To mark World Oceans Day 2021, we partnered with Concentric Records, TBA-21-Academy and Ocean Archive for a full day of broadcasts based on and inspired by sounds from the oceans.

 The incredible Ocean Archive is a sound library of the seas and harbours of the world, from Galapagos to the North Atlantic. It includes many types of whale, fish, earthquake, seismic explosions, methane seeps, tectonic plates and deep water drilling.

 The artists invited to make broadcasts based on this archive are Jake Muir, Izabel, Beluga, Carl Michael von Hausswolff / Dark Morph, Baby Vulture, Terrence Dixon, Jana Winderen reporting live from the seas, and finally Refuge Worldwide programmer Richard Akingbehin.

World Oceans Day - Jana Winderen

inter-spatia (2020/22)
Catherine Lamb

performed on March 18th, 2022 at Nykirken, Bergen, Borealis Festival

Microtub (Robin Hayward, Martin Taxt, and Peder Simonsen), Rage Thormbones (Mattie Barbier and Weston Olencki), with MO Abbott and Henrik Nørstebø

tuba trio + trombone quartet

recorded by Weston Olencki

inter-spatia (with Microtub and Rage Thormbones)

LIVE SET AT TRACK COULD BEND 02.08.23

Karen Power
wondrous worlds within/without: interspecies gossip (2024)

Karen Power is a Cork County–based composer, performer, and educator. Her compositional approach engages with the natural world through sound. The works challenge the distinction between what we consider ‘music’ and all other sonic existence.

Listening is at the core of Power’s methodology. Her field recordings, made in remote locations around the globe, unearth and reposition the environment’s sonic qualities. Through listening, Power practices an expanded sense of wonderment and appreciation for nature.

Power interrogates and seeks to transform our uneven, often extractive relationship with the natural world, and thereby advance a more equitable human-nature association. Her sound databank might be considered a form of environmental activism, preserving as it does a natural world ever more deeply impacted by climate change.

Power presents her compositions as staged orchestral and/or ensemble pieces, solo instrumental pieces, installations, and happenings, among other arrangements. Her process often involves collaboration with other artists, including filmmakers and dancers, putting sound in dialogue with moving images or bodies in movement.

wondrous worlds within/without: interspecies gossip is a composition presented in the form of an installation. It features a ‘collage’ of sounds Power has collected during her travels over the past decade to the Arctic, the Amazon, the Namib Desert, the Australian Outback, New Zealand, and Antarctica – scenarios as much removed from human existence or interference as possible. The composition relates seemingly disparate sonic elements, for example the shimmering of Australian cicadas and the birdcall of an Irish wren. It also leans away from direct physical associations of sound in favour of new, more wide-ranging connections. The work ebbs and flows, as layered sonic elements interact via eight speaker channels distributed across a gallery.

wondrous worlds within/without: interspecies gossip also considers the architectural and social characteristics of its presentation site, the SIRIUS building in Cobh. The soundscape dialogues with that of Cork Harbour, which includes water, animals, and church bells, among other sonic elements. In this way, Power’s work establishes links between this place and other territories, bringing together local and faraway experiences and narratives.

Power has been commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra, Dublin; RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Dublin; Klangforum Wien, Vienna; and Quiet Music Ensemble, Cork. She performed with Pauline Oliveros, David Toop, Mazen Kerbaj, and The Quiet Club. Her albums include is it raining while you listen (Farpoint Recordings, 2014) and Human Nature (self-released, 2020). She holds a PhD in composition from the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast, and lectures at University College Cork.

wondrous worlds within/without: interspecies gossip is Karen Power’s first solo show in a museum or gallery context. The work is commissioned by SIRIUS, Cobh, County Cork, through an Arts Council Commissions Award 2021. This exhibition is curated by Miguel Amado, director, SIRIUS.

wondrous worlds within/without: interspecies gossip (2024) - Stereo Extract From 6min In

This is an excerpt from the 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound Piece for cinema.
Premiered at film festival Copenhagen PIX in 2014.
Duration 42 min.
Available for performance, either in cinemas or using my Dynaudio 5.1 transportable audio setup. 
Music by Morten Svenstrup
Sound Design and arrangements: Peter Albrechtsen
Additional compositions and voices: Maja Ratkje and Gry Bagøien

Barndom Og Revoultion EXCERPT

2007

These 9 cello tracks were originally improvised by invitation against a piano track Stephen Vitiello http://www.stephenvitiello.com/ recorded while on retreat in a cabin in rainfall in Nebraska.             

Cellos recorded and mixed by Garnet Willis. 

This recording reminds me of water. Water continually allows form to emerge of itself refreshed.

I recently offered a section of this piece as a guide for artist Elysha Poirier to enliven the images from my visual still score 'Dreaming in the Womb' 1998 (commissioned by Meet the Composer and Ione the curator of the Dream Festival) into animation, becoming 'Meridians'. This was part of the Still Listening project in Montreal, which invited selected composers to create 85 second compositions in celebration of Pauline Oliveros' 85 year.  http://stilllisteningoliveros.com/meridians/

BODY OF WATER (9 CELLOS)

excerpt of 52 min. recording of the last in the series Prisma Interius on New World Records:
web page: http://www.newworldrecords.org/album.cgi?rm=view&album_id=95221

for: Ensemble Dedalus

Didier Aschour (electric guitar)
Amélie Berson (romantic flute)
Cyprien Busolini (viola)
Yannick Guédon (voice, treble gamba)
Thierry Madiot (bass trombone)
Pierre-Stéphane Meugé (secondary rainbow synthesizer)
Christian Pruvost (trumpet)
Silvia Tarozzi (violin)
Deborah Walker (cello/voice)

recorded and mixed by Benjamin Maumus at Centre Pompidou, Metz, France, July 2018

mastered by Paul Zinman

image by Uta Neumann

Prisma Interius IX (2018) excerpt

Commissioned by Opera Philadelphia, Carnegie Hall, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, "Cycles of My Being" (2018) is a song cycle developed in collaboration with tenor Lawrence Brownlee (for whom the song cycle is written) and poet Terrance Hayes, both of whom contributed the texts. There are two versions of the work. The performers in this recording are Brownlee and pianist Myra Huang. The second version of "Cycles" is scored for tenor, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano.

Cycles Of My Being

Cycles Of My Being (piano-vocal edition)

Last year in Brixton I had the privilege of witnessing artists and friends Gary Stewart and  Aniruddha Das prepare a marathon intermedia performance installation commissioned by the Tate Modern on the history of protest in London/ Britain. It was an initiation into the racism endemic in the history of pop music culture and a stunning historical black and white documentation of the manipulation and unprovoked violent response by police forces to nonviolent protest. During the height of ferocious beats and image mixing a beautiful floating Dub mix that made the great hall erupt in parents and children dancing together, the voice of Greta Thunberg piped in an affirmation of the power our children have inherently. And then out of the sky Ani blasts a rare sung prayer of Sukhawat Ali. Deeply grateful. Here is a fragment of the sound.

FIELD RECORDING: Aniruddha Das And GaryStewart Tate Modern 2019

'Máquina de Vênus' 12'' (P033, September of 2020)
Orders: https://principediscos.bandcamp.com/album/m-quina-de-v-nus

BLACKSEA NÃO MAYA - Africanalidade

Field recording in relation to non-human life and elemental belonging/  Improvises parallel streams of cello, voice and words/ believes creative expression is an opportunity to offer an experience of equanimity.

BODY OF WATER (9 CELLOS)

Anne Bourne

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