossie) (1989) Something "udder" for the "Moo American
Radio" series as the producer takes on the cow fad that has swept her
native Vermont. A hilarious fast paced collage of cow jokes, cow limericks,
stories about the cow in Vermont folklore, the sounds of a mooing contest,
with interviews with cow artist and marketer, Woody Jackson, and psycho-therapist
Dr. Michael Watson, Vermont's cow trivia expert Dan Connor, and, of
course, statements by "the girls" themselves. Consider it a charming
high-tech vacation for the mind with an underlying note of sadness as
it becomes clear that fads like this derive part of their meaning from
a sense of loss. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
EV GRIMES is an independent radio producer whose programs have won ten national and international awards. In 1988 she received the American Women in Radio and Television's top award for her cultural documentary Ruth Crawford Seeger: An American Music Maker, and she received an Armstrong Award for a program on composer Lou Harrison. Grimes is currently working on projects for the International League of Women Composers and the National Gardening Association. top |
|
| H | |
| HAINES,
JULIA HARRIS, LORELEI HASTINGS, CHRISTOPHER HAUTA-AHO, TEPPO HEBEL, MARTIN D. HERSKOVICS, ISABELLA HIRSCH, SHELLEY HLAVAC, TED HODIAN, JOHN HUHTAMAKI, HARRI HUTCHINSON, BRENDA |
|
| HAINES, JULIA | |
| Earthwork
(1990) (10:00) Made up of the first
two pieces of a larger song cycle-in-progress, exploring sounds, songs,
commentary and concern about contemporary environmental consciousness.
Part 1: Voices of Young People is filled with the vitality of children
and young adults enthusiastic in their knowledge and urgent in their
search for solutions. In Part 2: The careful reflection of the Voices
of the Elders serves as a reminder of our interdependency. A multi-layered
fabric of sound, Earthwork includes interviews with activist Maggie
Ruhn, artist Mildred Greenberg, composer Pauline Oliveros, farmer Myra
Perkins, members of the Cheltenham Students for Environmental Action,
and a variety of young people, who came together at the Philadelphia
Earth Fest, 22 April 1990. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
JULIA HAINES is an independent composer and multi-instrumentalist who has a decade-long history of collaboration with dancers, filmmakers, video artists, poets and storytellers. Nominated Best (Folk) Instrumentalist, by the Philadelphia Music Foundation in 1990, Haines was commissioned by the New Jersey Foster Parent Association to create a work in honor of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and AIDS caregivers with percussionist Glen Velez. Over the past ten years, she has also developed music therapy programs in hospital, educational, and community settings to address the creative needs of young people through improvisation. top |
|
| HARRIS, LORELEI | |
| Dreaming
of Fat Men (1993-94)
A delightful and insightful dinner conversation among five women of
size. Why do they love to eat? Do they really all eat for the pleasure
of it? In what way can a lobster become a symbol of liberation? Are
the men in their lives understanding of their appetites? In the work,
the sounds from the animated dinner conversations blend with excerpts
from one-to-one interviews with the women to shape lively portraits
that defy easy categorizing. Dreaming of Fat Men is the winner of the
prestigious 1995 PRIX ITALIA documentary award. Produced for RTE, Radio
1, Dublin, Ireland. Edited version presented by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
[Listen]
LORELEI HARRIS (Dublin, Ireland) was born and raised in South Africa. She has since become one of the foremost radio documentary producers in Ireland. Her works include the intensively personal Attempt at a Homecoming (on revisiting South Africa after many years) and the sensitive portrayal of a lonely eccentric trying to find a partner through contact ads, Hermann. Harris also holds an editorial position in the documentary & features department at Irish National Radio (RTE, Radio 1). top |
|
| HASTINGS, CHRISTOPHER | |
| See Sleight of Mind Group, "The Underseen World of Claude Jateau, Parts 1 & 2." top |
|
| HAUTA-AHO, TEPPO | |
| See Huhtamaki, Harri, "Calewalayana." top |
|
| HEBEL, MARTIN D. | |
| See Barnes, David, "Survivors of Hama." top |
|
| HERSKOVICS, ISABELLA | |
| Sounds of Therapy (1998) is a deeply personal docu-composition about the communicative process and power of art ritual. It documents acoustically that the desire for communication and selfexpression crosses international boundaries, and that there are hidden artistic talents in all of us. This at least, is what producer Isabella Herskovics discovered when she took part in the Easter Symposium of expressive art therapists from 18 nations that was held in Leuk, Switzerland, in 1995. It is also a portrait of the charismatic Paolo Knill -a Swiss born musician and art therapist, and Professor Emeritus of Lesley College in Cambridge, MA - who influenced the spread of expressive art therapy throughout Europe, Israel and the United States. ISABELLA HERSKOVICS (Berlin, Germany) is an actress and independent radio journalist/documentary producer. After receiving her PhD in German literature and communication sciences at the Free University in Berlin, she began a successful career in German public radio. Specializing in long-form cultural entertainment programs, Herskovics has also produced numerous documentary features and radio plays. In 1997, she received her diploma in expressive art therapy and is considering a second career in this field. |
|
| HIRSCH, SHELLEY | |
| #39
(1991) (8:13) A text by Angela Carter
spoken and sung by Hirsch in an environment of intricately woven rhythms
evocative of the jungle environment of the Carter text. With David Weinstein
on sampling keyboard. Co-commissioned by Harvestworks, Inc., the Wexner
Center for the Arts, and NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
O Little Town of East New York (1992) An autobiographical docu-musical about growing up in East New York. The artist describes, creates and inhabits remembered environments, situations and persons. Musical fragments, characterizations, accents, and sound images evoke the ethnically diverse neighborhood from the 1960s to the present: Hirsch's Russian schoolmate's living room; the home of her own working class Jewish family; synagogue; high school; rallies against the Vietnam War; drugs. O Little Town of East New York was the winner of the prestigious 1993 PRIX FUTURA Berlin, in the Ake Blomstrom competition for new, promising documentary talent. Music co-composed and performed with David Weinstein. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] States (1997) A complex soundscape that mixes polyphonic renditions of American pop songs ("Blue Moon" and "Blue Skies"), cocktail lounge monologues, techno music, exotica, Bulgarian choral singing, and the Firebird Suite, all strung together in a stew of electronically-treated found sounds. It's not an easy thing melding all this territory into coherence yet Hirsch manages to keep the thing seamlessly afloat for almost 20 minutes. "Tenemos" is a hypnotic treatment of a Steinian sentence, "Don't touch the rosebush." There are grunts and groans, cut up words, drony echoes, clicks and pops. It's a marvelous update on vocal techniques pioneered by Cathy Berberian earlier in the century. When Hirsch keeps things loose, free, and abstract, it works. [Listen] The Vidzer Family (1991) A portrait of a family with roots in Russia, who traveled to South America and ended up in Brooklyn's East New York in the 1960s. The work includes interview materials that are intricately interwoven into a poetic performance text and embedded in a richly textured sound score of singing, vocalization, and synthesizer music created by Hirsch with keyboards played by David Weinstein. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. War of Dreams (8:07) Musical improvisations, story, and expressive, processed breathing are woven into a piece of kinetic theater. With a text based on Angela Carter's "Doctor Hoffmanns Infernal Machines of Desire." SHELLEY HIRSCH is an accomplished vocalist/performer/composer whose original compositions, staged musical works, improvisations, and collaborations have been presented in concert halls, museums, clubs, galleries, theaters, and on television across America and Europe. A three time artist-in-residence at STEIM (Amsterdam) and at Harvestworks/Studio PASS in New York, Hirsch has also received a DAAD fellowship to live and work in Berlin, Germany. She can be heard on over twenty-five CDs including Singing, her record of solos and duos, and Haiku Lingo, a duo CD/LP with her longtime collaborator, keyboardist David Weinstein. top |
|
| HLAVAC, TED | |
| See Sleight of Mind Group, "The Underseen World of Claude Jateau, Parts 1 & 2." top | |
| HODIAN, JOHN | |
| Artaud
Ascending (1992)
With writer John Quinn. "Tragedy on the stage is not enough for me,"
Anton Artaud told Jean-Louis Barrault in 1935, "I am going to carry
it over into my life." Artaud Ascending shows Artaud carrying tragedy
even further, into his death and into the consciousness of modern man.
The work is an examination of the mind of one of our century's most
celebrated madmen/artists. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
JOHN HODIAN (Philadelphia, PA) began training as a classical pianist at age thirteen, and later studied jazz and free improvisation. Formal study included a master's degree from the Philadelphia College of the Performing Arts and studies in conducting with maestro Max Rudolf. In 1984 he opened Digital Sound, Philadelphia's first computer-based recording facility, where he has scored numerous feature films, documentaries and broadcast commercials for television and radio. Hodian also composes and performs theater and dance works in which he blends multimedia with live performance. JOHN QUINN (Philadelphia, PA) is a writer and journalist. A graduate of Temple University and a recipient of a Clinton Journalism scholarship, Quinn has written European travel articles, business reports and investigative political pieces for such publications as Vis a Vis, Focus, and Philadelphia's City Paper. He is the author of numerous works of short fiction and a novel, Balancing Act. He is also the co-author of Prometheus, a mixed-media stage adaptation of the Greek myth, and the author of a play, Emma. top |
|
| HUHTAMAKI, HARRI | |
| Calawalayana—Changes
in the Ecology of the Mind (1986)
With Teppo Hauta-aho, Pekka Lappi, Seppo Paakunainen, and Pekka Ruohoranta.
Bear Island, a remote wilderness area of Finland served as the primary
recording location for this remarkable work that reverberates with the
sounds of nature and ancient musical instruments. Additional recordings
were made in the streets of Helsinki, where jazz musicians Seppo Paakunainen
and Teppo Hauta-aho improvised on bass and saxophone. In the words of
its producers, Calewalayana is our way of interpreting the Finnish national
epic, the Kalevala, from which the text is taken. It's a documentary
about the Finnish identity, about breaking boundaries, and about nostalgia."
Calewalayana won a Special Commendation at the 1987 PRIX FUTURA competition
in Berlin, West Germany. Produced for the Finnish Broadcasting Company
(YLE). An edited version in the original language with an English translation
presented by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] Concerto for Doors (1993) (13:40) With Teppo Hauta-aho, Pekka Lappi, and Christine Topos. In this work, doors represent a transition—a threshold and a metaphor of change: "Because something is happening, but you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?" Evocative nature sounds combine with squeaky doors and other musical expressions. A collaborative composition produced for Radio Atelier at Yleisradio, Finland . HARRI HUHTAMAKI (Helsinki, Finland) is a theater director, university lecturer, and the present Head of Radio Atelier at Yleisradio, Finland. One of Finland's most accomplished radio producers, Huhtamaki has authored hundreds of radio documentaries, features and radio plays. His works have received numerous awards, including a PRIX FUTURA Berlin award for "Calewalayana" (1987) and for Cockroach (1989), the Prix Italia special commendation for "Amazon © as natural music" 1996, Prix Europa special commendation for "A Happy Childhood" 2000. Berlin, and a Prix Italia special commendation for "Voices from Hiroshima," 2001. He is also the author of the book, The Five Ways of The Radio, Like©Publishing House, Helsinki 1993. His works are available on CDs and DVDs. Collaborators: TEPPO HAUTA-AHO (Helsinki, Finland) Music Calewalayana and Concerto for Doors. A well-known musician and composer, especially in the areas of modern jazz and classical music. He is presently employed as a bass player in the orchestra of the Finnish National Opera. PEKKA LAPPI (Helsinki, Finland) Music Calewalayana and Concerto for Doors. Lappi studied classical music at the Sibelius Academy. He is currently sound engineer and sound designer at the Yleisradio (Finland) Features Department. SEPPO PAAKUNAINEN (Helsinki, Finland) Music Calewalayana. One of the foremost Finnish jazz musicians and composers with a special interest in ancient Finno-Ugric folk music. PEKKA RUOHORANTA (Helsinki, Finland) Co-producer, Calewalayana. A freelance journalist and director of radio plays and documentaries at Yleisradio. top |
|
| HUMON, NAUT | |
| See Earwax Productions, "Bloody Angle." top | |
| HUTCHINSON, BRENDA | |
| Violet
Flames, Parts 1 & 2 (1993)
In rare interviews, sound and music recordings, this work portrays the
philosophy and doctrine of the "Church Universal and Triumphant" headquartered
in Corwin Springs and Emigrant, Montana. The producer's sister has been
a member of the church for many years, sparking Hutchinson's interest
in this controversial religious community. Part 1 is made up of many
stories that reflect the individual and his/her relationship to the
Church and its teachings. Part 2 includes more controversial topics
such as politics, weapons, and shelters. This work is not an exposé
but an attempt to provide complex and sympathetic portraits of the people
involved. Co-commissioned by Harvestworks, Inc. and NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
[Listen
Part 1] [Listen
Part 2]
Every Dream Has Its Number (1995-96) A documentary/sound piece about the artist and her mother, a lifelong compulsive gambler now dying of cancer. Through stories, conflicting memories, music, and the sounds of gambling environments, Hutchinson shapes a portrait of a difficult relationship in its final stages. Terminal illness as a catalyst for healing and acceptance is both ironic and poignant. For the two women, it also provides a sharp and constant sense of urgency to discover and touch some basic thread connecting their lives. BRENDA HUTCHINSON (San Francisco, CA) is a sound artist whose work includes performance and compositions for dance, opera, film, video, and radio. She has built interactive installations and exhibits; worked as a video producer and sound consultant at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, as a sound engineer at Harvestworks, Inc. in New York, and as Senior Sound Designer for the multimedia company, Convivial Design in San Francisco. Recordings of her work are available through Tellus and Deep Listening/Oliveros Foundation. top |
|
| I | |
| IGES, JOSE | |
| City
of Water (1994)
With Concha Jerez. A sonic visit to the Alhambra—palace of the
Moorish kings in Granada, Spain and one of the most magnificent creations
of Islamic architecture (thirteenth and fourteenth centuries). Traveling
the monument's halls and courtyards, as well as the adjacent gardens
with its fountains and streams, the artist/producers record the sonorities
of the water, the voices of tour guides and visitors, and some of the
Arabic texts and epigraphic poetry that can be found along the garden
paths. Yet this serene and beautiful work is not simply another version
of "acoustic tourism." Rather, it attempts a sonic rebuilding of the
monument, reminiscent of its patterned mosaics. [Listen]
JOSE IGES (Madrid, Spain) is an industrial engineer and a composer. A former member of the Computer Science Seminary (University of Madrid) and of the performance group, ELENFANTE, Iges' compositional activities have been closely linked to radio since the late 1970s. He is the producer of the audio and radio art series Ars Sonora at RNE, Spanish National Radio. CONCHA JEREZ (Madrid, Spain) is an intermedia artist whose visual installations and sound and visual spaces have been presented in individual exhibitions and in group shows throughout Western Europe, in Japan, Mexico, and in the U.S. Some of her art works are part of the permanent collections of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Germany, and the Modernen Kunstmuseum of Norrkoping, Sweden. top |
|
| J | |
| JACKSON,
HOMER JASPERSEN, MALTE JEREZ, CONCHA JOHNSON, TOM JONES, BARNEY JONES, JAKE-ANN JONES, KEVIN JONES, LISA JONES, RHODESSA JOVANOVIC, ARSENIJE JOYCE, DON and NEGATIVLAND JUNGER, PATRICIA |
|
| JACKSON, HOMER | |
| KRS-ONE:
Philosopher (1989)
A hip-hop style music documentary about Kris Parker, widely known as
Blastmaster KRS-ONE. Parker has followed an arduous path to musical
stardom. From his decision to leave home at the age of thirteen to pursue
a musical career, to his struggles as a homeless teen on the New York
streets and the tragic death of his partner DJ Scott La Rock, KRS-ONE
has weathered the scene to become one of hip hop's most powerful and
original voices. KRS-ONE: Philosopher is a vibrant portrait of a musician
who is challenging the bad boy image of the current hip-hop scene by
advocating education and intelligence. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN
RADIO. [Listen]
Passage (1991) A collage that focuses on the migration of black Americans from the South to the North. Passage examines the migration's physical, metaphysical, psychological, and social aspects and their effects on black communities and the nation as a whole. Stories, music, the voices of elders, excerpts from old newsreels, country blues and urban jazz, the sounds of rural America and of metropolitan areas, poetry, and dramatic skits make this an entertaining and informative work. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] White for a Weekend (1991) A comedy drama, speculating on what being white could mean to a non-white. The story follows the misadventures of Bobby Burnett, a young black sales representative who becomes a winning contestant in the bizarre game show, "White for a Weekend." More than simply a revamped reversal of "Black Like Me," the work touches on social, economic, cultural, and sexual myths, and the realities of contemporary race relations. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] HOMER JACKSON (Philadelphia, PA) is an interdisciplinary artist with a background in teaching and social service. He uses images, sounds, text, live performance, video, audience participation and found objects to tell stories and to teach. His work includes multi-media music performance works such as The Three Willies, Yacub: Mad Scientist or Genius, Affirmative Actions, Blues & The Naked Truth, the live planetarium performance Dogon PM, sound/radio theater works such as Passage, White for A Weekend, The Perfect Pitch and multimedia installations such as Can’t Trust a Big Butt & A Smile: Rethinking the Legend of Mami Wota, Why Malcolm Had To Read and High Flying. A BFA graduate of the Philadelphia College of Art Jackson holds a MFA from Temple University's Tyler School of Art. He has performed, produced, presented or exhibited works at New American Radio, Philadelphia Art Alliance, Nexus Gallery, Moore College of Art, Yellow Springs Institute, the Painted Bride Arts Center, Taller Puertorriqueno and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia; at Hallwalls Arts Center in Buffalo, Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis, WGBH FM in Boston, Smithsonian Institute Traveling Exhibition, Art Center/South Florida in Miami Beach, Maryland Art Place in Baltimore, the Kitchen, Art In General and Aaron Davis Hall in New York City and Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts in Wilmington. His work has received the generous support the Pew Fellowships in the Arts, The Rockefeller Foundation, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, The Funding Exchange, Art Matters, and Franklin Furnace Fund For Performance Art among others.. Jackson currently serves as the publisher and editor of the artists’ newsletter, Shine: Conversations Between Artists. top |
|
| JASPERSEN, MALTE | |
| Water
Dripping in a Dish (1995) is an impressionistic
sound portrait of the city of Kyoto, Japan, a modern metropolis with twelve
hundred years of history. Water dripping through a bamboo cane pneumatic
drills the cacophony of amusement arcades moments of devotion,
reflection and silence - all shape an acoustic world that is surprising and enticing. "Water Dripping in a Dish" does not fall into the familiar trap of 'acoustic tourism'. Rather it is an invitation to hear with new ears, reminding listeners that the meaning of sound is indeed rooted in history and a particular place. Winner of a Special Commendation at the international Prix Futura Berlin competition in 1995. NEW AMERICAN RADIO presents an abbreviated version of the original 45 minute work. [Listen] MALTE JASPERSEN (Kyoto, Japan) was born and raised in Germany where he studied law and theater. Until 1986 he was member of the international theater group, "Drugie Studio Wroclawskie" in Poland. One year later he founded the theater project "Kuppel & Jaspersen" which toured Europe and Japan. In 1989 Jaspersen moved to Kyoto where he studied Noh theater and Noh mask carving from the master player Michishige Udaka. Still at home in Kyoto, he has produced several major documentaries for German public broadcasters, including work on water, geishas and Japanese comics. top |
|
| JEREZ, CONCHA | |
| See Iges, Jose, "The City of Water." top | |
| JOHNSON, TOM | |
| Piano
Problems (1988) With producer
Kaye Mortley. At age forty Johnson, already a respected music critic
and recognized "minimal" composer, discovered his true passion: counting.
Since that moment, he has composed only music that operates with logical
and predictable sequences. His radio plays for German, French, and Australian
radio are based on the same principle. They are examples of what might
be called humorous dramatic exercises in musical counting, designed
to help the listener understand the inner logic of musical structure.
"Problem 4: Suppose that a series of melodies are released at a height
of two octaves and are allowed to fall with gravity. Eventually they
begin to pile up at ground level, just like sand, or apples, or anything
else would. What would the pile sound like after fifteen melodies have
fallen? Piano Problems was produced at Radio France for the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation.
Born in Greely, Colorado, TOM JOHNSON lived and worked in New York City until 1983. A student of Elliot Carter and Morton Feldman, his musical work and his music criticism, which was published weekly in the Village Voice, established him firmly in the contemporary/ new music world. Johnson moved to Paris in l983, where he continues to write music, and where he also composes for radio. top |
|
| JONES, BARNEY | |
| See Earwax Productions, "Audiographs -- Songs From the Tenderloin," "Ecomania, Parts 1 & 2," and "Wake for Tom." top | |
| JONES, JAKE-ANN | |
| Juno,
the Universal Power Chile (1995)
Juno, the "Universal Pioneer Chile" travels through space in her soul-saucer,
The Sassy Sarah, to battle the evil Dr. Ranzeck's Galaxy Colonization
Plan. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
JAKE-ANN JONES (New York, NY) is a performer/writer, whose credits include the mixed media play Eclipse in Bottomsville; an acting role in Spike Lee's film, Malcolm X; and afro-funky performance evenings of cabaret, music, and poetry at Dixon Place, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and other New York City venues, which she co-produced and co-curated. JONES is a 1993-94 resident artist at Mabou Mines. top |
|
| JONES, KEVIN | |
| Discardia
#1 (1992) The first section of
The Discardia Report—a suite of works for radio which use the voice
and spoken word as the vehicle for the exploration of the human condition
and the struggle of individuals to find meaning in their lives. Discardia
#1 uses the voice of Heather Ehlers along with sound effects and electro-acoustic
sounds to create an amorphous, ever-changing soundscape within which
the voice can reside. The primary dramatic element here is the contrast
between the world of reason and a world of uncertainty, in which meaning
is as fluid as the soundscape in which it occurs.
Glancing Blows (1989) A work that explores the difference between language as a generator of images and language as pure sound material. The piece creates an audio world of its own—spaces into and out of which its characters move, trying to express themselves while at the same time they try to be a part of an audio environment that is always changing. In Glancing Blows nothing is stable, everything is in a state of flux. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. Imaginary Portraits #1 and #2 (1990) The first parts of a trilogy of works for radio that use a single voice as the sole source for the entire composition. Imaginary Portrait #1 is made entirely from the voice of vocalist Jill Burton. #2 is made from the voice of actor Rob Donaldson. In both, the source recordings are mixed, edited, processed, and manipulated using sampling techniques to construct the final pieces. Spatial placement both in the stereo field and in changing foreground-background relationships adds a sense of motion to these pieces. The WNYC Project and Imaginary Portrait #1 (1989) In 1988 composer and audio artist Kevin Jones did an on-air interview with WNYC's Lucy Sumner in which they discussed Jones's text-sound compositions. The interview was recorded. Jones subsequently cut it up, processed and repeated parts of it and produced a piece that is a Jones composition, that talks about Jones's compositions and that demonstrates how Jones makes a composition. KEVIN JONES (Brooklyn, NY) studied composition at the New England Conservatory for Music in Boston, and computer music at M.I.T. in Cambridge. He now lives and works in New York City, where he collaborates on large scale music/dance/ theater works with choreographer Theresa Reeves and pursues his own writing, installation work and compositions. top |
|
| JONES, LISA | |
| Aunt
Aida's Hand (1989) With performer/ composer
Alva Rogers. Stories about two black women trying to piece together
family legends and their cultural history. Neither women have mothers.
And since the history of women is largely passed down by women, they
must seek out other female relatives. Aunt Aida lives on a farm in North
Carolina and is struggling to hold onto her house -- the repository
of her family history -- though day by day she is losing her memory.
Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
Ethnic Cleansing (1993) A surreal satire that begins as a fireside chat but quickly leaps out of the frame to become real. It addresses the question: What would happen if an ethnic-racial "cleansing movement" took hold in America? First there's a racial mix-up in a local sperm bank -- then there's a full-scale civil war. With an exciting cast of young New York performers; sound design and original music by hip-hop composer Guido Osorio. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] Stained (1991) With performer/composer Alva Rogers. A fury of passion, then a sudden loss and all that's left is the music. A woman is haunted by music she associates with a lover who disappeared without explanation at the height of their love affair. The piece looks at how much our memory and emotions are linked with music. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] LISA JONES (Brooklyn, NY) is a playwright, journalist, and author. She won a Bessie Award for the stage adaptation of Stained, her musical-theater collaboration with Alva Rogers, most recently produced at the African American Art Festival in June 1995. Her play Combination Skin, which was premiered at the Company One Theater in Hartford, Connecticut in 1992, has been staged around the country. Her work is included in a new anthology of contemporary plays by women of color to be published by Routledge Press in early 1996. Jones contributes to the Village Voice, Essence, and Vibe. A collection of her essays, Bulletproof Diva: Tales of Race, Sex, and Hair, was published by Doubleday. ALVA ROGERS (Brooklyn, NY) Collaborated on Aunt Aida's Hand and Stained. Rogers is a writer/performer, who has been active in the downtown New York City scene since 1986. Called New York's "Down Diva" by the Village Voice, Rogers addresses the issues of race and gender with uncanny wit and directness, and draws upon musical styles ranging from jazz to gospel, blues to funk. The New York Times has described her as " . . . a natural mimic, brilliantly funny and acidic in her portrayals." She has performed at many of New York's major venues, including P.S. 122, The Kitchen, The Knitting Factory, and Central Park's Summer Stage series. She recently received an M.F.A. as a book writer/lyricist in musical theater writing from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She is a recipient of the Dance Theatre Workshop New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award (1995) as co-creator of the stage adaptation of Stained. top |
|
| JONES, RHODESSA | |
| Big
Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women (1993)
With composer/ performer Idris Ackamoor. Based on the powerful one-woman
performance Jones toured in 1991-92. The story follows the real-life
adventures and misadventures of an artist hired by the California Arts
Council to teach "aerobics" in San Francisco's city jail. While teaching
there she meets and hears the horrifying, dangerous, and sometimes profoundly
touching stories of the incarcerated women. Jones' portrayal is an intense
and moving tour-de-force. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
RHODESSA JONES (San Francisco, CA) is an actress, singer, and writer who has been active in San Francisco's performing arts community for many years. Recent performances include The Mother of Three Sons with choreography and staging by Bill T. Jones, libretto by Ann T. Green and music by Leroy Jenkins (Grand Opera, Houston, TX, 1992); and Reality is Just Outside the Window (Theater Artaud, San Francisco, 1992). In 1990 Jones founded The Media Project, a program to promote incarcerated women's self-awareness and self-esteem through the creation and production of theater pieces based on their personal histories. IDRIS ACKAMOOR (San Francisco, CA) is a composer and performer whose work is rooted in the artistic principles embodied in the music, theater, and dance he encountered in his travels to Africa in the 1970s. His works include collaborations with choreographer Bill T. Jones, playwright Ed Bullen, musician Don Moye and performer Rhodessa Jones. Ackamoor has toured the Uniited States, Europe and Japan for the last twelve years. He recently premiered a collaboration with Rhodessa Jones, Ed Bullen, and rock musician/composer Vernon Reid, called Emergency Report, which is based on materials derived from the life stories of participating at-risk inner city youth. top |
|
| JOVANOVIC, ARSENIJE | |
| Formula
I—the Art of Speed (1995)
(12:40) A radiophonic composition that deals with speed in the twentieth
century. The piece makes a connection between the famous manifesto of
the Italian futurists, which ranks the beauty of a modern race car higher
than the classical beauty of the "winged victory of Samothrace," and
our own time with its continuing obsession with cars and speed. Formula
I was produced for the series Kunstradio at ORF, Austria, in 1994. (#41,95
with Gautier and Zwedberg)
Klavierabtasten (1992) An intimate, contemplative sound composition developed during a workshop at Austrian radio (ORF) in 1990. "I entered the studio, closed the door and looked around. Somewhere in a corner there was an old battered piano which I approached as if it were a living being. Scattered stones came to life like animals in a cage. For the third section of the work called "Skin," I tried to become as conscious of my body as possible, and the sounds evolved, as if by themselves . . . " (Jovanovic) Cut into this work are short audio art pieces by Canadian radio/audio artist Christof Migone. Taken from Migone's The Transpiring Transistor, these short works were inspired by texts from Ecrits Bruts (France 1979)—writings of the insane. Roadside Tombstones (1970) With Enriko Josif. A powerful and moving "ritualistic commemorative service to the victims of war and to a nation in the agony of death." (Jovanovic) A drama without a plot; an oratorio; authentic literature and original music; inscriptions from roadside tombstones. [Listen] The Prophecy From the Village of Kremna (1990) A million voices raised in protest and other sounds recorded live in Belgrade and the surrounding country, are the materials of this unusual sound composition on the 1989 90 ethnic and political uprisings in Yugoslavia. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. ARSENIJE JOVANOVIC (Belgrade, Serbia) is a former professor of dramatic arts, and the award-winning director of over 100 plays for theater, television, and radio. One of the best known radio artists in Europe, his credits include commissions from the WDR Cologne, Germany; RAI, Italy; and the ABC, Australia. Jovanovic has been awarded a prestigious PRIX ITALIA award and numerous other international prizes. top |
|
| JOYCE, DON and NEGATIVLAND | |
| Advertising
Secrets (1991)
A dynamic blend of rhythmic elements and original audio constructs—actual
ad jingles, lines and phrases—commentary by and about advertisers—books
on tape materials about how commercials are conceived and created—plus
various out-takes from commercial productions which depict the sophisticated
process (and elaborate cynicism) of the professionals involved. "My
motivation is to inspect and depict some of the paradoxical aspects
of media advertisement which both attract and repel me as an artist
in America—a society whose entire economic well being rests solely
on consumerism and the need to manufacture want." (Joyce) Commissioned
by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
Guns! (1989) A dense, pulsing "action song" whose verses deal with America's intimate relation ship with firearms: "The gun and the Bible carved this nation out of the wilderness," a man exclaims. A tradition unfolds that links the voices of the past as we know them through television cowboy movies and gangster films, to the modern Annie-Get Your-Gun, the business woman of the 'eighties with her handy sub-machine gun. An evolving patchwork of movie excerpts and TV ads, statements and information about guns, and certain phrases repeated like bullets. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] A Piddle Diddle Disneyland, Part 1 & 2 (1994) An edited two-part version of a special edition of the long-running "Piddle Diddle Report"—an "in depth report on current issues of substance" produced by the American Broadcasting System (ABS). This Piddle Diddle special brings us live and remote to Disneyland in Anaheim, California, where a communicastor's booth has been built high atop the slightly swaying, but structurally reliable Matterhorn. The occasion: an all-night gala to celebrate the opening of a huge parking garage just outside the park, a beautiful structure with its own exit off the freeway. From their privileged position, hosts Doug Piddle and Peter Diddle along with the Weatherman and Rex Everything (the famous but unpublishable author) draw an animated picture of the past, present, and future of this amusing amazement area. Time Zones (1990) A radio talk-show approach to the question: how many time zones are there in the Soviet Union? DON JOYCE (Oakland, CA) Joyce has been working in radio since 1976. He is the producer of the late night show Over The Edge, in which he and other Negativland members (Mark Hosler, Chris Grigg, David Willis, Richard Lyons) use the entire studio as an instrument to produce a weekly session of live spontaneous sound combustion. Over the last decade Negativland has developed a variety of collaborative and listener interactive ways of presenting their noise/rock/found sound/sound animation compositions, including Radio Teletours "from our house to yours—phone charges only." top |
|
| JUNGER, PATRICIA | |
| Transmitter - First To Second Nature/From Riverbed to Flooding (1998) is the broadcast version of a large-scale site-specific sound event that was premiered in Basel, Switzerland, in 1996. The concept: The Rhine river as an instrument of public space. The construction: 10 microphones with different characteristics captured the sounds of the river above water and along its banks. In addition, divers supplied sounds using 4 hydrophon microphones at different levels in the rivers. Then, a 175 yard long tlHear-Promenade" was constructed along the right bank of the Rhine by installing 48 loudspeakers and 18 subwoofers to allow visitors to hear the sounding, virtual river alongside its analog reality. A boat carried well-known actress Christa Ludwig back and forth between the two bridges that marked the beginning and end of the acoustic promenade, adding her reading of literary texts to the overall mix. In this digital studio work, the Rhine emerges as a beautifully subtle, expressive and complex sound-music river of sound. NO ARTIST BIO available at this time. |
|
| K | |
| KAPFER, HERBERT KARLSSON, ERIK MIKAEL KENNY, MAURICE KIELTYKA, CONNIE KIM, JIN HI KOPETSKY, HELMUT KOPTIUCH, KRISTIN KUBO, MAYAKO KUIVILA, RON |
|
| KAPFER, HERBERT | |
| See Bassenge, Ulrich, "Euroanthem." top | |
| KARLSSON, ERIK MIKAEL | |
| Epitaphe pour Iqbal Masih (10:21) by Erik Mikael Karlsson. In memory of the twelve-year old Pakistani boy who was sold at age four to a weaving mill where he was kept chained up for the best part of the next six years. When he was ten years old, Iqbal managed to flee. He then took part in the fight against child labor until he was shot two years later, in 1995, while out cycling with some friends in his home village. ERIK MIKAEL KARLSSON (Stockholm, Sweden) is one of Europe's most promising young composers of electroacoustic music. Born in 1967, he has created work for the Swedish Broadcasting Company; La Muse en Circuit in Paris, France; Elektronisches Studio at the Technical University in Berlin, Germany; and the Institute for Electroacoustic Music in Aarhus, Denmark, among others. |
|
| KENNY, MAURICE | |
| Dug-Out
(1990) With original sound score by Helen Thorington. In 1984 when
two dug-out canoes were unearthed on a private estate in Malone, New
York, it was a very special occasion for the Mohawk Indian Nation at
Akwesasne. These two artifacts preserved for 400-500 years in the mud
of the Malone pond, were the oldest known artifacts linking the Mohawks
to their past. Deeply moved by their excavation, and the subsequent
unsuccessful effort to place the dug-outs in the Indian Museum at Akwesasne,
Native American poet Maurice Kenny wrote an epic poem that serves as
the textual base for this radio work. His performance evokes the past
of the Mohawk Nation and its present. As history, family, ritual and
nature merge in Kenny's poem, so do voices, sounds and music in the
production. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
MAURICE KENNY (Saranac Lake, NY) was born in 1929 of a Seneca mother and a Canadian Mohawk father. In the 1950s, he moved from his native North Country to Brooklyn, where he first taught at the Mary Taracai School of Drama, and later co-edited the poetry journal Contact II, and became publisher of Strawberry Press. Many of his volumes of poems originated in Brooklyn, among them "Blackrobe" (1982) and "Is Summer This Bear" (1985). Twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, Kenny is the winner of the prestigious American Book Award, the Boston Globe Award, and the William Carlos Williams Award. He is currently living in Saranac Lake, NY. top |
|
| KIELTYKA, CONNIE | |
| World
Sounds (1989)
A digital journey into the soundscapes of Third World countries. The
opening section focuses on Kenya, moves slowly through the jungle to
a small village where the ritual drums of initiation beat throughout
the night, then rises with the sounds of morning to journey on to Nairobi
and its urban environment. The second section focuses on transportation
and the ease with which it is possible to move from one remote location
to another -- from the Brazilian jungle to Hong Kong, from Hong Kong
to Nepal -- the world at our fingertips, world sounds in our ears. Commissioned
by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
Sound engineer, recordist and production consultant, CONNIE KIELTYKA (NY) has worked with an impressive number of radio producers and new music composers. Her credits include work for Tom Lopez, John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, and Steve Reich as well as live remote broadcasts for WNYC-FM (New York) and the Ars Electronica festival in Linz, Austria. In 1986 she joined the Godfrey Reggio/Phillp Glass film team as a sound location recordist for a six month worldwide film shoot of Powaqqatsi. Her radio piece World Sounds is based on sounds recorded during that trip. top |
|
| KIM, JIN HI | |
| See Celli, Joseph, "World Soundprint: Pacific." top | |
| KOPETSKY, HELMUT | |
| Europoly,
Parts 1 & 2 (1990) by German documentarian Helmut Kopetzky
with composer Michael Maria Kammertons is a marvelously produced tone-composition
of continental proportions that took three years to complete. With the
help of sound materials sent by colleagues from radio stations all over
Europe, a virtual Europe was to arise - giving flesh to the theoretical
concept of a new Europe and bureaucrats had been toiling over for years.
Finally the realization dawned: there is no single formula for a new
Europe! Europe already lives, in a vibrant, chaotic, post-modern Babel. Europoly is a document about its own development: a cheerful and occasionally desperate game made up of acoustic expressions of life in Europe that arrived on tape and in letters - including lists of materials, clever thoughts and crazy ideas. Unlike anything you may have heard on air in the U.S. [Listen Part 1] [Listen Part 2] HELMUT KOPETSKY (Berlin, Germany) A former newspaper journalist and editor, Kopetsky has worked as a freelance producer and editor for radio and television since 1972. He was staff editor in the Sender Freies Berlin Feature Department from 1994 -1998. He has more than 100 full-length documentaries to his credit, and many awards, including 2 Prix Futuras, two Prix Europas, three Premio Ondas, an Ohio State Award and a Japan Prize. He has conducted feature workshops in New York, Brazil, Kenya, Poland, Holland, The Czech Republic. Mexico, Ecuador, Romania, Great Britain and other countries; and he has lectured at Leipzig University. Kopetsky lives with his wife, Heidi, in Berlin, where they run their own digital studio. Collaborator: MICHAEL MARIA KAMMERTONS (Berlin, Germany) Kammertons was born in 1949 in Bochum, Germany. After studies in architecture and comparative music science, he began creating compositions, sound installations and art objects. Radio broadcasts with the group "audionauts" of Radio 100 in Berlin followed in 1987 and 1988. Kammertons has also presented performances and created stage sets and exhibitions in France, Germany, Scotland, Sweden, Turkey and Turkmenistan. top |
|
| KOPTIUCH, KRISTIN | |
| See Negron, Frances, "Third World U.S.A.: First Stop, Philadelphia." top |
|
| KUBO, MAYAKO | |
| I
Am 99 Years Old (1989)
A multi-layered and multi-textured collage with two narrative strains:
people's voices stating their age, from 99 years down to 1 year of age,
and moving towards 99 years again; and interview excerpts that speak
about the volatile dynamics of family life and relations. Though musically
"fractured," this work builds to an amazingly clear and single listening
experience: a sense of our shared humanity. Produced for radio station
Sender Freies Berlin, Germany. [Listen]
MAYAKO KUBO (Berlin/Rome ) is a sound artist from Japan. Her radiophonic works include Mothers Children Lovers People (independent production, Germany, 1988) and Father! Song of a Lost Figure (SFB/SR, Germany, 1992). The main thrust of her work is the artistic exploration of family relations, the experience of Japanese immigrants in Europe, and a (critical) discussion of contemporary Japanese society. top |
|
| KUIVILA, RON | |
| Hearing
Things (1991)
Uses music, interviews, and other sonic specimens in a meditation on
the unheard and the unhearable. An example of unheard sound is found
in the 5 Hertz chirp produced at irregular intervals by the Tappan Zee
Bridge. More figuratively, there is the Foley artist, who carefully
crafts "misheard" sound effects. And, on the most abstract level, there
is the contingency of "musical meaning." What, for instance, is hidden
in the Kreutzer Sonata that it could trigger marital rape on the part
of both Tolstoy and Mahler? What in Brahms, that it could render a parking
lot mugger free? And what in Easy Listening, that it could empty a 7-11
of punk teenagers? Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
RON KUIVILA (Middletown, CT) composes music and designs sound installations that revolve around the unusual homemade and home modified electronic instruments he designs. He pioneered the use of ultrasound and sound sampling in live performance. More recent pieces have explored compositional algorithms, speech synthesis and high voltage phenomena. His sound installations have worked with the same materials. For example: Radio Arcs, a sound installation commissioned by Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, includes the coordination of ninety-six stun guns. Kuivila has performed and exhibited throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. He has collaborated with other composers, artists, and choreographers, including Anthony Buxton, Rudi Burckhardt, Merce Cunningham, Hugh Davies, and Susan Foster. top |
|
| L | |
| LAAKSO,
MIKKO LADD, MICHAEL LANDER, DAN LAPPI, PEKKA LAWRENCE, DAVID LE PRADO, CECILE LEVIN, ELLIOT LIIMATAINEN, JUHANI LIKAR, IGOR LINDBERG, MAGNUS LOCKWOOD, ANNEA LOKTEV, JULIA LOPEZ, TOM LUDWIG, MEREDITH |
|
| LAAKSO, MIKKO | |
| Northern
Lights—Aurora Borealis (1995)
(9:18) A beautiful sound-music work that reverberates with images of
the North: reindeer bells, the sounds of Sami reindeer herders, a wood
fire, and sounds of the forest: such as, birds, wolves . . . Close your
eyes and Northern Lights will conjure up in front of your inner eye,
the magical, high-altitude, many-colored, flashing luminosity known
as aurora borealis. Commissioned by the Finnish Broadcasting Company
(YLE).
MIKKO LAAKSO has worked in television sound and as a sound supervisor for twenty years. Since 1981, he's been a sound designer and creator of sound effects for Special Projects at Yleisradio. See also Toiviainen, Ilkka, "Letters From the Front." top |
|
| LADD, MICHAEL | |
| Tracks
and Traces (1994)
An exploration of 'non-linear' structure, i.e. the tangential linking
of ideas and emotions through words and sounds. Each of the loosely
related sound works deals in its own way with following trails, tracking
things down, reassembling the past from evidence left behind. The work
includes an actual recording of the producer's attempt to walk a straight
line through his own suburb, a composition made from sounds taken from
a tape found in the sea, and a tracing in sound of a childhood valley
by means of recording the natural reverberations of steam whistles.
Produced for The Listening Room, Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
MICHAEL LADD was born in Berkeley, California in 1959, but grew up in the hills near Adelaide, South Australia. He studied poetry and philosophy, and in 1980 formed the poetry performance group, The Drum Poets. Ladd joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in 1983 as a trainee sound engineer and has since gone on to produce features, dramas, and poetry specials. top |
|
| LANDER, DAN | |
| Here Comes Everybody (2:15), with Gregory Whitehead, is a seductive (ly) ironic comment on radio and its gurus. Premiered live over a telephone line. MOTPIKHO: mostofthepeopleIknowhaveone (1989) This project began on the producer's thirty-fourth birthday and involved the recording of his travels to and from work for thiry-four days. Reversing the customary function of the "walkman," Lander absorbed the sounds of his environment, while others around him used it as a playback system to mask those sound. Later all the journeys were mixed down into a stereo composition. In Lander's own words, MOTPIKHO is about "marking time, the compression of experience, the documentation of a specific sonic environment, and the obsession with data collection and presentation. It is also about the noisy business of getting where we're going." Talking to a Loudspeaker (1989) Recorded in the comfort of the artist's own home, the work offers a humorous challenge to traditional notions of radio production. In a series of short sketches, Lander pokes fun at the radio call-in show; the place of music in broadcasting; radio's "commercial" values; balance in news reporting; and the notion of "broadcast quality." A light-hearted work that reflects the artist's love hate relationship with the medium, Talking to a Loudspeaker also asks important questions about the listener's relationship to radio. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] Talking to a Loudspeaker, Part 2 (1991) Further explores the contradictions inherent in our attitudes as radio listeners and producers. The work is made up of short vignettes that investigate the saturation of the airwaves; state regulations; audience research tactics, the question of objective information; the disembodied voice; and access to the airwaves. While humorous in its approach to radio, Talking To A Loudspeaker, Part 2 also comprises a critique of the radio we hear and seriously contemplates a radio we might like to hear. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. DAN LANDER (Toronto, Canada) received his education at Nova Scotia College of Arts and Design. Since then, he has become one of Canada's leading audio/radio artists and critics. His audio work has been heard in Europe, the U.S., New Zealand, and throughout Canada. Lander has had his own radio/audio art show on CKLN-FM, Toronto, and has involved himself with such innovative ventures as "Radia"—a month-long radio project broadcast from the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta (1989). Lander is the co-editor of an anthology on the use of sound by visual artists, Sound by Artists. top |
|
| LAPPI, PEKKA | |
| See Huhtamaki, Harri, "Calewalayana." top |
|
| LAWRENCE, DAVID | |
| See Earwax Productions, "Virtual Paradise -- The Reality Tape." top |
|
| LE PRADO, CECILE | |
| Navigation
(1994-95) (13:25) A musical navigation/travel
notebook/log that leads the listener through different areas of Paris.
In the words of the artist: "Grope one's way along, quietly. To listen.
To discover a landscape. To approach. Hear it disappear and find oneself
alone. And then let oneself be snatched by the swell. And then let oneself
be invaded by voices. And then silence. Sensations engulfed by the wind."
Produced for Atelier de Creation Radiophonique, Radio France.
CECILE LE PRADO Biography unavailable. top |
|
| LEVIN, ELLIOT | |
| A
Gift of Ghosts (1990)
A real fantasy of fantastic reality realized through the ever growing
minds-souls-spirits-world beat-sound of Philadelphia. This program grew
out of fifteen years of documenting performance poetry. It's a vibrant,
energetic "jam session" of poets who perform their work musically—
using their voices, other instruments, and various acoustically and
electronically generated sounds to complement and dramatize the text
of their poetry. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
Postcards from the Edge of the Road (1993) Explores the concept of international "audio postcards" as a series of mini poetry-prose-music sound compositions. Recorded with poets and musicians who are native or long time residents of the areas described. The work features postcards from Columbus, Ohio; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Indianapolis, Indiana; Louisville, Kentucky; Montreal, Canada; Zurich, Switzerland; Tijuana, Mexico; San Rafael and Los Angeles, California; and Yokahama, Japan. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. ELLIOT LEVIN (Philadelphia, PA) studied music and creative writing at the University of Oregon. Additional studies followed with Michael Guerra, jazz great Cecil Taylor, and flutist Claire Pollin. Levin has performed original poetry and music throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe. He has also performed with such diverse ensembles as Cecil Taylor's Unit Core Group. Gunter Hampel's Big Band, Bill Haley's Comets, and Iltar. top |
|
| LIIMATAINEN, JUHANI | |
| See Lindberg, Magnus, "Faust." top |
|
| LIKAR, IGOR | |
| Dance
with a Stone (1990) The first
part in a tri-part sound composition called "Soundings of a Mountain."
As the title suggests, all the sound elements of which this work is
composed were recorded during a climb with mountaineers Andrej Debec
and Igor Likar of the Kogel, a mountain in the Slovene Alps in 1990:
gravel under the climbers' feet . . . breathing . . . the climbers'
equipment. They are shaped into a sound-music composition that evokes
a sense of the "rhythm" of the mountain itself.
IGOR LIKAR (Slovenia) Biography unavailable. top |
|
| LINDBERG, MAGNUS | |
| Faust
(1985-86) With Juha Siltanen, and Juhani Liimatainen of Finland. A radiophonic
composition commissioned by Finnish National Radio in 1985, winner of
the prestigious PRIX ITALIA Award for Music the following year. The
work is presented in Finnish and English. Faust is about the process
of searching for beauty in the impossible. The story is about a ship
and its departure and arrival at "the burning city built in the sea."
Soundscapes, improvisational music, and a stream-of-consciousness text
shape a kind of play without a plot, its polished surfaces concealing
an astonishing, enigmatic world.
MAGNUS LINDBERG (Helsinki, Finland) studied composition at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki; with Vinko Globokar in Paris. He also attended Franco Donatoni's master classes in Siena. His work KRAFT received the prestigious Nordic Music Prize in 1987. Collaborators: JUHANI LIIMATAINEN (Helsinki, Finland) has worked with sound since the mid-seventies. He has worked internationally with live-electronic music groups, performance art groups, and in opera and ballet productions as a sound engineer and a teacher. For many years he's been on the staff at Yleisradio, Finland, where his realizations have won him several international awards, including two PRIX ITALIA's (1986 and '88). JUHA SILTANEN (Helsinki, Finland) is a playwright and librettist whose work comprises numerous musical productions, film scripts, and essays. He has also directed many radio programs and translated several productions into Finnish. top |
|
| LOCKWOOD, ANNEA | |
| World Rhythms (1997) is a sound meditation on energies that shape us and our environment constantly - energies of which we are not always aware, but which powerfully influence and interact with the rhythms of our bodies. The sounds of geysers and mud pools, of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, waves, peepers, radio waves from a pulsar and human breathing are physical manifestations of such energies. In the words of the artist: "They have their own intrinsic patterns, and are also interactive with one another." World Rhythms explores the intuition that such rhythms are components of one vast rhythm. It features the composer on tam-tam played in response to her own inner continuum, a form of bio-rhythm. ANNEA LOCKWOOD (Crompond, NY) was born in New Zealand. She moved to Europe in 1961, where she studied at the Royal College of Music and the Cologne Musikhochschule. In the mid-60s, Lockwood turned to electronics, mixed-media and ultimately to the exploration of natural acoustic sounds. She moved to the US in 1973, and silice has toured frequently in this country, Europe and Australasia. In the past decade, Lockwood turned again to instrumental and vocal writing. Recent works include "Shapeshifter", premiered by the American Symphony Chamber Orchestra in 1996 and "Monkey Trips", created in collaboration with the California E.A.R. Unit. She is on the music faculty at Vassar College. |
|
| LOKTEV, JULIA | |
| Eating
in Tongues (1992)
With Nancy Steadman. An audio dinner that plays with the juncture of
food, language, and sexuality on the tip of the tongue, where words
are savored as if they were succulent chicken breasts. A four-course
meal devoured blindfolded, the secrets of a recipe, the lonesome twang
of a twisted tongue, and a recurring rhyme of edible body parts give
the work a resistant playful quality reminiscent of a coyly al dente
pasta: firm at the center, but tender.
JULIA LOKTEV (New York, NY) is a Russian-born radio artist, whose home is now Loveland, Colorado. Among her recent creative fixations are carnal architecture, obnoxious children, and food. Locktev was active at CKUT (Montreal), where she produced Voiceage, a one-hour collage on old age, and a half-hour work with a group of twelve-year-olds, dadababies. Since she has traveled extensively through the former Soviet Union and attended film school at New York University in New York City. NANCY STEADMAN (Montreal, Canada) grew up in a small prairie city in Canada, the daughter of a proprietor of a number of Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises. A degree in psychology compelled her to study dance with a variety of companies in Canada, which led to her working as a private movement instructor—particularly with musicians, which piqued an interest in radio that lead to her working with Montreal community radio. top |
|
| LOPEZ, TOM | |
| Dishpan Fantasy (1998) In this operatic fantasy, Dora samples new "Blue Goddess" dish detergent, and floats away in a bubble to a tropical Shangri-La where trees, flowers and even the breeze sing to her. Dora and her husband, Aldo, are conveyed on a mythic journey to a place where women are goddesses, and men are as myrthful and devilish as Pan. A work that's funny and fun, it features performances by soprano Ida Faiella, and by John McDonough of Captain Kangaroo-TV fame. TOM LOPEZ (Fort Edward, NY). "As far as my bio goes, you can say 'Has written and produced over 100 radio dramas.' That's enough." One might add, however, that Lopez worked with Yoko Ono in the late 1970s and has since become public radio's most successful producer of contemporary radio drama. In the 1980s, his ZBS Foundation conducted influential workshops on sound production (including binaural or 3-D sound) and developed a uniquely popular cassette distribution business built on Lopez's work that's still going strong. |
|
| LUDWIG, MEREDITH | |
| Piled
High (1989) (2:20) A woman lives
in her neighborhood dumpster, where she contemplates the usefulness
of the things discarded by others and philosophizes for us: "So you
see, if things get too rough for you, you find a dumpster. You be alright."
MEREDITH LUDWIG (Nashville, TN) is an actress, writer, and radio producer. She makes her living as a production assistant for commercial television. top |
|
| M | |
| |
MACGREGOR, TONY MADSEN, VIRGINIA MALLOZZI, LOU MARCLAY, CHRISTIAN MASON, KEITH ANTAR MATAMOROS, GUSTAVO MATOUSEK, VLASTISLAV MAUGE, COLLIN MCKEE, JIM MCLENNAN, ANDREW MECKLEY, DIANA MESSINA, SERGIO MICHELE, RONA MIGONE, CHRISTOF MONTAGUE, SARAH MORELOCK, WILLIAM MORENO-PRIMEAU, SONI MORTLEY, KAYE MOSS, DAVID |
| MACGREGOR, TONY | |
| See Madsen, Virginia, "Cantata of Fire." top |
|
| MADSEN, VIRGINIA | |
| Cantata
of Fire (1994) With Tony MacGregor.
About the standoff between FBI agents and members of David Koresh's
cult in Waco, Texas, 1993. The work is a song of tragedy that begins
with guns—with cult members invisible behind the walls of their
compound, all communication by telephone and the command center for
the FBI agents in distant Washington—with the compound surrounded
by loudspeakers blasting out a sonic assault that seemed to echo the
collapse of the walls of Jericho. . . Incorporating fragments of reportage
and survivor accounts, the work is a poetic speculation on states of
mind, on sound as a weapon and the voice of God. Produced for The Listening
Room, Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Taken by Speed, Parts 1 and 2 (1990) (abridged) With Andrew McLennan. Takes you to The Listening Room studios at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, where host Andrew McLennan and producer Virginia Madsen composed an extraordinary three-hour program on the ideas of French architect, strategist, and philosopher of speed, Paul Virilio. Virilio's book, The Aesthetics of Disappearance is about speed-space: the collapsing of physical dimensions, the world disappearing before its image. It warns us that we're going too fast, so fast that we're losing consciousness. In Taken by Speed, Paul Virilio in Paris, philosopher Sylvere Lotringer in New York, and radio maker Virginia Madsen in Sydney come together via satellite. They conduct a three-way conversation in French and English in electronic space—the space Virilio calls speed-space. An outstanding radio art documentary. VIRGINIA MADSEN (Sydney, Australia) is an independent radio producer, sound designer and writer. She has created a number of significant works for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and her work has been broadcast in the U.S., France, Denmark, and Sweden. Madsen has taught radio at the University of Technology, Sydney, where she is currently doing doctoral studies. She is also involved in writing and sound design for installation and performance. Collaborators: TONY MACGREGOR (Sydney, Australia) Collaborated on Cantata of Fire. MacGregor has a background in experimental theater, and has worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio since 1984, primarily with the ABC arts unit, The Listening Room. MacGregor frequently works in collaboration with artists on projects that include theatrical performance and gallery or site specific installation. The co-founder of the Pacific region audio arts festival, SoundCulture, he received a fellowship from the Australia Council to work in Paris for four months in 1994. ANDREW MCLENNAN Collaborated on "Taken By Speed, Parts 1 & 2." (see McLennan, Andrew) top |
|
| MALLOZZI, LOU | |
| Building
from Scratch (1991) (14:00) An
audio art work with a simple fictional pre-text: the discovery of a
letter written in a foreign language and hidden in an unfamiliar house.
A young girl narrator provides directions for finding it. Parallel to
this fictional information are several linguistic explorations of the
male-female/female-male relationship. Instructions, descriptions, arguments,
songs, and phone calls are combined with electronic, musical, and ambient
sounds to present alternative views of the relationship and the struggles
that define it. The sonic experience is not fixed in a definitive narrative
or ideology, but remains fluid, multi valent and evasive.
Dizzy, Not Numb (1995) An audio art work that explores the sensorial body. Utilizing four original texts on breath, heat, bulk, and scent, several other linguistic layers or interpretive shells were constructed by asking several people to converse or improvise on the given themes. The sounds of bodies in motion, in space, and in repose interact with these texts. Drifters (1998) by Lou Mallozzi. Drifters is an attempt to find ways for both language and place to drift: different representations of language drift among each other - from stories in fragments to phrases to phonemes, from real stories to re-creations and back. These languages also drift among different sonic locations, which also drift among themselves - from a dripping cavern to an airport to the ocean. Eavesdropping, or the comments on eavesdropping, become the linchpins for the various sections, eavesdropping being a surreptitious drifting in and out of someone else's narrative space, as their sounds drift in and out of the eavesdropper's acoustic space. [Listen] Lingua Franca (1992) A rich playful composition on language and communication that exploits a variety of language combinations to comment on the impossibility of complete communication and to explore the possibilities of language-as-material. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] New World del Vecchio (1992) A work about the blurry line between exploration and exploitation, and about the interaction of history, memory, and fiction. Through interwoven narratives—the first voyage of Columbus to the Caribbean, Leonardo Da Vinci's anatomical dissection of a 100-year-old man, and stories about immigrating Italian peasant workers—this piece investigates the various motives and dreams behind the quests for "new worlds." Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] LOU MALLOZZI (Chicago, IL) is a performance, audio, and installation artist. Much of his work explores the methods by which men define the world and impose that definition on women and children. Mallozzi is a recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Artist's Fellowship and has performed extensively in Chicago. He teaches interdisciplinary arts and sound at the School of The Art Institute of Chicago and is a founding member of the Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago. top |
|
| MARCLAY, CHRISTIAN | |
| Stop Talk
(1990) Old arias, scratched symphonies, pop ballads, cut-up verses,
disco beats, children's stories, and numerous other vocal and musical
fragments, mixed and manipulated into a lyrical composition on multiple
turntables and a 16-track tape recorder. Subliminal narratives flicker
into existence only to dissolve instantly, then reform like micro worlds
momentarily glimpsed and lost. "I want to trigger the mechanisms of
memory," Marclay says, "to bring to the surface what has been deposited
in our collective and personal memories. I don't want to impose a single
reading but to involve each listener in the narrative process. The work
is a reaction to the overflow of sound contributed daily by the media.
In this saturated aural environment, I don't ask myself what more to
add, but rather, what to do with it. " Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN
RADIO. [Listen]
CHRISTIAN MARCLAY (New York City, NY) Christian Marclay is a visual artist and composer whose innovative work explores the juxtaposition between sound recording, photography, video and film. Born in California and raised in Geneva, Switzerland, he studied sculpture at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston and Cooper Union in New York. As performer and sound artist Marclay has been experimenting, composing and performing with phonograph records and turntables since 1979 to create his unique "theater of found sound." He has collaborated with musicians such as John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Fred Frith, Arto Lindsay, and Sonic Youth among many others. A dadaist DJ and filmmaker his installations and video/film collages display provocative musical and visual landscapes and have been included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art New York, Venice Biennale, Centre Pompidou Paris, Kunsthaus Zurich, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Marclay is a professor of video collage and sound at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where he conducts an intensive summer seminar. top |
|
| MASON, KEITH ANTAR | |
| See Apple, Jackie, "Frenzy in the Night"; and "Redefining Democracy in America, Parts 1, 2, & 3: Episodes in Black and White"; and "Part 6: A Leap of Faith." top | |
| MATAMOROS, GUSTAVO | |
| Joe
Celli's Portrait (1991)
(9:20) A work for avant-garde oboist Joseph Celli that reflects in content
and form on the composer/ performer's musical philosophy. Composed from
sampled interview excerpts, word fragments, and parts of letters. (#25,95
with Bassenge and Whitehead)
Tracing the Radio Landscape (1992) A sound portrait based on "snapshots" of living room environments that include a radio as an active sound element. The first layer of the work is made up of these recordings. The second layer is constructed from a selection of the same sounds, but manipulated and processed by computer. The third layer, representing the interpretative stage of the work, includes a text developed in collaboration with writer Robert Gregory. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] GUSTAVO MATAMOROS (Miami, Florida) is an experimental composer, performer, and sound installation artist, and the founder of the composer based group PUNTO. Born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1957, where he developed an interest in music through experimentation with short-wave radios and tape recorders, he has lived in the U.S. since 1979. His music and sound installations have been featured at The Latin American Music Festival and the III Encuentro de la Nueva Musica Electronica '91 in Caracas; the XV New Music Forum in Mexico City; and at numerous venues in the U.S. and Europe. Since 1989 he has been director of the South Florida Composer's Alliance and artistic director of the Subtropics New Music Festival in Miami. He co-directed the WORD(S)OUND festival of text-based sound works and poetry for the 19th Biennial of Sao Paulo, Brazil. He is the producer of FISHTANK Radio Journal of New and Experimental Music on WLRN in Miami. top |
|
| MATOUSEK, VLASTISLAV | |
| Five
Minutes Before (1943)
(5:00) A strikingly simple, playful, electro acoustic work built from
the sounds of a ticking alarm clock. The theme: Human beings tend to
expect that significant events will interrupt the dull flow of their
lives and somehow give meaning to them. This expectation is an illusion.
Rather, it is the small, barely perceptible changes around them that
probably have the most meaning—the NOTHING that seems to happen.
Accordingly, it is the gradual spatial variations in an otherwise unchanged
musical environment that one should listen for in Five Minutes Before.
Produced for Czech Radio.
Praga 1993 (1993) (5:01) Uses characteristic sounds from Prague as its raw material—bells of the Loreto Church, the Singing Fountain, the Old Town's astronomical clock—and musical quotes from works associated with the city, such as the symphonic poems by Bedrich Smetana. Prague's ancient history and its beauty are ever present in the sounds of this evocative polyphonic work. Produced for Czech Radio. VLASTISLAV MATOUSEK (Prague, Czech Republic) studied musical science, music theory and composition from 1977-89 and then turned his attention to non-European cultures and ethnic musical influences. His compositions range from chamber music and symphonies to children's songs and alternative rock. With the ensemble "Relaxation" he has been playing meditative Orient-inspired music since 1979. Matousek is also a music dramaturg and publicist for Czech Radio in Prague. top |
|
| MAUGE, COLLIN | |
| See Aschak, "Theme: Repairing the Elements of Rust." top | |
| MCKEE, JIM | |
| See Earwax Productions, "Audiographs -- Songs From the Tenderloin," "Bloody Angle," "Virtual Paradise -- The Reality Tape," and "Wake for Tom." top |
|
| MCLENNAN, ANDREW | |
| Komar
and Melamid (1988)
Introduces two Jewish artists who emigrated from Russia in the early
seventies when emigration finally became legal. Like most Jewish-Russian
emigrants of the time, they first went to live and work in Israel. Later
they moved to the United States. Some critics call them clowns; others
prefer the term "political artists." Produced for the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation.
ANDREW MCLENNAN (Sydney, Australia) was a professional performer in theater and dance from 1961-71. In 1975 on a grant from the Australian Council on the Arts, he studied advanced radio drama production techniques in Europe. Since that time he has been a Senior Producer (drama and features) and producer-presenter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's experimental audio and music programs. McLennan is currently producer and founding member of The Listening Room, a program of radio performance art, audio essays and explorations in the acoustic arts. See also Madsen, Virginia, "Taken By Speed, Parts 1 & 2." top |
|
| MECKLEY, DIANA | |
| Brass
Map (1990) (13:00) A work for brass, voice, and computer.
It explores ideas of perspective and the meaning we attribute to sound
based on its proximity or simplicity. Brass Map makes use of samples
of musical material, folding those multiple wave forms via computer
to create complex notes and then using those notes to play other sections
of the work. Several other levels of structure are added to the work
to make specific use of the radio medium and to create a different kind
of narrative structure. Commission of NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
DIANA MECKLEY (Brooklyn, NY) is a composer, writer/editor, arts administrator, and researcher whose work over two decades reflects her interest in the interfaces between art, science, technology, and the humanities. In the past six years, her work and research has focused on the nature of cross-disciplinary collaboration; the evolution of art practice and content in a continually changing technological/socioeconomic environment; the artist as researcher; and the impact of science on culture and the artistic response to that in the public realm. She has participated in and helped conceptualize a number of conferences and symposia focusing on art/science, emergent art forms, and interdisciplinary collaboration and has sat on a number of panels that award grants or residencies to artists working with new technologies. Most recently she was invited to be a proposal evaluator for the Creative Capital Foundation for their 2002-2003 Emerging Art Forms grant cycle. Meckley's music has been performed or broadcast in the U.S., Canada and Europe and she has appeared both as a soloist and with her own ensembles. Venues have included Merkin Concert Hall, the Kitchen, Roulette, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New Music America (Montreal); and West German Radio (WDR, Cologne). Her compositions range from those for electronically-altered voice to acoustic and computer-edited brass to string quartet. top |
|
| MESSINA, SERGIO | |
| Marinetric
(1991) An homage to the futurists, adapted for radio from a live
performance in which Messina performed with two samplers triggered by
a guitar and a tape recorder with digital effects. The work makes use
of the voices of the futurists Depero and Marinetti. Commissioned by
and produced at ORF/Kunstradio, Austria, 1991.
SERGIO MESSINA (Italy) Biography unavailable. top |
|
| MICHELE, RONA | |
| See Gomez-Pena, Guillermo, "Temple of Confessions." top | |
| MIGONE, CHRISTOF | |
| A
Hole in the Head—Brain Amplifications and Herniated Texts
(1993) A collection of portraits for those with dysfunctional attention
spans and disrespect for proper microphone techniques. Each portrait
flirts with the one-minute mark and acts as an incision into the broadcast
space. All portraits have textual origins. Acting as their interpreter,
the artist seeks to create a territory in permanent flux, with intersections
showered by collisions. An exploration of sound and language in its
infinite detail, from saliva contortions to alphabetical sonorities
to sporadic humming. [Listen]
Solar Plexus (1993-94) This work concentrates on the minute, the hereto insignificant, those tiny moments. Vacillating between abstractions and recognisability the piece features microphone intrusions, bad singing, sporadic moaning, and half-hearted humming. Solar Plexus is set as a diaristic and intimate rendition of the unusual as well as the banal. A portrait of the artist is thus rendered, and it is prickly soft and exposed (yet under surveillance). A narrative of a non-narrative, on the surface, the work accomplishes nothing. Squeaky Clean, Parts 1 & 2 (1993) With friends. A non-linear, episodic, improvisational soap opera. The work focuses on incidental characters, improbable events, and imaginary places, and words are used for their sonic as well as semantic qualities. An ear-in-cheek, audio artistic romp through the conventions of television soap operas and radio dramas. The Thing About Bugs (1994) With Gregory Whitehead. An exploration into the improbable relationship between entomology and electricity. Bugs in the world of electronic media or bugs in our beds: how to respond? In this collaborative "field trip," Migone and Whitehead invite us into their bug infested soundscape to investigate live wire cross-currents of extermination and redemption; the vitality of dirt and the urge to clean; the joys of pure noise and the fear of bodies gone to the worms. Professional exterminators philosophize about their daily warfare against other species while the producers orchestrate a mad carnival of the True Bugs. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] The Transpiring Transistor (1992) Short audio pieces based on the "Ecrits Bruts" (France, 1979), writings of the insane. CHRISTOF MIGONE (Montreal, Canada) is a sound artist who works extensively with Canadian community stations, particularly CKUT-FM in Montreal. His weekly program, "Danger in Paradise" (1987-1994), explored excesses of the radiophonic language. He has curated two international radio art festivals Touch that Dial and Radio Contortions, and his texts have been published in EAR magazine, Musicworks, and Semiotexte. top |
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| |
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| Three Sisters is a performance work for radio that explores the role of women and the nature of time through the manipulation of language and sound. It uses as its matrix Chekhov's play "The Three Sisters", the theme of which is the struggle between freedom and stasis, between the dream of Moscow and the oppressive present. By dissolving the surface of the play acoustically - deconstructing it and interweaving elements of text, music and created sound - Three Sisters transforms Chekhov's three sisters, who hope "our suffering may mean happiness for the people who come after us," successively into other trios, other triangles from both classical and popular culture: the Three Graces, the Three Witches, the three Brontees, the Supremes, the characters in Gertrude Stein's Three Lives .... SARAH MONTAGUE (New York City) is a writer, radio producer and director who was born and educated in Great Britain. Since the early 1980s she has built a career in New York City with numerous radio drama productions for public radio to her credit. The co-founder of Exit 3 Productions, Montague's nationally distributed dramatic series include "The Radio Stage" and "Jazzplay" as well as arts specials for NPR. Montague was a 1995 Artist-In-Residence at Harvestworks, where Three Sisters was produced. Also see Thorington, Helen, "In the Devil's Footsteps, Parts 1 & 2." top |
|
| MORELOCK, WILLIAM | |
| Proposition
Four (1989) A work that propels us into
the year 2004, when San Francisco Bay has just been drained to create
the perfect environment for a theme park. The vision of the world's
most powerful private citizen, Arthur Seymour Sullivan, a man whose
boundless love for amusement parks may eventually transform the entire
planet into one. But before the construction begins, the people of San
Francisco get ready to witness the ultimate: the recovery of the ancient
Hologram of Creation from the bottom of the Bay. Finally mankind will
know the secret of life. . .Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
Pruning: A Love Story (1991) Maria Esperanza, a dental hygienist and chanteuse loves Clay Balfour, the divorced father of two children and owner of a little house on 34th and Fever. And he loves her back. But as a man emotionally "in extremis" who tries to heal himself by extreme means, Clay also falls in love with something he can't define: with the ambiguity, the act of juggling all the chaotic elements of his life. Music and sound play an unusual role in this exploratory drama. They intrude upon, complement, and accompany Clay's tour of his own mind. They take on the form of reaction-connection. Events react with events, the reaction connects with other reactions involving other events . . . nuclear introspection! Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] Saturday, Late in the Twentieth Century (1990) Laura Mace Riddle is a beautiful media magnet who understands the media she controls. Ruthless, mad for power and with a fondness for clothes, cars, and private wine cellars, Laura also has ideas. And that's why the ingenious and sly Jenkins ("Jinx") Potter, in love with her since the age of thirteen, agrees to create and host a radio program, Saturday, Late in the Twentieth Century. It is, of course, to be a vehicle for her enterprises, which are the show's sponsors. . .This is only the surface of Morelock's sharp and witty play. Add a framework of ideas by Marshall McLuhan, Walter Percy, and Glenn Gould. Fill in with music, sounds, and a host of characters living and dead. And there you are: Saturday, Late in the Twentieth Century, a radio show celebrating the possible. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] Short Summer at Longhurst (1992) Four young people in search of a comedy of manners get caught up in a succession of plot conventions and verbal repartees straight out of S.N. Behrman or Philip Barry. Set on the estate of lumber baron R. George Fellows, the play follows the no nonsense Laura, slothful Tom, the skeptical and exquisitely bored Regis, and sweet little rich girl Winnie as they come to terms with their meaning as characters in a world perpetually in love and perpetually at odds with privilege. A meddlesome Chorus encourages, censures, supports, chides, and occasionally calls up the characters in the midst of the action to give unsolicited advice. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. Sims Serenade (1992) The story of a young man and his family, an old man and his town. Harry Lyman Sims is the unofficial bard of Hallam, a town east of San Francisco with a long, deep past buried beneath a development so bright and shining and inexorable no history can be seen or heard. As Sims says, "There has come a time when fewer and fewer people can tell the difference between knowledge and news. That is the time to tell a story—about people in a place, at a certain time, trying to recover from the dislocations of life lived through the filters of expectation and regret." Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] WILLIAM MORELOCK (Minneapolis, MN) was a producer and classical music host at KWSU-FM in Pullman, Washington beginning in 1982. In 1987 he occupied the newly established position of arts programming coordinator. Incorporating features on arts and entertainment into his classical music show, Morelock developed "Bob and Bill"—a daily National Public Radio program produced by Minnesota Public Radio. top |
|
| MORENO-PRIMEAU, SONI | |
| MORTLEY, KAYE | |
| Do
You Remember Jogjakarta? (1992)
"The work began as fragmentary notes, impressions, sensations, jotted
down during a trip to Indonesia: Jogjakarta via Djakarta. Notes born
of a growing sense of frustration because I did not have a microphone
to catch the strangeness, the sensuality of the sounds, beguiling on
all sides." (Mortley) Do You Remember Jogjakarta? is a work of extraordinary
subtlety and stimulating complexity. Its text, original music by American
composer Tom Johnson, and occasional ambient sounds are a poetic tribute
to Indonesia as well as a reflection on sound as a language unto itself:
"There are no words for sound, only similes." (from the work) Produced
for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. [Listen]
It is the Days, Lucy (1994) A beautifully subtle and complex work that is both document and reflection. Recorded on St. Lucy's Day in Stockholm, Sweden, the work is about the cultural meanings of this celebration. But it is also a reflection on light and darkness, seeing and not seeing, creation and destruction, and on memory. Produced for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. [Listen] Streets—Paris/Tokyo (12:00) A bilingual "sight seeing tour" in French and English that unfolds through the recitation of street names and brief reflections by people on their favorite streets. "Rue des Anglais—Rue Bonaparte—Rue du Bordeaux—Chateau Rouge—Rue de la Cle..." Poetic and compelling. Co-commissioned by Radio France and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. [Listen] KAYE MORTLEY (Paris, France) was born and raised in Australia. After studies in Sydney, Melbourne and Strasbourg, France, she finished her doctorate in French literature and begun working as a writer-producer for the ABC, Australia. In 1981, Mortley moved to Paris, where she built a career as a documentarian working for Radio France and radio stations around the world. Today, she is one of the most respected documentary producers in the world. Mortley's works are characterized by a transparent, elegant production style, a quiet and poetic language, and a remarkably sensual sound quality. top |
|
| MOSS, DAVID | |
| Conjure
(1993) (10:00) Moss's second audio
piece based on a Calvino text. A dizzying stew of music and narrative—
quantum physics, languages, chants, stories, scientists, banquets, distant
galaxies, songs, objects, and desire. Co-commissioned by Harvestworks,
Inc., the Wexner Center for the Visual Arts., and NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
[Listen]
Language Linkage (1986) (10:00) An OpeRadio that revels in the playful world of the late Italian writer and Nobel Prize winner, Italo Calvino. Moss uses selected texts from Calvino's "Invisible Cities" and his own inimitable vocal and percussion style. DAVID MOSS is one of the most innovative percussionists and vocalists in the field. His solo performances combine drums, metal, strings, plastic, wood, and microchips with astonishing vocal techniques. Moss received a fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in Berlin in 1991. He has remained there, using Berlin as homebase from which to tour Europe, Japan, Australia, and the U.S. Moss has worked with amongst others Fred Frith, Shelley Hirsch, Heiner Goebbels, Christian Marclay, Carlos Santos, Hans Peter Kuhn, Henning Christiansen, Tom Guralnick, Jon Rose, Sergei Kuryokhin, Z'EV, Malcolm Goldstein, Anthony Coleman, Peter Hollinger as well as collaborated with dancers Steve Paxton, Kei Takei, & Kenneth King. As a soloist MOSS has been featured at: The Kitchen, Public Theater, Knitting Factory, Whitney Museum, Roulette, Musica '88/92 (Strasbourg/Bonn), Walker Art Center, The Ijsbreker, New Music America ('83-88), Wien Festwochen, Taktlos Festival, PS 122, Tokyo New Music, American Center (Paris), ICA (London), Milano Poesia, Alte Opera (Frankfurt), WDR (Koln), Kunst Museum (Bern). top |
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| N | |
| NALEPPA, GOETZ NEGRON, FRANCES NEILL, BEN NEUMARK, NORIE NEWELL, ANDREW NIKOLAEV, DIMITRIY NISKER, WES ("SCOOP") NOTTAGE, LYNN |
|
| NALEPPA, GOETZ | |
| Ponte Del Molino (10:50) (1997), with Inge Faarborg, tells of the destruction of a bridge near Naleppa's house in Italy during a flood and its subsequent reconstruction. The work is also a reflection on bridges build between people and on their destruction. With brief texts in German, English and Danish, and with the sounds of the river Prino in Liguria, Italy. Preceded by a brief interview (in English) with Naleppa. GOETZ NALEPPA (Berlin, Germany) has been a freelance radio playwright and director as well as a staff editor at the radio drama department of DeutschlandRadio Berlin (formerly RIAS Berlin) for many years. INGE FAARBORG (Copenhagen, Denmark) is a staff editor at the radio drama department at Danish Radio. She is a member of the group overseeing the recently established radio art series at her station. |
|
| NEGRON, FRANCES | |
| Third
World U.S.A.: First Stop, Philadelphia
(1991) (13:00) A provocative radio-activity
that dramatizes the cultural politics involved in the process of "third-worlding"
(Koptiuch) that has overtaken America in the last two decades. Adopting
a travelogue structure, the producers examine the new interior frontiers
of Philadelphia's urban jungle. They encounter a new breed of yuppie
missionaries, capture the pungent sounds of rap and salsa, listen closely
to the voices of urban militia and merchants of the economic underground
and learn about the mortality rates among blacks and Hispanics. The
divergent impulses in this urban scenario supply a series of aural frames
through which the neo-territory of the "third world at home" bursts
onto the airwaves. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
FRANCES NEGRON is a Puerto Rican poet, film/video/maker and anthropologist, who has lived in Philadelphia for nine years. In 1989 she co-directed "Eso no me pasa a mi," a film about the socio-economics and cultural context of AIDS in the Puerto Rican community in Philadelphia. Among her other projects are a radio work on Latino Poetry in Philadelphia and two music videos on AIDS and domestic violence. KRISTIN KOPTIUCH is an anthropologist trained in a broad interdisciplinary range of cultural studies and social theory who attempts to practice anthropology more as performance art than as a social science. top |
|
| NEILL, BEN | |
| See Wojnarowics, David, "ITSOFOMO -- In The Shadow of Forward Motion." top |
|
| NEUMARK, NORIE | |
| Into
the Interface (1994) An outstanding
audio art documentary about the way computers are re-shaping the face
of popular culture and altering the way we look and interact. The program
explores computer aesthetics and politics at a visceral and sensual
level. It questions the pleasures and compulsions that draw us into
the interface. "Interface suggests more than just the screen, the machine
surface, on which a new (and old) aesthetics is being imaged. It suggests
the human/machine relationship and interaction that is being shaped
there— taking us to other spaces, other realities, but also telling
us and forming who we are." (Neumark) Into The Interface is structured
as an aural hypertext—crossing the listener between a number of
"sound stacks"— dressing room, morphland, speedzone, surface and
desire. Commissioned by The Listening Room, Australian Broadcasting
Corporation. [Listen] Jobs for the Girls, or What Do You See When You Look in the Mirror? (1991) A clear-eyed and humorous look at cosmetic surgery and how women from diverse backgrounds perceive themselves and see themselves perceived by (anglo) others in contemporary Australia, and how that differs from the way they are perceived in their own cultures. Hair growing in "unfortunate" places on the body is more acceptable in Lisbon and Madrid than in Sydney and Canberra. Black hair, not blond, is the beauty ideal in India. And cosmetic correction of large breasts does not automatically make a woman a sex symbol. So what's a girl to do? [Listen] Separation Anxiety: Not the Truth About Alchemy (1997) is an alchemical aural text, a journey through stages of transformation. Historically, alchemy was a way of knowing through a mind/body/and spirit that were not split. The alchemist was understood as a performer who performed his way of knowing in a theater of physiological, psychological, philosophical and spiritual dimensions. Separation is one of the stages or gates of alchemy. Anxiety, a moment when truths are no longer so comfortable or comforting... Separation anxiety is the a moment in which truth, regularity, and categories give way, allowing things to manifest themselves in their singularity. It is a moment more fruitful than chaos. A moment to be experienced. With participating artists and alchemists, Neumark creates this theater, opening the gate to a new way of knowing and doing. [Listen] Shock
(1996) "My interest in shock was first sparked when I suffered
a shock myself after a car accident. It had a profound effect which
I found difficult to convey, as I had no visible wounds or gashes. Perhaps
it addled my brain, perhaps it resonated with earlier experiences of
culture shock, but in any event, the connection between these various
articulations of shock became electrically clear." (the artist).
Shock maps the aesthetics and kinaesthetics of the shock experience,
historically, physically and psychically, from modernism to post modernism,
from the attack of event to the decay of after-shock, from the metaphor
into the corporeal body. It explores the different meanings of shock
through stories and texts. [Listen]
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|
| NEWELL, ANDREW | |
| See Earwax Productions, "Metal." top |
|
| NIKOLAEV, DIMITRIY | |
| The
Tune (1993)
(11:00) A play without words. It unfolds through the noises of human
activities, sound effects and music, and portrays the rapidly growing
hatred between its two main characters. Originally friends, their stubborn
insistence on principles leads to violence and finally to a war that
destroys many others with them. "The work was produced during the October
1993 riots in Moscow, and it was difficult sometimes to distinguish
between the sounds of war created on tape and the real sounds of tanks
storming parliament only 1,200 meters from our studio. However, I tried
to treat the theme with humor—the only thing that can help." Produced
for Radio Ostankino/Radio One Moscow. (D. Nikolaev)
The Word of the Prophet (1994) (15:00) In spite of its many languages, the World speaks only the "yes" language: Da, yes, oui, ja, si ... Yet the Prophet says: "Njet, no." People try to change him, but execute him. After his death, the world begins to speak the "no" language. And a new prophet appears... Produced for Radio Ostankino/Radio One Moscow. DIMITRIY NIKOLAEV (Moscow, Russia) was born in 1960. A student of the State Institute of Theater Art (Theater Academy), Moscow, he has directed eighteen plays for the stage, two for Russian television, and fifteen for radio. Since 1993, Nikolaev has been a producer for Radio Ostankino/Radio One Moscow, and a member of the international ARS ACUSTICA group. top |
|
| NISKER, WES ("SCOOP") | |
| A
Decade in Your Ear (Parts 1 & 2) (1976,
1979) This two-part documentary is not just another collage of the late
sixties and early seventies; it may well be the news-sound collage of
that turbulent time: one that speaks the ideas of justice, freedom,
and enlightenment with a passionate and authentic voice. Its music still
carries the sense of momentous cultural and political upheaval and its
voices still reverberate with amazing intensity and power. Originally
produced in 1976, and reworked three years later into "The Last News
Show," these documentaries have become a solid underground classic.
Once considered too controversial for the public airwaves, A Decade
in Your Ear can now be heard and appreciated as refreshing and exciting
radio: collaging at its very best—and the only news show you can
dance to. [Listen
Part 1] [Listen
Part 2]
Hailed as the "Monty Python of Radio" by the San Francisco Bay Guardian, WES ("Scoop") NISKER (San Francisco, CA) is a twenty-seven year veteran of the broadcast media. It was in the late sixties as news director of rock station KSAN-FM, San Francisco, that he first established his reputation as one of the deans of "new journalism." Since that time he has produced documentaries for National Public Radio, worked as a morning talk show host for KPFA-FM in Berkeley, and as news director and special features producer at KFOG-FM. His honors include a 1976 Armstrong Award for excellence in FM programming, and the 1986 Bay Area Media Alliance Meritorious Achievement Award. top |
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| NOTTAGE, LYNN | |
| Maria
Rodriguez and the Hari Krishnas (1994-95)
A tale of an Hispanic girl growing up in a closely knit brownstone community
in Brooklyn, New York, during the 1970s. The story tracks the humorous
observations of a member of that community watching this world in transition.
Love, politics, and Hari Krishna. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
[Listen]
LYNN NOTTAGE is a graduate of Brown University and the Yale School of Drama. Her most recent plays include Las Meninas (Mabou Mines "Suite" Workshop series) and Eulogy for a Missing Player (Talking Drum Action Theatre). A recent resident artist at Mabou Mines, Nottage is currently at work on Crumbs from the Table of Jou, developed in the summer of '94 at the Sundance Playwrights Laboratory. top |
|
| O | |
| OBRECHT,
BILL ODLAND, BRUCE ODRISCHINSKY, EVA OLIVER, AKILAH NAYO OLIVEROS, PAULINE OSTERTAG, BOB |
|
| OBRECHT, BILL | |
| Aerial
(1993) A work for string quartet, electronics, and radio transmitters
and receivers. The piece uses new advances in psycho acoustic processing
to achieve an extraordinarily large stereo field from regular stereo
speakers. Listeners will experience a 3-D effect with sound appearing
to emanate from an approximately 270 horizontal and 120 vertical field
-- provided they are receiving a strong stereo signal and are properly
oriented in relation to the speakers. Co-commissioned by Harvestworks,
Inc. and NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
BILL OBRECHT (New York, NY) is a musician and composer. As a saxophonist/flutist he has worked with a number of New York's New Music luminaries, including Laurie Anderson, Peter Gordon, and Elliot Sharp. Obrecht has composed for concert, theater, film, and dance. He has pieces in the repertoires of the Joffrey Ballet, the Toronto Ballet and the Berkshire Ballet, among others. Obrecht's music has been presented in a wide variety of venues, from "Saturday Night Live" to Alice Tully Hall to the halls of Hartford, Connecticut's Amtrak station. He recently collaborated with performance artist/ choreographer John Kelly on a piece for the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival. top |
|
| ODLAND, BRUCE | |
| Terra
Infirma (1990) (3:20) A "statistical
symphony" that illustrates in sound just how fast the environment is
really deteriorating.
BRUCE ODLAND (Croton-on-Hudson, NY) is a composer, performer, and audio artist whose major sonic installation works have earned him an international reputation. His credits in this country include work for Laurie Anderson, Peter Sellars, JoAnn Akalaitis and his own Bruce Odland Big Band. See also Auinger, Sam, "King of Time" and "Resonance." top |
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| ODRISCHINSKY, EVA | |
| The Voice
is the Muscle of the Soul (1989)
The Roy Hart Theatre in France is known for its voice research and its
unique methods of teaching singing. Producer Eva Odrischinsky attended
workshops there for ten years and worked closely with its best singing
teachers. Taking a cheap little tape recorder along to remind herself
of what went on and how it sounded, she accumulated a large sound diary.
This work is an unusual document showing how exciting it can be to experiment
with the human voice. The Voice is the Muscle of the Soul won the 1989
Ake Blomstroem Award (Swedish Radio) for the best European-style feature
by a new and promising producer. An English version remixed especially
for the sreies, presented by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
EVA ODRISCHINSKY, a 1983 graduate of the Finnish Theatre Academy, began her career as a director of classics, musicals, children's plays, and experimental works. Her strong interest in the human voice as a means of dramatic expression gradually moved her artistic focus from the theater to sound and radio where she directed adaptations of such contemporary French writers as Marguerite Duras and Nathalie Sarraute. In 1988 she started doing freelance work for the features department, Yleisradio. The Voice is the Muscle of the Soul was produced for Yleisradio (the Finnish Broadcasting Company). top |
|
| OLIVER, AKILAH NAYO | |
| See Apple, Jacki, "Redefining Democracy in America: Parts 1, 2, & 3: Episodes in Black and White." top |
|
| OLIVEROS, PAULINE | |
| Poem
of Change (1993)
(10:30) A sound-music play that consists of several elements: repeated
sentences such as "Change many things," "Change more things"; a series
of questions such as "Are children loved?"; "Can we give up wars?";
a compilation of war sounds and a meditative vocal and instrumental
composition by Oliveros. Produced for West German Radio Cologne.
Time Piece (1993) A work that combines three closely intertwined narrative elements related to the subject of time: (1) a time-poem by Oliveros made up of words related to time; (2) time-stories told by Fanni Green about her personal relationship to time; and (3) time-illusions evoked in the sound design and music by Oliveros, the feeling of time stretched and suspended, of time beyond. Co-commissioned by Harvestworks, Inc. and NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] Wind Horse (1990) exists in two forms: as a musical work and as a radiophonic composition. The music was premiered by the Ana Crucis Women's Choir (the oldest feminist choir in the country) at their fifteenth anniversary concert in July 1990. In the radio work, the stories told by the choir members about their experiences with the wind, and the creative process of learning the musical work are woven into a sound environment that evokes the wind. As with most of Oliveros's recent work, Wind Horse is an invitation to "deep listening," a challenge to open our senses to the sounds around us and to listen to one another. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. PAULINE OLIVEROS (Kingston, NY) Pauline Oliveros, composer, performer and humanitarian is an important pioneer in American Music. Acclaimed internationally, Oliveros has explored sound for four decades, forging new ground for herself and others. Through improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation she has created a body of work that displays an incredible breadth of vision. She has been honored with awards, grants and concerts internationally. Whether performing at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., in an underground cavern, or in the studios of West German Radio, Oliveros' commitment to interaction with the moment is unchanged. Through Deep Listening Pieces and earlier Sonic Meditations Oliveros introduced the concept of incorporating all environmental sounds into musical performance. To make a pleasurable experience of this requires focused concentration, skilled musicianship and strong improvisational skills, which are the hallmarks of Oliveros' form. In performance Oliveros uses an accordion which has been re-tuned in two different systems of her just intonation, in addition to electronics, to alter the sound of the accordion and explore the individual characteristics of each room. top |
|
| OSTERTAG, BOB | |
| Sooner
or Later (1991)
A musical work that grew out of the composers ten year stay in El Salvador.
"There is a boy and his father is dead. And no angels sang and no one
was better because of it and all that is left is this kid and the shovel
digging the grave and a fly buzzing in the air. If there is beauty,
we must find it in what is really there: the boy, the shovel, the fly.
If we look closely, despite the unbearable sadness, we will discover
it." (Ostertag) The music is made by breaking the original recording
into very small events, and stringing these events into musical structures,
creating shapes radically different from the original. An unusual and
haunting composition. [Listen]
BOB OSTERTAG's (San Francisco, CA) is a composer, performer, instrument builder, journalist, activist, historian, and kayak instructor. His work cannot easily be summarized or pigeon-holed. As a composer, he has released 21 CDs of music, and appeared at music, film, and multi-media festivals around the globe. As a journalist, his writings on contemporary politics have been published in many languages. Electronic instruments of his own design are at the cutting edge of both music and video performance technology. Born in Albuquerque in 1957, he dropped out of the Oberlin Conservatory after two years, and has eschewed working within the confines of academic music ever since. He settled in New York City in 1978 and immersed himself in the “downtown” music scene of the period. He left music in 1980/81 to work in Central America, and became an expert on the region, with writings published in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and the US. In 1988 he moved to San Francisco and resumed his musical activity. His radically diverse collaborators have included the Kronos Quartet, avant garders John Zorn and Fred Frith, heavy metal star Mike Patton, jazz great Anthony Braxton, dyke punk rocker Lynn Breedlove, drag diva Justin Bond, film maker Pierre Hébert, and others. top |
|
| P | |
| PAAKUNAINEN,
SEPPO PALACIOS, FERNANDO PARKS, SUZAN-LORI PEARCE, ION PETERS, CATHY PHILLIPS, JOHN J. H PURA FE |
|
| PAAKUNAINEN, SEPPO | |
| See Huhtamaki, Harri, "Calewalayana." top | |
| PALACIOS, FERNANDO | |
| Cantaleta
en virutillas (1992) (5:00) A
simple, beautiful composition for whistling, in which the whistle acts
like a stiletto cutting into songs deeply engraved in the sonic memory
of the Spanish people. Commissioned by the Ars Sonora series at Spanish
National Radio (RNE).
FERNANDO PALACIOS (Lisbon, Spain) Biography unavailable. top |
|
| PARKS, SUZAN-LORI | |
| Loco-Motive (1991) A monologue set to a haunting, cinematic sound score by Helen Thorington
in which a woman reflects on the truth of evolution. With typical Parks
word play and humor, the work is surreal, sad, and sometimes even silly.
"All girls grow up and grow tails. All girls grow up and grotesque." Commissioned
by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] Pickling (1990) With sound design by Helen Thorington. A story about Miss Miss who has preserved all her loved objects in jars. Bits of mother, tokens of a lover, all are preserved by pickling. Along with parts of an old refrigerator and other things, also kept in jars, they shape the content of Miss Miss's monologue, and her memory. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] SUZAN-LORI PARKS emerged as one of the most promising young playwrights in experimental theater in 1988 with Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom—a work about "African American history in the shadow of the photographic image" (Parks) for which she received an Obie Award. Parks has gone on to produce numerous theatrical works and is one of the most popular and prolific contemporary Afro American playwrights. Pickling was her first work for radio. top |
|
| PEARCE, ION | |
| The
Strange Machine (1991)
Since 1989, Ion Pearce has designed and built musical instruments/machines
from materials found at demolition sites old factories and warehouses
in the inner city areas of Sydney. These strange and monumental musical
machines were created in direct response to the chaos and cacophonies
of the urban environment and the cycle of building/construction/ demolition.
The Strange Machine has been specially adapted for radio from Ion Pearce's
solo performance with these instruments at the SoundCulture '91 festival
in Sydney. A short feature by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's
Robyn Ravlich tells about the artist and his instruments.
ION PEARCE (Sydney, Australia) Biography unavailable. top |
|
| PETERS, CATHY | |
| Clearing
the Square (1996) is a documentary in memory of the victims of
the repression of the democracy movement in Tienanmen Square. An estimated
two and a half thousand unarmed civilians were killed there is June 1989;
others died later or are still in Chinese prisons because of the belief
they could effect democratic political change of a kind occurring elsewhere.
Central to the creation of this work is a clandestine tape recording of
testimony by student leader Chi Ling. The production uses a rich variety
of audio and written documentary materials, including accounts by Amnesty
International, original testimony by a Chinese student in the square who
is now living in Australia and by Christine Liao, an Australian who was
in Beijing at the time. Clearing the Square is an edited version of the
original 42:00 work produced by the ABC, Australia's "The Listening
Room." [Listen] CATHY PETERS (Sydney, Australia) has worked in audio and sound production for some twenty years, primarily as a music producer for ABC Radio and as a freelance composer. She has produced numerous radiophonic works, documentaries features and recordings of contemporary musics for broadcast and CD. Her radiophonic work has been presented in many international forums. In 1989 her "collaboration" won the Prix Italia, Music. She is currently focusing on multimedia sound production and design. top |
|
| PHILLIPS, JOHN J. H. | |
| The
Things One Has to Listen to . . .
(1990) (10:00) In his novel, The
Unnamable, Samuel Beckett's characters hear many intriguing sounds in
the bleak landscape: "the sound of pierced air," and "a little cry like
a wounded wistiti," to name just two. Occasionally he even describes
the placement of sounds in space. Composed of acoustic and synthesized
sounds etched into a background ambiance, The things one has to listen
to . . . is a tribute to Beckett's vision in a world too busy to listen.
Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
Altitudes (1990) (10:00) is a very quiet slow fade from "mountain canyon sound" (13,000 feet) to a "driveway at midnight sound" (9,000 feet) to "field sounds" (500 feet) to sea level with "river waterfront sounds" (0 feet). Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. JOHN J. H. PHILLIPS (Philadelphia, PA) is a painter of twenty years. His perception of sound has been formed by his visual sense of experience. Spacious and quiet, his audio work has been exhibited and performed in Amsterdam, London, New York, and Philadelphia. One of his more recent projects is a collaborative sound-performance on electro-magnetic radiation with a dancer/ choreographer, a sculptor, and a nuclear physicist. See also Seidel, Miriam, "Interference." top |
|
| POWELL, ALAN | |
| See Coleman, Connie, "Borderland" and "Ground Wars, Parts 1 & 2." top |
|
| PURA FE | |
| Cement
in My Way (1993)
With singer/composer Soni Moreno-Primeau. A musical portrait of two
composer/performers whose native heritage is the inspiration for their
work. Soni Moreno-Primeau (Aztec/Mayan) and Pura Fe (Tuscarora) grew
up in two very different environments: Pura Fe in New York City and
Soni as a migrant worker in northern California. When their paths accidentally
crossed in the early 1980s in New York City, they developed a personal
friendship that lead to the formation of the performance group Pura
Fe (Pure Faith). Soni and Pura Fe tell their stories in conversation
and in music. Cement in My Way is a collaboration between the two performers
and producers Helen Thorington and Regine Beyer. Commissioned by NEW
AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
PURA FE (Philadelphia, PA) is a singer, composer, and dancer. She studied with Martha Graham, danced with the American Ballet Theatre, and sang with the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Her Broadway performances include The Me Nobody Knows, Ari, and Via Galactia. Pura Fe has also done studio work with numerous jazz bands and for many TV commercials. She is a founding member and namesake of the traditional/ contemporary Native American musical group Pura Fe. The group has produced three collections of songs and a music video, Follow Your Heart's Desire, and performed extensively throughout the United States and Canada. SONI MORENO-PRIMEAU (Staten Island, NY) is an actress, singer, and songwriter who studied at the American Conservatory Theatre in California, and played Chrissie in the original San Francisco and the 1975 New York productions of the musical Hair. She has performed at LaMama ETC in New York City and toured Europe with their production of Aladdin's Lamp, as well as appeared in the Broadway production of The Leaf People by Tom O'Horgan. She is a founding member of the musical group Pura Fe and a member of the board of directors at the American Indian Community House in New York City. top |
|
| Q | |
| QUINN, JOHN | |
| See Hodian, John, "Artaud Ascending." top |
|
| R | |
| RAVLICH,
ROBIN RIEGER, JOHN RIGNEY, SEAN RILEY, TERRY ROBINSON, JONATHAN ROSE, JON ROSENSTEIN, BRAD ROSENTHAL, RACHEL RUBIN, ANNA RUE, RIK RUSSELL, LAWRENCE RYDBERG, BO RUOHORANTA, PEKKA RUX, CARL HANCOCK |
|
| RAVLICH, ROBIN | |
| The
Life of Art—The Art of Life (1993)
A personal memoir about the famous mining town of Broken Hill in Australia's
Outback that is also a thriving art community. Ravlich grew up in Broken
Hill. In 1991 she returned to explore the impact of art on life. Underground,
in the enormous cavernous labyrinth of the mine, she talks to George
Gottoes about his dramatic paintings of Broken Hill miners and the masculine
ethos of the community. Above ground, she talks with Aboriginal artist
Edith Kennedy, feminist painter Kate Lohse, and others. A lively portrait
of people who live on the Australian "frontier." Commissioned by the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
ROBIN RAVLICH (Sydney, Australia) is a poet and radio producer. She graduated from Sydney University and subsequently published her first book of poetry. Since 1980 she has been producing documentaries for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, including a series on multiculturalism and ethnic conflict in the United States and Europe, and her more recent Carnivale at the Club about the Yugoslav community in Broken Hill. Ravlich is a co-founding producer of the innovative ABC radio art series Surface Tension, and a producer for its successor, The Listening Room. top |
|
| RIEGER, JOHN | |
| Alcatraz
(1989) (10:50) This work sits on
the boundary between drama and the real world. It contains no actors.
The close, urgent voice that guides you through the notorious penitentiary
is the voice of a former inmate. The guard is a former Alcatraz Prison
guard. And the stories they tell are true stories that draw the listener
in and make him a part of the dramatic tableau. Originally commissioned
by San Francisco's Antenna Theater.
City in a Bottle (1985) A radiophonic work that takes its title from the story of Kandor, a city of Superman's home planet, Krypton, which was subjected to a shrinking beam and held captive in a large glass bottle. According to the story, Superman rescued the city and removed it, still in its bottle, to the Fortress of Solitude for safekeeping. Both story and title provide key's to Rieger's use of more or less mundane sound images taken from his daily life in the Bay Area. He has rescued them from contexts in which they no longer excite interest or attention, and removed them to a compositional context where they can be heard afresh and the questions raised: What is this? Who am I in relation to it? City in a Bottle is an exploration of ways of talking with sound free of the constraints of journalism, drama, and music. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] Drunken Jungle (1989) A drama that is not a drama. Its text, written by San Francisco poet and performance artist Scott McLeod, follows the lives of three characters approaching death in a plague-infested village in an unnamed jungle. But the dramatic frame is repeatedly suspended by the language, a recurring vocabulary of words and images that call attention to the text. The production reproduces the structure in sound. Sound effects that play a traditional role at the beginning of the work become, through repetition, independent sound images. And, like the repeated imagery of the text, they take on a psychological rather than a literary significance. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. Windows (1989) (15:30) On one level this is a work about the pure joy of opening windows and listening to what's out there. On another level, it investigates the question: What is the content of a sound recording? and finds that there is much more objective information in it than is usually thought. JOHN H. RIEGER (San Francisco, CA) has produced documentaries, features, and modules for national, state, and local radio audiences. He has also produced sound tracks for experimental films and site- specific installations. Still remembered for his bi-weekly, late-night radio program Artifacts on KPFA, Berkeley (1985-87), Rieger's more recent productions include work for the Bay Area Telecommunications Project (Bari Scott, Director) and an upcoming one-hour special commissioned by CalArts. top |
|
| RIGNEY, SEAN | |
| Topology
of a Phantom City: A Symphony of Samples (1995)
(19:26) Composed entirely of sounds recorded in the urban environment
of Melbourne, Australia. Topology is a musical response to a painting
by Rene Magritte, L'assassin menace. "In this picture, two bowler-hatted
assassins wait menacingly behind the walls of a room which contains
two figures, whilst three other figures observe the room from a window
at the rear. One of the figures in the room is naked and apparently
dead, the other is the menaced assassin of the title, staring into the
trumpet of a gramophone. By sheer coincidence, perhaps the same sort
that allows the note of a truck horn to be in the same key as the sound
of an electric fan and the ad-music on television, my piece seems to
have emanated from Magritte's gramophone." (Rigney) Produced for The
Listening Room, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Sydney.
SEAN RIGNEY Biography unavailable. top |
|
| RILEY, TERRY | |
| Autodreamographical
Tales (1996) is a brand new and excitingly
different work from "the father of minimalism." It's an electro-acoustic
radio opera based on a series of short stories from Riley's 1995 Dream
Journal. All the music was inspire by and composed specifically and interactively
with these tales. Also emerging and submerging from the text is a dream-like
anthem, "The Circle of Wolves." Its text reveals the perceived
apprehensions of artists, gays, immigrants and people of color who live
in a sometimes hostile and button-downed society. [Listen]
TERRY RILEY (Camptonville, CA) launched what is now known as the Minimalist Movement with his revolutionary classic INC in 1964. His music influenced such diverse musicians as Phillip Glass and the rock groups, The Who and Tangerine Dream. In the 1960s and '70s, Riley turned his attention to solo works for electronic keyboards and soprano saxophone and pioneered the use of various types of tape delay in live performance. His numerous musical activities since then include a series of study trips to India; commissions for the Salzburg Festival and Carnegie Hall; scores for such new music ensembles as The Rova Saxophone Quartet. Zeitgeist and The California Ear Unit; and performances for his own ensemble, Khayal, and The Travelling Avantt-Gaard. He was listed in the London Sunday Times as one of the 1,000 makers of the 20th Century. top |
|
| ROBINSON, JONATHAN | |
| Sight
Unseen: A Travelogue (1991)
A personal documentary essay that makes use of the nineteenth-century
travelogue form, but that is less about "exotic" India than the tourists'
perceptions and his abilities to perceive. It traces the displacement
of an American tourists' sense of belonging, referring ironically to
the ambiguous persistence of the colonial imagination when touring the
"exotic." The point of view shifts between three main voices. The words
are taken from diverse sources, such as, Paul Bowles, Walter Benjamin,
and the author, and are woven into an evocative maze of sounds and musics
that include soundtracks from Indian movies, performances by Ravi Shankar
and Wayne Horvitz, and the sounds of streets and villages in India,
Nepal, and Tibet. [Listen]
JONATHAN ROBINSON (San Francisco, CA) was born and raised in New York City. He studied modern history as an undergraduate at the University of California and then received a Master of Fine Arts from the California Art Institute, Los Angeles. When not traveling, Robinson has worked as a chef, a documentary film editor, and a prisoner's advocate. He recently produced the film Looking for Order, an historical documentary about deviancy, crime, and social control in the Western world. top |
|
| ROGERS, ALVA | |
| See Jones, Lisa, "Aunt Aida's Hand and Stained." top | |
| ROSE, JON | |
| Bagni
di Dolabella (1994)
A tourist's guide to the treatments and political intrigues of an Ancient
Roman Bath. . .the Bath of Dolabella. Owned by a run-of-the-mill corrupt
politician called Navarone, the bath is a state-of the-art health paradise
for the average under-worked, over-stressed city bureaucrat. The tour
guide Donabella dutifully recites her sales pitch. And since election
day is near, she mentions the name of her bos— frequently. Her
talk is punctuated with quick "Vote Navarone" chants by an on-tap chorus.
But in the end, the rather ugly truth about Navarone is revealed . .
. Bagni di Dolabella combines a quirky sense of humor, beautifully recorded
sound and original music by the artist. Produced for RAI, Italy.
Paganini's Last Testament (1989) An outrageous musical play for radio constructed from a series of imaginary documents about the legendary composer and violinist, Paganini. "I've taken what may or may not be true and definitely put it in an area of my own choosing. I've turned him into a religious guru, with people attending his concerts to be cured of diseases and find enlightenment. I edited it together with a lot of Southern Baptist radio material like faith healing. So that the program became not about Paganini, but about people believing in what they want to believe." (the artist). In Rose's work the violin plays a speaking part. Violin, ten string double violin, baby megaphone violin, nineteen string cello and amplified bow are all played by Rose. Produced for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. [Listen] The Long Sufferings of Anna Magdalena Bach (1998) is a set of variations on a recently discovered theme by Johann Sebastian Bach's second wife: mother of 13 children, hard-working housewife and composer. Colorful, intense and irreverent, this work presents Anna Magdalena in her own voice, commenting on her husband, their life together and on her times. It is an abridged version of a 45 minute commission of the ABC Australia's Listening Room series, 1996. [Listen] The Virtual Violin (1991) An impish music-science-fiction that presents the latest in interactive software for violinists: two new and groundbreaking instruments: the "History Sampler" and the "Virtual Violin." The following is a quote from the Veta Music Systems' catalogue: "Veta has acquired the rights to historic recordings by famous violinists of the past. Simply press the PLAY button and you will sound exactly like an authentic Heifitz or Menuhin. . .The 'Virtual Violin' allows the modern violinist access to cyberspace. With authentic period sound, he or she may wander through simulated three-dimensional space and participate in seemingly real performances by Bach, the emperor Nero, Henry the Eighth, the young Mozart, or sit with the orchestra at a legendary Beatles or Michael Jackson recording session." (from the work) All violins played by Rose. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. Violin Music for Supermarkets (1994) Consists of thirty-two mini pieces, some in the form of soap operas. This is an abbreviated version of the work, which was produced for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. JON ROSE (Amsterdam, Holland) Jon Rose was born in Great Britain in 1951, has Australian citizenship, and now lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin. After studies in music, graphic design, and jazz, Rose began his now fourteen year-long exploration of The Relative Violin—a Total Art Form based around the one musical instrument. This exploration is given expression in a variety of performance areas, such as violin performances of up to 12 hours in duration, large-scale on-site installations, multimedia performances and radiophonic works. Rose has toured the United States, Europe, Australia, and China. top |
|
| ROSENSTEIN, BRAD | |
| A
Personal Appearance by the Virgin Mary and Other Urgent Messages
(1991) (18:00) A man returns home
to rid himself of earlier belongings: a watch, a comb, photographs,
a block of wood, a cigarette, a diary. As his monologue unfolds, it
reveals a religious fanatic trying to erase all sense of a wordly past—developing
a private cosmology and striving toward a mystical marriage. The beautifully
majestic, polyphonic sacred music of the sixteenth-century composer
Lassus serves as counterpoint to the motet of voices that develop in
the man's mind and begin to subvert his assurance. Commissioned by NEW
AMERICAN RADIO.
Cayo Hueso—Island of Bones (1992) A creative documentary about Key West, Florida. In collaged interviews, ambient sounds and music, it captures some of the distinct character of the island, whose special perch on the tip of the United States lends an air of go-to-hell independence coupled with an easy "mañana" life style. The cast of characters ranges from writers and politicians to gay activists and boat captains. They chart Key West's evolution from pirate haven to naval base to tourist mecca. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, playwright BRAD ROSENSTEIN (San Francisco, CA) earned his degree in English and theater arts at the University of Philadelphia. He developed new plays in staged readings and workshops at the Play Works Company, co-founded the InterAct Theater Company and directed plays by Sam Shephard, Joseph Chaikin, Ntozake Shange and Edward Albee. Rosenstein has also worked as a freelance journalist and a dance critic. top |
|
| ROSENTHAL, RACHEL | |
| File
Name: FUTUREFAX (1990)
The sounds of a fax machine going through a time warp... a fax arriving
from the future . . . a female voice reading the message from the survivors
of a catastrophic ecological clash, who now (i.e., in the future) live
in an environment that shelters them from outside perils . . . In File
Name: FUTURFAX, Rosenthal's expressive voice performance is coupled
with sound by Don Preston (formerly with Frank Zappa). Commissioned
by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] Mouth Music (excerpt) (1990) Playfull vocalizations, with performances on straw, and a glass of water with straw. [Listen] SEARCH FOR THE NEW WORLD Pataphysical ORDER—A Meditation in Time of War (1991) What has happened to us? After the promise of 1990, we find ourselves catapulted back to the time when brute force solved all problems. 1991 is an historic blight. Rosenthal goes on a tour of her own mind in an attempt to discover the seeds of universal folly. The "New World Order" promises to fall in step with Pere Ubu, wading and waddling in his Pataphysics philosophy, shouting "merde!" at the scud fragments raining on the sands of Eden, as Mere Ubu knits little sweaters for crude coated cormorants. All voices and sounds by Rachel Rosenthal with sound design by Dain Olsen. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] RACHEL ROSENTHAL (Los Angeles, CA) is one of the foremost interdisciplinary artists in the United States. Since 1975, she has focused exclusively on performance and has created and presented more than two dozen full-length solo and group pieces for museums, theaters, and alternative spaces all over North America and Europe. A self-described deep ecologist, an ecofeminist, an animal rights activist and Gaia lover, Rosenthal's recent projects include Amazonia, a collaboration on the Rain Forests with a group of musicians; the California E-A-R Unit, presented at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Pangaean Dreams, a solo piece with music and video co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Festival 1990 and the Santa Monica Museum of Art, that toured Europe and the United States. Rosenthal is also a much sought-after lecturer and workshop leader. top |
|
| RUBIN, ANNA | |
| World
Turning Over (1990) A music-drama
depicting the world some forty generations after an unnamed disaster.
Living underground, the inhabitants have suffered multiple deformities,
and their names starkly and immediately identify these infirmities:
One-Eye, Wing, Only Moans . . . A mythology relating to pre-disaster
religious teachings binds the community together: fragments of songs,
stories, unexplained values . . . The dramatic crisis facing this community
is the sudden inexplicable drive of the figure called "Only Waits" to
emerge into the Upper Air, the abandoned wasteland that is the world
above ground. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
ANNA RUBIN (Brooklyn, NY) is a classically trained composer/performer with a strong interest in electronic music. She received her M.F.Aa in composition from the California Institute and continued her education at the Institute of Sonology, Utrecht, and the Sweelinck Conservatory, Amsterdam, Holland. Rubin's credits include performances throughout the United States and in Europe. World Turning Over is her first work for the broadcast medium, and her first drama. top |
|
| RUE, RIK | |
| The
World Behind You (1992-94) With
Shane Fahey. A series of sound compositions that use decoyed and doctored
sounds from many regional and global sources, including urban and environmental
sounds, found sound, tapes of instrumental material and text bartered
from musicians and vocalists. Two sections from the series are presented
in this program: (1) Modern Sleep
(5:45), a dream-like electro-acoustic work to relax into and to relax
with [Listen];
and (2) Intrusions
(due to the inclement weather) (8:10), an expressive blend of rolling
thunder, the voices of birds and cicadas, electronic manipulations,
and industrial music [Listen].
RIK RUE and SHANE FAHEY are composers and sound engineers based in Pyrmont and Sydney, Australia. top |
|
| RUSSELL, LAWRENCE | |
| Ride
On (1989)
"I am a professional man," the protagonist of this work says. "Maybe
I was a hippie once, but I'm a professional now . . . I make ends meet
. . . All I want is a bit of privacy, a chance to relax. That's why
we live here on the inlet. . . ." But that's not what happens when late
one night his teenage son comes home drunk, and eager to show his goon
friends the pot plants his father and mother are nurturing upstairs.
. . . Ride On captures in amusingly realistic language the anxiety and
frustration of a father whose anti-authoritarian position turns against
him.
Born in Northern Ireland, LAWRENCE RUSSELL has been living in Canada since 1958. His theater plays have been staged throughout Canada, including performances at Stratford (Ontario), the National Arts Centre (Ottawa), and the Factory Theatre Lab (Toronto). He has produced numerous audio tapes for university and listener-subscription FM stations throughout North America, and has written radio dramas for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, winning the CBC Literary Prize twice. Russell is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. top |
|
| RYDBERG, BO | |
| Krets
A work about the illusory freedom
of man—in this place, in our time. While there is a kind of story,
the work is best experienced as a sound-music composition that may lead
listeners to differing emotional and psychological interpretations.
With brief excerpts from Bertrand Russell's introduction to Wittgenstein's
Tractatu in Swedish and English. Produced fby the Earplay group of the
music department at the Swedish Radio Company. Bo Rydberg Biography unavailable. top |
|
| RUOHORANTA, PEKKA | |
| See Huhtamaki, Harri, "Calewalayana." top |
|
| RUX, CARL HANCOCK | |
| Pork Dream
in the American House of Image (1994-95)
With original music by Bill Toles. The story in this play is written
as a libretto. Enveloping new wave music, post-ante-bellum rhythms,
blues, gospel, show tunes, and pan-African percussions, Pork Dream is
a postmodern musical fantasia about an eternally young boy, "Pork,"
who was born and raised in a movie house at the beginning of the twentieth
century. His family are the characters he has come to love, hate, and
imitate, in Westerns, post-war detective flicks, turn-of-the-century
race films, musicals, and Home Boy Hood Independents. As he enters the
twenty-first century, Pork finds himself bored and all too familiar
with the images he has lived with for a hundred years. So he decides
to give up his eternal role as a film voyeur and become a filmmaker,
facing his own creativity for the first time. But filmmakers seem to
come and go—only the images and the audience live forever. . .
Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
CARL HANCOCK RUX is a playwright whose works include Geneva Cottrell Waiting for the Dog to Die, which has been performed at such New York venues as Actor's Playhouse, Mabou Mines, Aaron Davis Hall, as well as at the Woodstock Jazz Festival, the American Church of Paris (France), The University of Ghana (West Africa) and the National Institute for the Arts in Abidjan (Ivory Coast, West Africa). A recipient of the 1994/95 Fresh Poet's Award, Rux is also published in several periodicals, journals, and the new anthology Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poet's Cafe. (1994 American Book Award). top |
|
| S | |
| SATURDAY,
JACK SANI, NICOLA SCHOEN, CLAIRE SCHUMAN, JOAN SEIDEL, MIRIAM SHORT WORKS SIFUENTES, ROBERTO SILTANEN, JUHA SIREN, PEKKA and AGNIESZKA SKIBELL, HARRIS SLEIGHT OF MIND GROUP SMITH, LADONNA SMITH, MIYOSHI SNITOW, ALAN SONAMI, LAETITIA STEADMAN, NANCY STEPHANOVIC, IVANA STIFTER, CATHERINE STONE, SUSAN STOYKE, MARCIE SUBLETTE, NED SUGAR, MIKLOS SUNWAN, JIANG SWEARINGEN, DONALD |
|
| SATURDAY, JACK (alias Matt Fair) | |
| The
World Owes You A Living (1988)
A provocative collage made from hundreds of hours of recordings of day-time
radio programming. It addresses the effects of the computer revolution
and our increasingly high-tech environment on North American and international
world markets.
JACK SATURDAY (alias Matt Fair) (Victoria, British Columbia) is a painter, audio artist, writer, and composer. He decided years ago to make his life his art and he has followed the idea faithfully—without ever pursuing the sale of his work. top |
|
| SANI, NICOLA | |
| Water Memories (16:30) was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's "Pensieri", a painting that expressed an idea of the rapport between the life of man and the passing of time, symbolized by the continuous flow of water. The acoustic material of this radiophonic composition consists of electronically altered water sounds, and other natural and electronic instrumental sounds that are reminiscent of the sound qualities of water and its particular timbre. A metaphorical story emerges. It is as if on its endless journey through history, the flowing water collected sounds - that were transformed into poetic vision by the composer - and can now be relived by his listeners. NICOLA SANI was born in Ferrara, Italy, in 1961. His compositions include instrumental and electronic works as well as operas and multimedia projects on which he has collaborated with many of today's leading directors and visual artists, such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Nam June Paik and Mario Sasso. From 1986-88, Sani organized the music section of the Electronic Arts Festival in Cameriono, Italy, and since 1993 he's directed the electronic arts program of the Roma Europa Festival in Rome. He presently hosts a series of classical music programs for RAJ Radio. |
|
| SCHOEN, CLAIRE | |
| See Snitow, Alan, "What's Left?" top | |
| SCHUMAN, JOAN | |
| Conversations
with Jane (1993)
Investigates the question: What can progressive feminists and lesbians
(the Janes) do to move from their current self-involved personal knowledge
and "emotional victim" awareness to political and collective struggle
to affect social change? Partially improvised conversations are layered
and linked by music, rhythmic use of ambiances, and the repetition of
catch words. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
JOAN SCHUMAN (Santa Cruz, CA) is a writer, activist, and feminist. Between 1985 and 1989 she wrote and produced public radio documentaries on lesbian, feminist, and multicultural issues for WXPN FM, Philadelphia, Pacifica Radio, and National Public Radio's Latin File and All Things Considered. Since 1988 she has worked as an educator, counselor, and advocate in the Battered Women's and Rape Crisis Movement. top |
|
| SEIDEL, MIRIAM | |
| Interference
(1992) With audio/visual artist John J. H. Phillips. A bizarre sci-fi
play that unfolds as one person's inner monologue and as a sound collage
that evolves into the equivalent of the text, entwining itself first
between sections, then between words until it finally becomes the words.
The story traces one person's reaction to a mounting dislocation in
the structure of the physical world. "This fable embodies my own questions
about the overwhelmingness of our fractured culture." (Seidel) Commissioned
by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
MIRIAM SEIDEL (Philadelphia, PA) is a writer and artist. Her artworks include outdoor and indoor installations, several collaborative works including a performance/public ritual presented at Philadelphia's Painted Bride Art Center; and several dramatic works. Seidel's writing about art has appeared in The New Art Examiner, High Performance, Art in America, and other publications. top |
|
| SHORT WORKS | |
| Audio Art Ireland | |
| Audio Art Ireland (1997) presents three works from a country rarely associated with cutting edge sound art. They were commissioned for the art project "Random Access", a brain child of the Sculptor's Society of Ireland in 1992: GBH (8:00) by Fergus Kelly explores the interface between the body and technology in the context of industrial production. It looks at the idea of the vulnerability of the body, the body as something soft and penetrable in contrast with the hard-edged surfaces and effects of technology. Breaking Point (6:50) by Stephanie Condon Casey is a powerful audio sculpture made of voices, sounds and music. "I voice the measure of coercion in a word -Mother -against the experience of women who have children: Tracy, Marie, Frankie, Rosemary, Caroline and many more. I have distilled into minutes of sound: Years of endless exhaustion, unvalued work, suppressed and censored anger." (the artist) Kevlar Second Chant (11:00) by Tony Patrickson and Chris North may be called digitally processed sound-poetry. In the words of the artists it's simply: "When opening, the mouth defends the ears." NO BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION is available at this time. |
|
| DISCONTACT | |
| DISCONTACT (1997) is devoted to Canadian electro-acoustic music. Its offerings include: Woodstock to Detroit by Frank Koustrup (2:50). An excerpt from a time-lapped film depicting an automobile journey from Montreal to Samia. The sound sources are recordings of sheets of metal and the lead-out groove from a cardboard phonograph record; Spleen (2:20) by Robert Normandeau, "cinema for the ears", in which the sense of the sound, what it represents, is as important to the composition as the physical nature of the sound; Jolly (2: 15) by Bruno Degazio, a set of miniature dramas for electric violin and tape adapted from earlier song settings of poems by Edgar Allen Poe. NO BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION is available at this time. |
|
| #1 | |
| Radio Alarm
(1987) by Christine Baczewska: a "colloquial operetta" commissioned
by David Moss for the OpeRadio project in 1987. In the Dark (1990) (6:30) by Helen Thorington: audio images that evoke an unpeopled, cinematic geography. A landscape of loneliness and loss. In Malpais (1990) (5:30) and The Respirator (1990) (5:31) by Gregory Whitehead: "It's the Malpais we're talking about: hot sand, black rocks, and a whole lotta dead things." A dramatic geography. The Respirator: sensual and unusual audio inspired by the terminal Illness of the broadcast medium. "There is no sign of brain activity, but we are able to keep the patient breathing through the use of a respirator." |
|
| 1998, #2 | |
| Here Comes Everybody (2:15) by Gregory Whitehead and Dan Lander is a seductive (ly) ironic comment on radio and its gurus. Premiered live over a telephone line. Acte (5:27) by Ward Weis. A radio ad, "Always Coca-Cola", as stimulus for an improvisational sound art piece. War of Dreams (8:07) by Shelley Hirsch. Musical improvisations, story, and expressive, processed breathing are woven into a piece of kinetic theater. With a text based on Angela Carter's "Doctor Hoffmanns Infernal Machines of Desire." Epitaphe pour Iqbal Masih (10:21) by Erik Mikael Karlsson. In memory of the twelve-year old Pakistani boy who was sold at age four to a weaving mill where he was kept chained up for the best part of the next six years. When he was ten years old, Iqbal managed to flee. He then took part in the fight against child labor until he was shot two years later, in 1995, while out cycling with some friends in his home village. GREGORY WHITEHEAD (Nantucket, MA) and DAN LANDER (Montreal, Canada) are well known radio artists in their respective countries. Both have been frequent contributors to NEW AMERICAN RADIO. WARD WEIS (Antwerp, Belgium) is a well known sound artist whose work has been aired throughout Europe and abroad. He is the co-founder of the Planktone CD label. SHELLEY HIRSCH (New York City) is a composer/performer who has been exploring her extended vocal range for the over fifteen years. Her original radio plays, theatrical productions and filmscores have been performed on stages throughout the US and Europe, and in Australia. ERIK MIKAEL KARLSSON (Stockholm, Sweden) is one of Europe's most promising young composers of electroacoustic music. Born in 1967, he has created work for the Swedish Broadcasting Company; La Muse en Circuit in Paris, France; Elektronisches Studio at the Technical University in Berlin, Germany; and the Institute for Electroacoustic Music in Aarhus, Denmark, among others. |
|
| Vocalizations | |
| Vocalizations presents four impressive works by American woman composer/performers: Erogenous (8: 10) by American LaDonna Smith is an intensely sensual, cross-cultural improvisation with two Russian musicians. It presents the human voice as a vibrational force at once strange, familiar and ultimately transformative. Electric Lady (7:35) by Lynn Book. Performance art-storytelling from a decidedly female perspective that expands into soundscape and song forms. Goat Cheese (2:07) by Bonnie Barnett represents the artist's "foray into the duo format. .. " (Barnett). Playful and surprising. Yoga (6:35) by Christine Baczewska is a choral piece that features the artist and members of her yoga class. It uses stringing pearls as a metaphor for the breathing: Each breath is a pearl. Optimally, each is a fine round, even pearl, yet none can be discarded no matter how rough or uneven. Like life ... LADONNA SMITH (Birmingham, AL) has been on the international improvising music scene for over two decades, as well as an active performer and educator in Birmingham, Alabama. Through her work as a performer and co-editor of the improvisor, the international journal of free improvisation, she has been responsible for keeping improvised music alive in the southeastern United States. LYNN BOOK (New York, NY) is an interdisciplinary performance artist, vocalist and composer recently transplanted from Chicago to New York City. Her performance work has evolved over the past 15 years from a very physical and visually charged form to include a broad repertoire of vocal activities ranging from textual play and Dada scores to more free-form musical and extended vocal territories. BONNIE BARNETT (Los Angeles, CA) teaches voice, tours with the Barnett Band and The Zone, and continues to produce such public events as her legendary "Tunnel Hum" . Barnett has toured Europe extensively playing at festivals in Germany, Holland and Switzerland. Her most recent works are duets with musicians Richard Wood and Nels Cline. CHRISTINE BACZEWSKA (New York, NY) is a composer and performer whose work has always made use of multitrack vocal harmonies, recorded in the studio or sequenced real time during performance. She is known for her "colloquial operettas" and has also created soundtracks for film. |
|
| SIFUENTES, ROBERTO | |
| see Gomez-Pena, Guillermo, "Temples of Confessions." top |
|
| SILTANEN, JUHA | |
| See Lindberg, Magnus, "Faust." top |
|
| SIREN, PEKKA and AGNIESZKA WALIGORSKA | |
| AKA
SAGA, PART 1: AKAKLAKLAK — Return From Death
(1990) A fascinating blend of the
mythological past and technological present: the story of the woman
Aka and her man Kala, both members of the fish clan, and their enemies,
the people of the reindeer clan. When Kala is killed by the reindeer
clan, Aka swears revenge and Kala's soul promises to return "gliding
as a bird, riding with the wind, carried by the night." A meticulously
researched radiophonic mythology, AKAKLAKLAK makes use of the human
voice and ancient musical instruments, such as amber rattlers, straw
brushes, and wooden pellet bells. It is presented in Finnish with introduction
in English. A commission of Yleisradio, Finland. [Listen] AKA SAGA, PART 2: ALAK (1990) The second part of the "Aka Saga" continues the story begun in AKAKLAKLAK. Following the fate of Kala's son, Alak, the work makes use of the human voice and ancient musical instruments and is produced in a high-tech style. Presented in Finnish with an English introduction. [Listen] AKA SAGA, PART 3: AKAMER (1990) In the third part of the "Aka Saga," Aka is the leader of her own clan and Alak a full-grown man. One day, Aka dreams of a dying walrus being washed ashore—a premonition that speaks of evil to come from underwater. In the rousing finale, she fights a battle with "the demon eye" for the power of knowledge. She wins, but exhausted by the effort, finds herself swimming towards darkness and a reunion with her beloved Kala. . . Presented in Finnish with an English introduction. [Listen] The Sixth Day (1994) (9:05) Addresses the question: "How did life begin?" Focusing on the sixth day as portrayed in the book of Genesis, this work is a radiophonic composition for tape, clarinet, didjeridu, bullroarer, and processed voice. Terra Incognito (1997) is a work composed of sound recordings made on the Faroe Islands in 1995. In the words of the artists, there are "500 different tunes of green to listen to and relax by -no explanations needed. PEKKA SIREN (Helsinki, Finland) is one of the founders of Yleisradio's Experimental Studio. A teacher of sound art at the Radio and TV Institute, the Theater Academy and the University of Art and Design in Helsinki, Siren also produces tape compositions for television, ballet and film. Together with Agnieszka Waligorska, he is a member of the sonic art group, ProTon. AGNIESZKA W. ALIGORSKA (Helsinki, Finland) is a native of Poland who has made Finland her home. After studies at the Sorbonne and research projects at institutes of art and science in Poland and the US, Waligorska co-founded the group, ProTon. A graphic designer, composer, photographer, vocalist and actress, she has participated in many sound art exhibitions in Finland, and several radio art festivals abroad. top |
|
| SKIBELL, HARRIS | |
| Around
(1993) An interior musical and verbal
monologue about psychic and physical wandering. Set in New York City,
it chronicles a character's attempt to escape into the drama and energy
of the city. As the piece progresses, the character's narrative begins
to be projected onto surrounding sounds, and a structure begins to emerge
from the act of wandering through the multiple ambiances of the city.
Sounds for Around were composed from a guitar feedback algorithm, from
the CB radios in New York City taxis, and from numerous city recordings.
Created on the NEXT computer using CMIX, CSound, RT and other direct
digital synthesis software packages. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
Exchange (1989) A composition made up of the sounds of the New York Stock Exchange and the violin. For the artist the worlds seemed at the start almost antithetical: the violin a symbol of the world of European art music and the stock exchange, a powerful American symbol of the world whose business is business. But as Skibell uses the materials, distinctions blur and meanings get exchanged. Skibell used the Sun 3 based digital synthesis system at the Brooklyn College Center for Computer Music to analyze, process and organize the sounds of the exchange and the violin into a musical dialogues. Renowned violinist Rolf Schulte performed in this work. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. Watunna (The Telling) (1990) With Susan Lepselter. A collaborative work that juxtaposes creation myths of the Makiritari culture in Venezuela—the oldest known creation myths in the Americas—with the musicalized sounds of New York City. Lepselter's narrative includes poetic adaptations of the original texts. The sounds of New York serve as the contemporary screen on which to view the text. And they illustrate the text in the same way that orchestral instruments illustrate the text of Peter and the Wolf. Reading by Lepselter. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] HARRIS SKIBELL (New York, NY) is a composer, sound designer, and multimedia designer. As a composer he has gravitated towards use of computers and direct digital synthesis and analysis to process and produce recorded sound. He has been composer-in-residence at the Columbia University Computer Music Studios, the Center for Computer Music at Brooklyn College, and at Studio PASS in New York City. His works have been performed or broadcast at Roulette, Columbia University, the Whitney Museum, New Music America, CBGB's Real Computer Music Series, Merce Cunningham Studios, Bowling Green New Music Festival, WNYC-TV, Danish National Radio, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He is currently working on sound design for a CD-ROM on the Beat poets for Voyager and an upcoming exhibit at the Whitney Museum (with the music production company Tomanandy), on the World Wide Web-based media removal machine, "Snuff," and on a Web-based serial which takes place on a subway car. top |
|
| SLEIGHT OF MIND GROUP | |
| The
Underseen World of Claude Jateau, Part 1: The River of Angels
(1989) Do you remember the long-running
Jacques Cousteau nature documentary series on television? In The River
of Angels you'll meet his radio cousin, Claude Jateau. With a delightful
French accent and a tireless thirst for scientific knowledge Jateau
and a group of scientists and friends, explore the freeways of Los Angeles
and examine the nomads who travel them with the same enthusiasm that
Cousteau brought to his explorations of the Amazon and the Nile. He
even goes in search of such endangered native wildlife as The Fading
Film Star, and manages to capture and tag one with a radio collar. Skillful
writing, acting, and a wonderful sense of humor combine in a guaranteed
half hour of pure fun. [Listen]
The Underseen World of Claude Jateau, Part 2: A Trick of Perspective (1989) (21:20) Jateau develops a shrinking gas, reduces himself and his team of experts to a height of 1.7 centimeters, and sets up an encampment in the shag rug in his living room. Another thoroughly amusing episode in the life of Claude Jateau. SLEIGHT OF MIND is a group composed of freelance producer Christopher Hastings, sound designer John Wilson, and computer system designer Ted Hlavac. Hastings has also acted on Broadway and in the TV soap As the World Turns. Wilson manages his own production company, Sound Choices, and works for a San Francisco audio visual firm. Hlavac is currently working in Oslo, Norway, as a systems designer for Bankeness Betalingsentral. top |
|
| SMITH, LADONNA | |
| Erogenous (8:10) is an intensely sensual, cross-cultural improvisation with two Russian musicians. It presents the human voice as a vibrational force at once strange, familiar and ultimately transformative. LADONNA SMITH (Birmingham, AL) has been on the international improvising music scene for over two decades, as well as an active performer and educator in Birmingham, Alabama. Through her work as a performer and co-editor of the improvisor, the international journal of free improvisation, she has been responsible for keeping improvised music alive in the southeastern United States. |
|
| SMITH, MIYOSHI | |
| I
Stopped but Never Gave Up (1990)
(5:00) A dramatic narrative about a girl who drops out of high school.
(#32,91 with Negron, Mason, and Oliver.)
MIYOSHI SMITH (Philadelphia, PA) is a media artist whose credits include two major radio series for national and international distribution: First and Last Words—a poetry series hosted by writer Sonia Sanchez, featuring Essex Hemphill, Larry Duckette and Linh Dinh; and Even the Sounds Are Blue—a musical series hosted by vocalist/composer Cassandra Wilson and featuring Michel Rosewoman, Craigh Harris and David Murray. top |
|
| SNITOW, ALAN | |
| What's
Left? (1992)
With Claire Schoen. What does it mean for the Left in the West now that
upheavals in the former Soviet Union have unraveled the Bolshevik Revolution?
Based on hundreds of hours of interviews with democratic activists in
what is now the Confederation of Independent States, What's Left? is
a docu-satire about the identity crisis facing progressives after the
collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War. It follows a North
American television reporter—once a radical activist—on his
travels through the Soviet Union as he tries to make sense of it all.
[Listen]
ALAN SNITOW (San Francisco, CA) is an award-winning radio and television news and documentary producer. He has been news director at KPFA-FM in Berkeley (1987-present) and news producer at KTVU-TV in Oakland (1987-present). Snitau is also a consultant on live satellite productions and the board president of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. CLAIRE SCHOEN (Berkeley, CA) is a freelance radio reporter, and documentarian and founder of Fine Lines Productions in Berkeley. Her credits include Sanctuary Caravan, a documentary on the sanctuary movement's response to problems in Central America; and Hard Work: Job Training for Urban Youth. In film and video, Schoen has been involved in such diverse and well-known projects as Apocalypse Now, The Black Stallion, and The Mothers of the Plaza. top |
|
| SONAMI, LAETITIA | |
| See Carnahan, Melody Sumner, "Manananggal" and "The Bench." top |
|
| STEADMAN, NANCY | |
| See Locktev, Julia, "Eating in Tongues." top | |
| STEPHANOVIC, IVANA | |
| Metropolis
of Silence — The Old Ras (1991-92)
A sound-music work of great serenity and beautiful images. Recorded
in the ruins of the ancient town of Ras (the first capital of Serbia),
it combines processed animal sounds, improvised music that ranges from
old folk songs to new music, and natural ambient sounds: a group of
horsemen passing by, the wind in the surrounding fir trees. Produced
at JRT, Radio Belgrade. Included with Metropolis of Silence are parts
of Stephanovic's speech to her colleagues in London asking them to think
of the Serbs and all Yugoslavian people faced with the hardships of
winter, and also producer Helen Thorington's comments and reading of
excerpts from a Stephanovic letter.
IVANA STEPHANOVIC is a Serbian composer and former director of JRT, Radio Belgrade's Radio Workshop (the experimental music and radio art department.) An outstanding critic of the war and the politics of her government, Stephanovic was dismissed from her job in 1992, shortly after the completion of Metropolis of Silence, and has since worked with other artists in Belgrade's underground. top |
|
| STIFTER, CATHERINE | |
| The
Geography of Friendship (1991)
(13:00) With Marcie Stoyke. A collage of authentic audio letters between
two long-time friends: Marcie, who lives on a farm in southern Minnesota;
and Catherine, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Each letter
makes some everyday event a moment in their friendship—time spent
together—feeding the farm animals, commuting to the city, looking
at the full moon. The Geography of Friendship is an unusual portrait
of an ordinary friendship. In the words of its producers it is also
"an invitation to remember why we women are friends." Commissioned by
NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
CATHERINE STIFTER (San Francisco, CA) grew up in rural Minnesota, moved to Los Angeles and now lives and works in San Francisco. Her career in radio spans fifteen years and reaches in many directions. She was production manager at KALW, San Francisco (l985-88) and served as associate director of training, operations, and development at Western Public Radio (1988-89). She has produced award-winning documentary work for National Public Radio's Horizons, numerous art features for Morning Edition and Performance Today, and experimental radio pieces for Artifacts at KPFA-FM Berkeley. Stifter is NPR's Training Specialist. MARCIE STOYKE (Mapleton, MN) is a videographer and manager of the Community Cable Access Channel in St. Peter, Minnesota. Her childhood dream came true when she moved from Minneapolis to the small rural community of Mapleton twelve years ago with her husband. They have learned to break horses, farm organically, butcher chickens, and live comfortably in an agricultural community. Stoyke writes and performs music. top |
|
| STONE, SUSAN | |
| Heat
(1989) (15:00) Audio portrait of
life in tropical latitudes. Testimonies about the impact of "the greenhouse
effect" on coastal city life are interwoven with the sounds of life
inside a seaside residential hotel. The consequences of the rising tides
and temperature take a toll on living within the rooms of a tinderbox,
"where people huddle like flotsam and live on the jetsam of discarded
odds . . . and ends." (from the work) Created for New Music America
'89, Miami.
Omphalos (1990) Her fear, his fantasy, his incisions, and her insanity collect and collide in the corners of a room in which both operate. This audio journey into a woman's heart of darkness takes place in a hospital operating room; there cardiac surgery charts the way through the surgeon's probing of her valley walls, intervening divides, and summits. The soundscape provides aural entry into his reconstruction of her heart, while he deconstructs her humanity. Illusion, delusion, and "instrumental" foreplay are derived from an interweaving of a male and female voice, medical actuality, and the manipulated musical phrasings of Hilding Rosenberg. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] Ruby's Story (1986) (3:00) With writer Melody Sumner Carnahan. Inner monologues of a deaf-mute woman struggling to reconcile herself to a loveless marriage. The speech rhythms and phrasings of her silent world, which has been shattered by betrayal, ultimately takes the form of a letter written secretively to a friend. [Listen] SOCO-GAP: Snake-Charming in America (1994) A docu-drama based on the life of a young snake handler at a roadside attraction in the South. Caught up in the religious zeal of her serpent worship, and an innate skill of reptile wrestling, the heroine, Chance, reveals the nether world of the freak show. There, slithering sleights of hand expose a magical sideshow life. "In small pockets of the Southern United States, oddity, aberration, and delusion captivate the curious. There, the willing suspension of disbelief fosters the on-going popularity of freak shows. Similarly, daring acts of faith in snake-handling fuel a belief in life in the Hereafter." (Stone) Viscera (1989) (22:00) Audio portrait of passion, constructed as a radio play between two lovers who share very close quarters. Drawing on the consequences of intimacy and appetite, their pillow talk reveals deep sensations of longing, possession, and primitive need. They are linked by emotions that pull them together, while driving them apart. In the confinement of a studio apartment, an unexpected gesture of love proves fatal. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] Producer, writer SUSAN
STONE (San Francisco, CA) is director of Pacifica Radio/KPFA-FM's
drama and literature department (Berkeley), where she is also executive
producer of the weekday documentary series, Audio Evidence, and weeknight
sound arts series, The Eleventh Hour, featuring experimental spoken
arts and performance readings of world literature and drama. Stone also
teaches audio-taping techniques in the California public school system.
Her independent productions of original mixed media texts and sound
design for theater, film and television have received numerous awards.
Her writings and recordings have been featured in multimedia installations
and productions of international radio theater through Westdeutscher
Rundfunk (Cologne, Germany), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,
the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (Sydney, Australia) and National
Public Radio.
|
|
| STOYKE, MARCIE | |
| See Stifter, Catherine, "Geography of Friendship." top |
|
| SUBLETTE, NED | |
| The
Auctioneer (1989)
A lively composition of voices that will introduce you to the skills
and insights of master auctioneers, and to the aspirations and experiences
of their students at the Missouri Auction School in Kansas City. While
presenting a delightful array of counting practices, bid-chants, and
anecdotes, The Auctioneer also reflects the economic realities of rural
America, where the number of little towns are dwindling and you hate
to go in there and sell out the backbone of the whole community: the
general store. . . Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
Perhaps best known as a country music singer, NED SUBLETTE (New York, NY) has also worked extensively in radio. He was four times a composer in-residence at KUNM-FM, Albuquerque. There he developed such projects as the first ever complete performance of John Cage's Empty Words. In 1982 he was a composer-in-residence at VPRO, Holland. Sublette also produced a series of commissioned work by new music composers for The Kitchen (New York City). Sublette is originally from Lubbock, Texas. top |
|
| SUGAR, MIKLOS | |
| Balaton Highlands (12:00) by Miklos Sugar is composed into a series of pictures that capture the sounds and music of Lake Balaton in Hungary. "...the splashing of its waters, the surrounding noises, and particularly those of our garden - trains, bells, folk songs and a musician gipsy playing the harp." (the artist) MIKLOS SUGAR (Szekesfehervar, Hungary) was born in 1952 in Budapest, where he later studied composition at the Academy of Music. From 1988 to 1990, Sugar worked at Hungarian Radio. In 1991, he began playing with the National Philharmonic Society. Since 1987, he has been a professor at the Academy of Dramatic and Fine Arts in Budapest. |
|
| SUNWAN, JIANG | |
| The
Unforgettable Songs (1987)
With Xie Wenxiu and others. The first Chinese radio broadcast ever to
be adapted for American audiences. As delicate as a Chinese ink-drawing,
the work is about folk songs and folk singers in the Province of Shanxi.
Lui Jucang, for instance, who sings a song in memory of his deceased
wife—"Little Oil Lamp"—the very song she sang for him at their
wedding four decades earlier. "Little Oil Lamp" was deemed "pornographic"
and forbidden during the Cultural Revolution. Produced for China National
Radio (CNR), and adapted for NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
JIANG SUNWAN Biography unavailable. top |
|
| SWEARINGEN, DONALD | |
| Between
Fear and Longing: Marginally Stable in San Francisco
(1990) One of the first compositions
to derive its impetus from the October 1989 San Francisco earthquake.
In it Swearingen explores personal fear and longing as expressed in
the words and thoughts of various individuals "overheard" during the
earthquake and its aftermath. Interspersed with the spoken texts are
snippets of radio broadcasts. All are embedded in a musical context
whose rhythms and colors echo those of the spoken words. Commissioned
by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
Salvation at 1 A.M. (1991) takes its inspiration from the myriad of promotional programming on late night cable television. Typically they are 30-minute advertisements that imitate the format of talk shows. Anything you want: sex, money, self-esteem, God, celluloid freedom, a full head of hair, property, beauty, an exciting life style . . . just call 1-800. Call now. What are you waiting for? Put your hand on the TV screen. Feel the power! [Listen] We Elect To (1989) A radio opera featuring the voices of seven American presidents and singer Pamela Z, who counterbalances their lofty words with the reality of newspaper headlines. This piece is about the highly charged and emotionally loaded phrases that our leaders employ and which, over the years, have acquired a life of their own. In We Elect To they are placed in a musical context, with the music integrated into the flow and rhythm of their words, and their pronouncements highlighted by varying musical styles and moods. Interwoven throughout the piece are continuing references to religious themes and familiar hymns. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] DONALD SWEARINGEN (San Francisco, CA) Composer/Performer Donald Swearingen's professional career has been a garden of forking paths: to Memphis where he worked as a rock musician with legendary studios Stax and Hi Records; to California, where he designed software systems for LucasFilm/THX, Telenetworks/NLC, Fujitsu, NSC, Octel, NET, and numerous other Silicon Valley firms; to San Francisco, where he has established himself as an original and vital member of the Bay Area new music community; and to points beyond, touring, lecturing, and performing throughout the US and internationally. Along the way, he has picked up advanced degrees in music and mathematics, and pursues continuing interests in literature, physics, writing, cooking, and living, all of which feed his activities as a musician, composer, programmer, and designer of new instruments for the performance of expanded-music. In addition to performances of his own work, Swearingen has premiered several live sound works employing light-activated musical controllers of his own design; since 1990, he has been a regular consultant to LucasFilm/THX; and he is the software architect and programmer of the THX R2 Acoustical Analyzer. top |
|
| T | |
| TAYLOR,
DOMINIC TEITELBAUM, RICHARD TERRANOVA, ELAINE THOMAS, MARTIN THORINGTON, HELEN TIETZ, WARD TOIVIAINEN, ILKKA TUREL, BOR UMOJA, MBALI UMCHLABA |
|
| TAYLOR, DOMINIC | |
| Session
One (1994-95)
African-Americans have had to define self and person before America
had its definition. One of the post-colonial mechanisms for self exploration
has been what we now call "therapy." Session One is a visit with one
woman as she encounters how she is imaged, as well as what she images.
The fluid nature of the constructed versus reconstructed self are examined;
the selves fight for equilibrium before her time runs out. Commissioned
by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
DOMINIC TAYLOR (New Haven, CT) is a playwright who has worked extensively around the country in alternative and New Form Theatre. A participant in the International Playwrights Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center in Waterford, Connecticut in 1994, Taylor recently directed the workshop production of Fresh Faust, a hip-hop opera, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. He is currently at work on a new opera entitled The Negroes Burial Ground for a 1995 production at The Kitchen in New York City. top |
|
| TEITELBAUM, RICHARD | |
| MELOG
XRAM (1990)
From out of the East comes the story of the giant MELOG. Conceived originally
by the old philosopher XRAM to help the people, and brought to life
by the crafty NINEL, MELOG soon grew powerful, corrupt and oppressive.
When the people tried to escape, MELOG built an iron wall and imprisoned
them in their own lands. Finally they rose up. In the triumph of their
revolts an electrician vanquished a general, a jailed playwright became
president, and the wall was dismantled and sold as art. The people were
joyous, but dark forces of violence and chaos threatened. Noone knew
what the future might portend. A sound work that makes use of the voices
and musics of eastern Europe and the Soviet Republics. Commissioned
by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
RICHARD TEITELBAUM received his Masters of Music from Yale University in 1964, and was then awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study with Luigi Nono and Goffredo Petrassi in Italy. Teitelbaum returned to Italy in 1966 where he co-founded the legendary Musica Electronica Viva group with Frederic Rzewski and Alvin Curran. Teitelbaum is recognized internationally for his live electronic performances and his work with interactive computer systems. His music and performances appear on over a dozen releases on Cantaur, Hat Hut, and other labels, broadcast and performed throughout Japan, Europe, and the United States. His opera Golem was performed at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria in 1991. Teitelbaum teaches electronic music at Bard and Vassar College in New York. top |
|
| TERRANOVA, ELAINE | |
| Taking
Tap at Miss Patterson's (1990)
(5:00) A delicately crafted sound poem set in a children's tap class
in the mid-1940s, at a time when tap was king. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN
RADIO. (#51,90 with Alburger/Tietz and Thorington)
Poet ELAINE TERRANOVA (Philadelphia, PA) has contributed poems to Southern Poetry Review, American Poetry Review and Poetry Northwest among other journals. Her most recent awards and honors include a residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland, 1988, and the 1990 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets for her first book of poems, The Cut of the Right Hand (Doubleday). Terranova is currently reading/writing specialist at the Community College of Philadelphia. top |
|
| THOMAS, MARTIN | |
| Home
Front Manhattan (1991)
"When I arrived in New York, two tragedies were taking place. One was
the Gulf War, radiating like a day-glo nightmare from the nation's television
screens. The other was homelessness. The daily contact with extreme
poverty is still my most poignant memory . . . I was unprepared for
the sheer scale of the problem: the shanty towns on vacant lots, the
hordes of subway dwellers, the people living in cardboard boxes . .
. I could not help drawing analogies between the brutality and sheer
extravagance of the U.S. intervention in the Gulf crisis and the absence
of domestic social services." (Thomas). Produced for The Listening Room,
Australian Broadcasting Corporation, as a one-hour program.
MARTIN THOMAS (Sydney, Australia) is a writer and researcher. In the spring of 1990 he went to the U.S. to interview the rich and famous, and ended up talking to beggars. top |
|
| THORINGTON, HELEN | |
| Aphids
and Others (1990)
(8:00) Written in response to Gregory Whitehead's Male Digger Bees,
this short work is a humorously poignant appeal for diversity and choice
in our lives. It features a laughing aphid, three bumping snails, and
an octopus arm that swims.
Building a Universe, Part 1 (1985) Outrageous, and at times downright silly, an experimental new drama that focuses on contemporary technologies, such as cloning, cross-breeding, and the ability to exchange body parts. [Listen] Building a Universe, Part 2: Rifts, Absences and Omissions (1987) Satiric and experimental new drama that focuses on the new reproductive technologies and the scientists responsible for their development. "I will get a Nobel, I will . . . " While shaped into dramatic scenes, the text is based on the actual statements and writings of scientists. Providing associational and causal links between sounds (an old record, semi military aerobic exercises, textbook lessons on female infanticide and the new technologies), Building A Universe creates an incredibly funny and disturbing picture of an active and unregulated new science, preparing a future with unexpected and undiscussed implications. [Listen] Congruent Appeal (1989) (18:00) An experimental drama composed entirely of sound—musical, electrical, vocal, environmental—most of it processed and organized into events that are not necessarily related, although their placement may suggest some sort of narrative. Someone is definitely getting squashed in the great technological machine! (#4,90 with Parrot Talk and Fiddling Around.) Dracula's Wives (1992) (12:00) An otherworldly geography peopled by the disembodied voices of the undead; a radio film, at times operatic in its approach, about women vampires, their bond with the vampire of all vampires, and their unending lust for that "juice of the rarest quality"—the blood of the living. With the vampire voices of Pamela Z and Agnieszka Waligorska, and the cello of Deidre Murray. Produced for RNE, Spain. Dream Sequence, Part 1 & 2 (1979) (5:58) One of the first compositions for radio to make use of electronic processing, The Dream Sequence unfolds associationally, its lyrical text reflecting humorously on the author's rural experience and her concern for personal disappearance. [Listen] Fiddling Around (1987) (3:21) A tiny monkey escapes his cage and is pursued by other monkeys and his keepers. A true story out of Monkey Jungle, Miami, told with monkey screeches and fiddle music. Going Between (1993) A hypertext fiction for radio about consciousness and the imagination; how thought and language materialize in the world; how we perceive, understand and communicate the nature of our existence, and what we define as "reality." Composed of a series of discrete yet linked stories, musics, geographies, word plays, and quotes that take place both in a real (fictional) world and a (fictional) virtual world. Its materials are earthquakes, mud and MUDS [on-line text-based virtual spaces]; dungeons and underground passages, worms and wormholes, black holes and white holes, and the idea of "going between." Going Between is the original from which the larger work Going Between—One Word at a Time (created with Jacki Apple) evolved. Produced for ORF, Austria, and Transit. Hard City Rock—New York City in Sound (1987) With radio documentarian Regine Beyer. Resounds with the energy, excitement, and noise of one of the U.S.'s largest metropolitan areas. The piece opens at South Ferry as the morning commuters arrive; it moves on to the Fulton Fish Market, Wall Street, and Chinatown in lower Manhattan; then on to Times Square and Central Park, and ends at a block party in East Harlem. A flow of sounding images interrupted by short informative and anecdotal comments from Robert Bennon of the Environmental Protection Agency. An environmental composition with an unusual twist. In the Dark (1990) (6:30) Audio images that evoke an unpeopled, cinematic geography. A landscape of loneliness and loss. In the Devils Footsteps, Parts 1 & 2 (1993) With writer Sarah Montague. Created especially for Halloween, these two complimentary programs celebrate and explore the vampire tradition, which is as ageless and enduring as its own subject, and the shadowy world of the bat, which though its popularity is on the rise, is still very much of an endangered species. The first part recreates the image of the vampire through dramatic readings from the rich literary tradition of vampire lore, and a lush compelling sound score. The second part focuses on the bat, a mysterious creature as fascinating in its own way as the mythological creation which, since Bela Lugosi first lifted his cape in 1931, has literally cast a shadow over its life. Bat experts Dr. Merlin Tuttle, founder of Bat Conservation International, and Dr. Roy Horst, discuss bat behavior and bats' vital ecological contributions, as well as the nature of true vampires. [Listen] Loco-motive (1992) (12:00) An electronic environment impervious to the hurried, energetic movements of the many little engines that scuttle back and forth across it. Based on the artist's sound score to a work of the same name by Suzan-Lori Parks. Natural Classic (1987) (1:10) Drop-in cock-a-doodle-doo. Music for cello and rooster. North Country (1995) The second in a series of hypertext-inspired stories for radio: a narrative that uses short blocks or fragments of texts to shape a web of linked ideas that reflect the way the mind works. In North Country, meaning and memory, and fiction's role in both are part of the plurality of connections made. The cast of characters includes a forensics expert, a lawyer, a dead woman, and another woman who travels in a text based virtual world similar to the biological world once inhabited by the dead woman; a tamarack tree and the eleven Eastern woodrats remaining in New York State. With an original sound score by the artist. [Listen] One to Win (1989) (10:00) A short, humorous, audio art work that recreates a single event in a horse-racing day. Presented from many perspectives, including that of the horse, One to Win carries the listener quickly from one location to another—the announcer's booth, the betting hall, the racetrack, the horse's stall—as it presents the victorious race of Cold Spot, a bay gelding from Yukon by Smart Helen. The sounds range from the hushed movements of horses alone in their stalls to the tremendous visceral heave of their lungs as they plunge toward the finish line. Commissioned by New Music America '89, Miami. Parker's MOO Journals, Parts 1 & 2 (1995-96) A beginner's odyssey into the text-based on-line communities known as MUDs and MOOs. As Parker tries to learn how to communicate with the computer and the people he (or is it she?) encounters in text-designed living rooms, libraries, and coat closets, an on-line world comes to life that is very much about role playing, social interaction, and FUN. With a performance-narrative and a large-scale original score that express in sound and music the wildly animated print-expressions on the computer screen. Parrot Talk (1986) (5:00) Controlled insanity in sound. A work about repetition and entropy. Told with live recordings from Parrot Jungle, Miami, feedback, carnival music, static and other anathema of the broadcast world. Winner of First Prize in Macrophon '91, the First International Festival of Radio Art, Wroclaw, Poland. [Listen] Partial Perceptions (1991-92) Cinematic audio that works on different levels of perception. Its underlying concerns are closely linked to the reshaping of traditional concepts of nature, woman, and machine. Recipe for a Lark (1992) (1: 35) With vocalist Shelley Hirsch. It's a lark! Story Space An audio essay on her work for radio, a creative audio compilation with commentary that includes: (1) an excerpt from Locomotive (5:20); (2) Dracula's Wives (8:30); and, (3) an excerpt from Terra Dell'Imaginazione (Landscape of the Imagination) (3:10). Straight Ahead (1989) (11:00) Originally created for the award-winning experimental film Optic Nerve by Barbara Hammer, a work about the filmmaker's grandmother. Thorington's sound score takes its title from the question, "Straight ahead, Grandma?" repeated by the filmaker as she pushes her grandmother around the hospital in a wheelchair. In the fragmented context of the score, the phrase, repeated by the grandmother, "Yes, Barbara, straight ahead," becomes a metaphor for endurance. [Listen] Terra dell'Imaginazione (Land of the Imagination) (1990) A sound composition in which the artist evokes a landscape and tells a story without a text. Originally commissioned as an audio installation for a riverside cave in Mattera, Italy, Terra reflects the artist's view of the place for which it was intended but which she had not as yet seen: wet, quiet, and dark but inhabited by multitudes of insects and small mammals. The story is that of a solitary person paddling through these waters. [Listen] The American Buffalo (1980) (2:00) Why the American buffalo is not a true buffalo but a bison. And what we may learn from this ancient creature. The Hunt is on: Reflections on the Human Genome Project (1994) A documentary work on the federally supported Human Genome Project. According to the producer, "I intended an entirely other kind of production —a sort of associative drama with satirical overtones, but when I inquired, I found very few people who know what the Human Genome Project is, let alone what impact it is already having on us. And satire is impossible without shared knowledge. So here's some information. And here's hoping, that at a time when health concerns are national concerns, the questions raised by this production will be treated seriously." Interview participants include: Dr. Ruth Hubbard of Harvard University, co author of the book, Exploding the Gene Myth; Dr. Daniel Callahan, President of the Hastings Center, Briarcliff Manor, New York; Dr. Barbara Katz Rothman of Baruch University, author of The Tentative Pregnancy; and Dr. Steven Hilgartner of the Center for the Study of Society and Medicine at Columbia University. turbulence (1997) is an open-ended sound composition that centers around the theme of turbulence. It began with an imaginary geography created by the artist on tape, in which myriad sound events took place. This composition enlarged and altered as improvisational performers interacted with it in real-time performances. The taped composition was revised after each performance to include aspects of the improvised materials. It features noted double reed player Joseph Celli (on the Yamaha WX7 midi breath controller) and guitarist, Nick Didkovsky. turbulence was conceived and executed by the artist for PORT – a project originated by artnetweb, New York City, that presented the flux of digital culture in the networked environment of the Internet as a two-month exhibition at the List Visual Arts Center at MIT in 1997. HELEN THORINGTON (Jamaica Plain, MA) is a sound artist, writer, and radio producer. Her work has been presented in Australia, Canada, Europe, and the United States for the last twenty years. The Co-Director of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (aka Ether-Ore), the founder and producer of New American Radio (1987-1998), and the founder and producer of the Turbulence.org and Somewhere websites, Thorington is also an Internet artist. Her net work includes the narrative exploration "Solitaire" and the real-time Internet performance event "Adrift," a multilocation collaboration with Marek Walzcak and Jesse Gilbert, initially created for the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria in September 1997. An evolving project, "Adrift's" final iteration was as a performance spectacle utilizing three projectors and screens at the New Museum in New York City in 2001. Thorington continues to create sound compositions and narrative explorations for the internet. Her audio work "9_11_scapes" won the 2003 Honourable Recognition, PRIX BOHEMIA RADIO FESTIVAL, Czechoslovakia; and was the winner at the 2003 AETHER FESTIVAL, KUNM-FM, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Collaborators: REGINE BEYER Documentarian Hard City Rock. (see Beyer, Regine) SHELLEY HIRSCH Vocalist in Recipe for a Lark. (see Hirsch, Shelley) SARAH MONTAGUE (New York, NY) Co-writer, co-director, In the Devil's Footsteps, Parts 1 & 2. Montague is a writer, radio producer, and director who was born and educated in Great Britain. Since the early 1980s she has built a career in New York City with numerous radio drama productions for public radio. A co-founder of Exit 3 Productions, Montague is currently the executive producer of Radio Stage, a series of dramatic works co produced with radio station WNYC. top |
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| TIETZ, WARD | |
| See Alburger, Scott, "A Sound Education." top |
|
| TOIVIAINEN, ILKKA | |
| Letters
From The Front (1990)
(12:30) With Mikko Laakso. Original idea, Pekka Siren. Produced for
the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) in 1990, and based on letters
by unknown soldiers dating from 1939-41, the work is a multilingual
radio performance that movingly conveys the human aspects—and universality—of
the Western war experience: "This nation—its standard owned by
Heaven itself—can never be defeated . . . " "First, I am a soldier.
Secondly, I am a soldier. Thirdly, I am a soldier." "I can't write to
you myself, since I can't see. What's more, there's only a small chance
that I'll ever see again. The war is over, maybe you want to forget
me . . . "
ILKKA TOIVIAINEN (Helsinki, Finland) has directed over 200 radio plays for the Yleisradio's radio theater department. He has also directed several indoor and site-specific sound performances. Toiviainen is a member of the sound art group, ProTon. MIKKO LAAKSO (see Laakso, Mikko) top |
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| TUREL, BOR | |
| Etude
for the Requiem (1992)
(16:50) Based on brief quotations from requiems with an innovative and
daring musical language. The artist makes use of highly contrasting
materials, composing them into an electro-acoustic commentary. Produced
for Radio Slovenia.
BOR TUREL (Ljubeljana, Slovenia) studied music at the Academy of Music in Ljubeljana. After further studies in Austria, England, and France, Turel now works in Ljubeljana as a freelance composer. His electro-acoustic compositions have been performed at many European New Music venues, including the Composer's Forum in Cologne; the Zagreb Biennial; and the Biennial of Young Composers in Paris. top |
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| U | |
| UMOJA, MBALI UMCHLABA | |
| W | |
| WEIS, WARD WESTERKAMP, HILDEGARD WHITEHEAD, GREGORY WILSON, ERIN CRESSIDA WILSON, JOHN WOJNAROWICS, DAVID |
|
| WEIS, WARD | |
| Acte (5:27) by Ward Weis. A radio ad, "Always Coca-Cola", as stimulus for an improvisational sound art piece. WARD WEIS (Antwerp, Belgium) is a well known sound artist whose work has been aired throughout Europe and abroad. He is the co-founder of the Planktone CD label. |
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| WESTERKAMP, HILDEGARD | |
| A
Walk Through the City (1981)
(16:08) An environmental composition based on a poem by Canadian poet
and playwright Norbert Ruebsaat. Urban sounds such as car horns, sirens,
brakes, pinball machines and the rhythmic pounding of trains are presented
both as they were recorded on Vancouver's skid row and as they were
processed in the studio. The voice of the poet reading his poem moves
in and out of the composition, entering into dialogue with many of its
sounds. A continuous flux is thus created between real and imaginary
landscapes, recognizable and transformed places, between reality and
composition. Produced for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. [Listen]
Cricket Voice (1987) (11:00) A musical exploration of a cricket whose song was recorded in the stillness of a Mexican desert region called the Zone of Silence. Slowed down it is like the heartbeat of the desert; at its original speed it sings to the stars. The percussive sounds in Cricket Voice were created by playing on desert plants, dried roots and palm eaves, and by exploring the ruins of an old water reservoir. [Listen] HILDEGARD WESTERKAMP was born in Osnabrück, Germany in 1946 and emigrated to Canada in 1968. After completing her music studies in the early seventies Westerkamp joined the World Soundscape Project under the direction of Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Vancouver. Her involvement with this project not only activated deep concerns about noise and the general state of the acoustic environment in her, but it also changed her ways of thinking about music, listening and soundmaking. The founding of Vancouver Co-operative Radio during the same time provided an invaluable opportunity to record, experiment with and broadcast the soundscape. One could say that her career as a composer, educator, and radio artist emerged from these two pivotal experiences and focused it on environmental sound and acoustic ecology. In addition, composers such as John Cage and Pauline Oliveros have had a significant influence on her work. Westerkamp taught Acoustic Communication with colleague
Barry Truax in the School of Communication at SFU until 1990. Since
then she has written additional articles and texts addressing issues
of the soundscape and listening and has travelled widely, giving lectures
and conducting soundscape workshops, internationally. She is a founding
member and is currently active on the board of the World Forum for Acoustic
Ecology (WFAE). as well as the Canadian Association for Sound Ecology
(CASE). Between 1991 and 1995 she was the editor of The Soundscape Newsletter
and is now on the editorial committee of Soundscape -The Journal of
Acoustic Ecology, a new publication of the WFAE.
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|
| WHITEHEAD, GREGORY | |
| Beyond
the Pleasure Principle (1987)
A journey into the seductive and dangerous zone between Eros and Thanatos.
With a "cameo" appearance by Freud's prosthetic jaw.
Dead Letters (abridged version) (1985) Starring in this unusual documentary are the Rosetta Stone, the Body of Judy Garland's Voice, Hitler's Handwriting, Fake Fingers, the Tongues of Extinct Dinosaurs, Napoleon's penis and other dead letters. Both darkly humorous and highly informative, this work points new directions in the art of radio documentary. Dead Letters was produced independently as a one-hour program. Degenerates in Dreamland (1991) "A radio manifesto in memory of the body in pieces." (Whitehead) Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. Display Wounds (1986) A fictionalised monologue that addresses the "woundscape" of the human species in the wake of the history of technology through the brooding ruminations of a "vulnerologist"—a wound doctor whose slow and seductive voice unfolds the history of wounds, and the damage that extends even into the future, (mis)shaping the unborn. Punctuated by periodic suggestions from tango music ("Life is but a dry wound. Oh hot-blooded sadness, bleed away from me.") Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] Escalated Ziggurat Inhalation (1986-87) (4:35) A reflection on the fate of language in the mouth of time. Here Comes Everybody (2:15), with Dan Lander, is a seductive (ly) ironic comment on radio and its gurus. Premiered live over a telephone line. How to Pronounce "Prosthesis" (1991) (4:45) A new castaway in search of a prosthetic language. A co-commission of Harvestworks, Inc., the Wexner Center for the Arts, and NEW AMERICAN RADIO. If a Voice Like, Then What? (1986-87) (2:20) In Malpais (1990) (5:30) "It's the Malpais. We're talkin' about hot sand, black rocks, and a whole lotta dead things." A dreamlike geography. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO It makes me blush . . . (1990) (3:45) Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. Lovely Ways To Burn (1990) A fascinating docu-performance on the contradictory aspects of fire/electricity: seduction and power—fear and destruction. "Everybody's got the fever," a chorus sings in many variations, providing the glue for several intercut and inter-related stories: the fiery childhood memories of a young woman; expert ruminations on the use of electro-shock in therapy and as capital punishment; and sonic outbursts of pyromania. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. Male Digger Bees (1990) (5:44) An account of the energetic habits of the male digger bee. "Listen to the following scenario: Powered by the laws of Darwinian selection, each digger bee is born with the instinct to reproduce more than any other member of its species, driving the males to excavate, tumble, fight, mount and sing in the hot desert sun." (From the work). Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. M is for the Million Things (1991) (2:40) A co-commission of Harvestworks, the Wexner Center for the Arts and NEW AMERICAN RADIO. Phantom Pain—The Theater of Operations (1989) "I opened this place," the narrator says, "as an inter-disciplinary center for exploring the phenomenon of phantom pain. Phantom pain is the experience of pain in an area where the real organs of sensation no longer exist. The problem then is finding some way to address the reality of feelings that have been cut loose from the body. So as a director of the center my main role is to try to facilitate making connections in a situation, where real contact among the subjects is impossible." (from the work) Pressures of the Unspeakable (1991) Over the course of several weeks, Whitehead, as "Resident Director of the International Institute for Screamscape Studies" established a Scream Room at the Australian Broadcasting Company and a National Scream Line answering machine, where screams were collected. The resulting work for broadcast combines selections from participating screamers, in counterpoint with notes and ruminations on the fundamentals of scream discourse. Together they map a journey into the vast territories of the Australian screamscape. Produced for The Listening Room, Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Winner of the 1992 PRIX ITALIA. [Listen] Principia Schizophonica (1998) (6:40) A lecture-demonstration on communication technologies and electronic media, cut into radiophonic life. Radio Degree Zero (1990) (1:25) A drop-in polemic to slow the frantic pace of current radio programming. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. Reptiles and Wildfire (1989) (18:10) Soundspaces of water, rain, and wild fire transport the listeners to a place where "The Heat is heavy, but soft. And all that moves, moves quietly." A dream-like piece of great sensual beauty and lyrical power in which nature and reptiles and humans merge. "It's hot and wet. And above my head I see mangrove, gumbo, limbo and cocoa plum. Where are we? . . ." Created for New Music America '89, Miami. Shake, Rattle and Roll (1992) A personal history inscribed in a technical history. Or, as Whitehead himself describes it, "The strange and inescapable desire to electrocute myself, under the delusion that I will then somehow be able to fly. Brainwaves and radiowaves: magnetic dreams. BUT: the con/current fear of the CRASH, 'ending up in a burn unit.'"Radio as a sensual seduction and political provocation. Radio as a theater of ideas. Winner of the 1993 PRIX FUTURA Berlin. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. The Pleasure of Ruins (1989) (14:20) Begins with a haunting new age style incantation of obliterated civilizations—a slow-paced voicing of ruins. Then, with closely-timed razor interruptions, brief outbursts of sound are heard that increase in speed and density—and drive the work relentlessly forward until it becomes a ruin of voices. An excellent example of conceptual art that expresses itself with a highly sensual sound language. The Respirator (1990) (5:30) Sensual and unusual audio art inspired by the terminal illness of the broadcast medium. "There is no sign of brain activity, but we are able to keep the patient breathing through the use of the respirator." Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. The Thing About Bugs (1994) With Christof Migone. In this collaborative "field trip," Migone and Whitehead invite us into their bug-infested soundscape to investigate live wire cross-currents of extermination and redemption; the vitality of dirt and the urge to clean; the joys of pure noise and the fate of bodies gone to the worms. Professional exterminators philosophize about their daily warfare against other species while the producers orchestrate a mad carnival of the True Bugs. Winner of a Special Commendation at the 1994 PRIX FUTURA Berlin. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen] This is Not a Test (1991) (2:10) A new castaway in search of a prosthetic language. A col-commission of Harvestworks, Inc., the Wexner Center for the Visual Arts, and NEW AMERICAN RADIO. This Mindless Thing (1990) (5:00) The story of a twelve-year-old forced to show and be shown. Totenklage/Lacrimosa (1990) (3:30) Two words migrate into each other to compose an acoustic requiem. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. Twilight for Idols (1990) (4:25) An incantation in hommage to the wasted memory of utopia. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. GREGORY WHITEHEAD is a writer, audio artist, and the director of sea-crow media. He has produced over fifty radio features, voice works, and earplays for programs in the United States and abroad. Drawing on his background in improvised music and experimental theater, Whitehead has created a body of radiophonic work distinguished by its playfully provocative blend of text, concept, voice, music and pure sound. Production credits include: Dead Letters; Pressures of The Unspeakable (Prix Italia, 1992); and NEW AMERICAN RADIO commissions: Lovely Ways to Burn; Shake, Rattle, Roll (BBC Award, Prix Futura, 1993); and The Thing About Bugs. He is also the author of numerous essays on subjects relating to language, technology, and "the public," and he co-edited Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio and the Avant-Garde, a selective history of audio and radio art (MIT Press). top |
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| WILSON, ERIN CRESSIDA | |
| Flying
Hormones (1989)
A highly entertaining musical on teenage sexuality in the age of AIDS.
Developed by playwright Erin Wilson and performed by a group of San
Francisco high school students, it describes the plight of Cinderella
and Prince Charming, hurled out of their fairy tale world (where neither
pregnancy nor disease exist) into a present-day high school. What follows
is a series of interwoven vignettes and songs that educate Cinderella
and the audience about birth control, AIDS, and anatomy. Among them
are two sportscasters announcing the sperm race; a condom song, an AIDS
rap, and Dr. Abstinence. Barney Jones of Earwax Productions was the
technical director and mixing engineer. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN
RADIO. [Listen]
The Berlin Understudy (1990) In poetic inner monologues, dramatic scenes, staged interviews, and eclectic music and soundscapes, the story of a woman unfolds whose spiritual power borders on magic. Born in Berlin and lost by her mother during a riot at the time the Berlin Wall was erected, she was adopted by an American serviceman and brought to the United States. In the 1980s, at the time the Wall was dismantled, she suddenly hears the cries of her younger self and returns to Berlin. What follows is a sensual journey inside this woman's imagination and the depiction of how she finds power, strength and healing in her own creative way of living. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. ERIN CRESSIDA WILSON is an internationally produced and award-winning playwright and screenwriter. She has written over fifteen plays produced regionally, in New York City, and abroad - at such stages as The Brooklyn Academy of Music, Joe's Pub at the Public Theatre, Classic Stage Company and the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh. In 2003, she won the Independent Spirit Award for her screenplay, Secretary. Her musical, Wilder - co-written with Red Clay Rambler composers Jack Herrick and Mike Craver - opened at Playwrights Horizons in October of 2003. Her first novel will be published in 2004 by Simon & Schuster. Formerly an associate professor at Duke University, Wilson is now on the English Department faculty at Brown University. top |
|
| WILSON, JOHN | |
| See Sleight of Mind Group, "The Underseen World of Claude Jateau, Parts 1 & 2." top |
|
| WOJNAROWICS, DAVID | |
| ITSOFOMO—In
the Shadow of Forward Motion (1991)
(10:00) With Ben Neill. An excerpt from a large-scale, multi-media performance
piece. Wojnarowics' urgent, eloquent text juxtaposes the transfiguration
and ecstasy sought in sexuality with the harsh reality of intolerance
and repression against gays and people with AIDS in contemporary America.
Neill's fragmented musical score, performed on the "Mutantrumpet," along
with computer-generated and designed sounds, tapes and percussion, form
a counterpoint to the text. A co-commission of Harvestworks, Inc., the
Wexner Center for the Arts, and NEW AMERICAN RADIO.
DAVID WOJNAROWICS was a visual artist and writer whose work was seen in galleries and performance spaces throughout the United States until his untimely death of AIDS. Active both as a composer and performer, BEN NEILL (New York, NY) is the designer of the "Mutantrumpet," an instrument which expands the capabilities of the normal trumpet. He has toured throughout Europe and the United States, and worked closely with such composers as John Cage, Rhys Chatham, Earl Brown, John King, David Behrman and Pauline Oliveros. top |
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| Z | |
| Z, PAMELA
ZWEDBERG, TOMMY ZUCKERMAN, ILANA |
|
| Z, PAMELA | |
| Parts
of Speech (1995)
Utilizes found texts from advertising, communications systems, "buzzwords,"
and slang. The sound sources for the work are a combination of actual
samples from these language elements, and versions rendered by the artist
reading, singing, chanting, and processing the language. These fragments
are woven together by non language sounds sampled and composed into
a cohesive audio environment that deals with words as propaganda, words
as mantra, words as poetry, words as authority, and words as music.
Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [Listen]
The String Movement (1994) (11:00) A brief, sonic journey into the puzzling world of exotic particles. Using her voice as the only sound source, the artist combines found texts, strange melodies, whispers, gasps, and pronouncements to depict the multi-dimensional world of particle interaction. The String Movement was developed and recorded during a residency at Yellow Springs Institute in August of 1992 as part of a larger work Exotic Particles. Trying to Reach You (1990) Text and musical episodes that describe the long, seemingly endless endeavor of trying to locate and communicate with a mysterious, unknown beloved. What is it that keeps the seeker separate from the sought after: language? distance? misunderstanding? Using her extraordinary singing voice and unique brand of music, clusters of other voices and ambient recordings, Pamela Z creates a playful and hauntingly beautiful aural journey. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. Which is Better? (1989) A youthful search for an answer to the questions: What is reality? What is fantasy? and Which is better? When she is unable to solve the riddle herself, she turns to others: to a coin-operated information machine and to friends. "This is all very interesting," she remarks, "but not terribly enlightening." Which is Better? combines expressive operatic solos, in which digital delay creates textures of varying denseness, spare percussion, and brief narrative statements. Be prepared for an upbeat, playful and utterly engaging production. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. PAMELA Z (San Francisco, CA) is a composer/performer. She has performed solo in Bay Area clubs and galleries, and throughout the U.S. since 1984. She works primarily with voice, live electronic processing, and sampling technology creating lush textures and frenetic rhythmic structures overlaid with melodic lines and spoken text. Pamela Z has also collaborated on works for dance and experimental theater and produced numerous multimedia performances, featuring her own work and that of other Bay Area artists. top |
|
| ZWEDBERG, TOMMY | |
| Through
Water (Genom
Vatten) (1994) (10:10) The work invites its listeners for a ride on
the Swedish cruise ship, the M/S Birka Princess. Glasses clinking, the
voices of crew members and passengers, the thumping of disco music,
and water sounds are some of the sound phenomena that make up the material
of this sound-music work. "Genom Vatten" was produced for the Swedish
Broadcasting Company, and premiered on the M/S Birka Princess during
a music cruise.
TOMMY ZWEDBERG (Stockholm, Sweden) was a professional trumpet player for many years before taking classes in composition and teaching music at the Royal College for Music in Stockholm. Under the guidance of Lars Gunnar Bodin and Miklos Maros at the newly founded Electronic Music Studio (EMS), Zwedberg began exploring his own artistic language. His work combines music with film, music drama, and modern dance. top |
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| ZUCKERMAN, ILANA | |
| The
Angels of Tamara (1993)
(10:20) A text-sound-music composition with a tantalizing Middle Eastern
flavor. From the text: "Ilana looks at Tamara looking at Katerina observing
the angels of Tamara slowly moving around the edges of the room, dancing,
touching each other, floating lazily above the floor, dragging their
heavy, wonderful wings nonchalantly behind them, males and females nearly
alike, the signs of their sex almost invisible, ripe with sensuality,
smiling innocently." Produced for Studio One, KOL Israel in Jerusalem.
ILANA ZUCKERMAN (Jerusalem, Israel) is an audio artist and performer whose work has been presented in Israel, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Poland. She received a first place award at the international radio art festival, Macrophon 1991, in Wroclaw, Poland, for her composition Primot 84. Zuckerman is currently senior feature producer at KOL Israeli and the director of KOL's Radio Art Workshop Studio One. top |
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