L'autre Face (1983) by Jean-Claude Risset

In this piece (1983), the soprano dialogues with a tape generated by computer. The form of the piece was influenced by a poem: "L'autre face" by Roger Kowalski (in "Le Sielciaire", Editions Guy Chambelland, Paris).

The poem is sung in a lyrical and expressionist style, calling for non-conventional singing techniques: high pitches, inhaled sounds, voice split into multi-phonics, vocal harmonics. In counterpoint with the voice, the tape exposes motives and textures synthesized or processed with the MUSIC V program. 
Quasi-vocal syntheses - uttered by no one's voice - are like virtual counterparts of the soprano live on stage. At the end, the soprano's part is entangled with sinuous melodic lines traveling in space and dwindling in the treble.

L'AUTRE FACE

Vois : j'ai posé sur le papier un point d'encre très noire; ce feu sombre est l'eau même de la nuit; un silence d'étoiles échevelées.

Il suffit de peu de choses,presque rien; une syllabe, une consonne et je deviens tempête ; un geste de l'arbre, et cent racines me lient;

le pas des filles de mémoires, et je tourne vers ta face un oeil qu'emplit une plainte égarée; écoute : quelque chose ici n'est point de ce monde;

ni le verbe, ni le point où s'articule un discours entrepris dans l'ennui, mais la profonde, chaste et noire encre sur ton masque de papier.

 Roger KOWALSKI 
(1938-1972)






L'autre Face by Jean Claude Risset

Inharmonique (1977), for soprano and 2-track magnetic tape synthesized by computer at IRCAM.
     - Jean Claude Risset, composer
     - Janice Jackson, soprano

Inharmonique combines the voice of the soprano with a tape of computer-synthesized sounds. During most of the piece, the tape sounds are made up of "inharmonic" components, whise frequencies do not relate to each other as the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 ... Such configuratios are rarely found in instrumental and vocal sounds. The internal structure of the sounds brings out different relations between them.

The piece opens with noise bands in motion. Pure sounds then emerge and gather in increasingly rih layers. The voice first appears in the background, then it eventually breaks through the curtain of artificial sounds. It elaborates on the note A, whose harmonics are taken up by the tape. The pitch intervals broaden. The tape introuces imaginary bells, composed like chords, which then break up into fluid textures (this is obtained by transforming the temporal profile of its components witjout modifying their frequencies). The voice's intrusions become sparse but increasingly dramatic. The tape distanly echoes the voice (recorded and modified by computer). The singer's breath is submerged in surging bands of noise.

The tape was synthesized by computer at IRCAM. Inharmonique is dedicated to Irène jarsky who inspired it and who enriched the vocal portions. Recorded by Irène Jarsky, it appears on compact disk INA C1003 (together with Mutations, Dialogues and Sud by Jean-Claude Risset). The piece was also sung by a number of other performers, among which Neva Pilgrim, Kerstin Stahl, Linda Richardson, Olga Szwajgier, Linda Hirst, Akemi Mitsuishi, Brenda Hubbard-Mitchell, Jane Manning, Pamela Jordan, Janice Jackson ... 


Inharmonique by Jean Claude Risset

Khoom (1962) 
“Seven episodes of an unwritten story of love and death in a distant land.”  
     - Giacinto Scelsi, composer
     - Stephen Clarke, conductor      
     - Janice Jackson, soprano

Khoom / Movement 1 (1962) - Giacinto Scelsi

Luigi Nono's La Fabbrica Illuminata 
     - with Janice Isabel Jackson, soprano
     - De Ijsbreker, Amsterdam

"La Fabbrica Illuminata" (The Illuminated Factory) is for woman's voice and four-channel magnetic tape that uses noises and speech sounds recorded in a factory. These were combined with choral and electronic sounds and taken through multiple transformations. The woman sings a commentary on the situation represented by the fixed sound events on the tape: the trial of the work process in the factory and the social injustice and unfairness that are tied to the social forms of capitalism. Massive vocal tone clusters followed by declarative, fragmented political chants begin the work.

Steel-on-steel electronics accompany the voices. The live soprano's text is likewise punctuated and fragmentary ("...electronic...machinery...and..."). Imagery is created by deep rolling sounds, wind-like roars of empty landscapes, voices of muscle-exhausted workers and the sounds of their expended effort, cars rushing past, and the actual and electronically described sounds of turning gears.

Nono has created an empathetic, mysteriously toned and moving work, which is also compelling, convincing and original with "Ricorda cosa ti hanno fatto in Auschwitz" (Remember what they did to you in Auschwitz) (1965). Strangely modified children's voices in a nightmarish landscape are heard followed by a distorted national anthem (unrecognizable). Trumpets like sirens of war, sounds like bullets striking metal, and horrific bellowing creatures fill the soundscape. Odd echoes of a damp, dreary jail, moaning voices, screeching machinery, and deep unison gasps of a multitude of people complete the horrible picture. One of the most moving and effective depictions of this instance of inhumanity.

La Fabbrica Illuminata Luigi Nono

Il Nome - Richard Karpen
     - with Janice Jackson
     - De Ijsbreker, Amsterdam

Il Nome is a work for soprano and computer-realized sounds. The piece is a setting of two texts, Il Nome de Maria Fresu, by Andrea Zanzotto and a fragment from the libretto of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo by Alessandro Striggio. Zanzotto composed his short poem in response to the August 1980 bombing of the train station in Bologna, Italy by neo-fascist terrorists that killed 84 people. Maria Fresu was one of those lost in the bombing but whose body was never identified. The two texts contrast and compliment one another; the harshly ironic objectivity of the Zanzotto text depicting the mindless anonymity of the act on the one hand, the sad lament of Orfeo after the death of Euridice evoking the reality of the human loss on the other. The Zanzotto text is mostly fragmented in this setting and not sung straight through until near the end of the piece while the Striggio text is presented intact and is the basis the middle of the piece. The work was composed at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University and premiered there in 1988.

 

Il Nome (1987) by Richard Karpen

Sola - Jean Claude Risset
Janice Jackson - soprano

Jean Claude Risset is a French composer of mostly orchestral, chamber, vocal, piano, and electroacoustic works that have been performed throughout the world.  He is best known for his pioneering contributions to computer music. He is a former student of André Jolivet and former co-worker of Max Mathews at Bell Labs.

Sola - Jean Claude Risset

Haiku No. 1 of Four by Julian Yu
Janice Isabel Jackson - soprano
Simon Docking - piano

Julian Yu believes that quality and beauty in music come from something deeper than the sound produced...and that it is this inner pattern which gives integrity and individual character to a work.

Born in Beijing in 1957, Julian Yu settled in Australia in 1985. He studied composition at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, later joining the teaching staff there, and from 1980 to 1982 studied at the Tokyo College of Music with Joji Yuasa and Schin–ichiro Ikebe. In 1988 Julian Yu was a Composition Fellow at Tanglewood where he studied with Hans Werner Henze and Oliver Knussen.

Haiku No. 1 of Four by Julian Yu

City Night IV by Alice Ping Yee Ho
Janice Isabel Jackson - soprano
Simon Docking - Piano

No 4. of Six Songs entitled City Night with music by Alice Ping Yee Ho (Canada) and libretto by Bo Wen Chan.

One of the most acclaimed composers writing in Canada today, Hong Kong-born Alice Ping Yee Ho has written in many musical genres and received numerous national and international awards, including the 2014 Prince Edward Island Symphony Composers Competition,  2014 Kitchener Waterloo Symphony Friendship Orchestral Composition Competition, 2013 Dora Mavor Moore Award “Outstanding Original Opera” for her opera Lesson of Da Ji, 2013 Boston Metro Opera International Composition Competition, K.M. Hunter Artist Award, du Maurier Arts Ltd. Canadian Composers Competition, MACRO International Composition Competition, Luxembourg Sinfonietta International Composition Prize, and International League of Women Composers Competition. Her work “Glistening Pianos” for two pianos (Centrediscs label) was nominated for the 2015 JUNO Award Classical Composition of the Year. A new disc for her opera "The Lesson of Da Ji" has just been released by Centrediscs label in November, 2015.

City Night IV by Alice Ping Yee Ho

Ce que vie Kenjeke depuis la colline de Khabarovsk” (What Kenjeke saw from the Khabarovsk hill)by Nicolas Gilbert was commissioned by soprano Janice Jackson and was premiered on May 18th 2002 at the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing, China. 

Through an imagined language and hints of Peking Opera, Ce que vit Kenjeke depuis la colline de Khabarovsk evokes the story of Kenjeke.  Her husband, Er-Toshtuk’s (Giant of the grasslands) soul has been robbed by a jealous witch. With his horse Tchal-Kouyrouk, he has left his people and family to travel down to hell in order to take it back.

Kenjeke has been waiting for him for seven years. The elders know that her child will see the light only once the Giant has gotten down from his horse. Seven hundred young buffaloes were sacrificed. 

Khabarovsk is a Russian city, on the North-Eastern Chinese border. It is far from the Kirghiz grasslands. But I have heard that its air was pure and that from there, one could see as far as the Horseshoe Mountain.

And Kenjeke, on a hill, looks to the horizon, waiting for the Giant to appear.


Ce que vit Kenjeke depuis la colline de Khabarovsk

Nasca Lines (excerpt) 2001 - Barry Guy

This is a short but wild solo which I sang in the middle of Barry Guy's Nasca Lines written for the Upstream Orchestra in 2001.

Nasca Lines (excerpt)

Madcap's Diary by Alice Ping Yee Ho was performed on November 29, 2008, Halifax. Vocal concert for CBC Radio 2 Signal. Janice Jackson , Soprano; Michelle Cheramy, alto Flute; Simon Docking , Harpsichord. Two songs based on poems by Carole Langille.

Madcap's Diary

One of Astor Piazzolla's famous songs...with Janice Isabel Jackson, soprano and QuarTango (Montreal).

Unknown album (Feb/25/2018 6:50:03 PM)

Oblivion - Astor Piazzolla

This is a song I sang on tour with Montreal's QuarTango.

Unknown album (2021-02-19 10:04:56 AM)

Tengo Miedo de Olvidarme by Juan Carlos Cáceres

Balada Para Mi Muerte - Astor Piazzolla

Janice I Jackson with Tango Extasis
Performance Date September 2001 

John Scott - Accordion
Sylvie Proulx - Guitar
Kirsty Money - Violin
Mike McKay - Piano
Max Kasper - Double Bass

Unknown album (2021-02-20 10:52:29 AM)

Balada Para Mi Muerte - Astor Piazzolla

My name is Janice Isabel Jackson, I am a New Music Singer, specializing in the music of living composers using classical vocal techniques along with non-western singing styles, from overtones to multi-phonics to yodeling to...  I have sung over 200 world premieres and work with composers from around the world.   I am always excited by the new sounds my voice is able to make.  With each new piece I learn more and more about music and my instrument.

Janice Jackson New Music

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