November 2022

catherine lamb -- descensus trio (2020). i recorded each part by myself over the course of the pandemic.

catherine lamb -- decensus trio

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)

Far from Shore

[Please listen w headphones or great speakers.]
A stereo mixdown from a fragment of On Your Winds, an ongoing longform invitational work with human breath as the sole sound source. The work recognizes that breathing is intimate and personal. At the same time, we share air, with each other, with other lifeforms, and even with the past as nanoparticles from many times and places and industries filter through our atmospheres. 

The audio for On Your Winds brings together accumulated breath sounds from many places in an evolving breathscape. Participants are invited to consider their relationships with wind, with their ancestries, and to perform and record a simple score for breath. Anyone can participate. The recordings are carefully listened to, and excerpted, samples are edited, stretched and filed. For each installation, the sounds are reconsidered, then mixed with new contributions, layered and spread sonically according to studies of the biospheres and wind patterns of the installation locales.  

The breath sounds on this excerpt are from people residing in North America and Europe, ranging in age from about 8 to about 80.

On Your Winds (excerpt)

Pointillistic Momentum

"Magnetic Pull" - Romance/Drama

This is a comical 2-part setting of the A. A. Milne poem, HAPPINESS. It uses unison and easy two part singing with piano accompaniment, and an ideal voice range for young singers to make a quality choral piece for teaching and performing. This is a part of Gerda Blok-Wilson's developing choir repertoire. Digital downloads are available through SHEET MUSIC PLUS and SHEET MUSIC DIRECT.

Happiness

performed by Dr. Alexandra Fol
St. James United Church, Montreal

Aurora - For Organ (2022)

I
II 
III 
Estonian bagpipes: Katariin Raska, Ulvi Võsa, Karolin Vetevoog, Kaisa Kuslapuu, Mari Meentalo, Kerli Kislõi
Premiere recorded by Estonian Classic Radio, 01.05.2023
Be it lines of force or a forgotten contact between the earth and our bodies, the essential point of support.. Earth veins as vital paths with oscillating and resonant intersections? 
Following the events of last February in Southern Turkey and  Western Syria, the earth once again showed also its destructive power, the effects of which are also echoed in this work.
a review by Simon Cummings: https://5against4.com/2023/05/30/estonian-music-days-2023-part-3/

Earth Veins for 6 estonian bagpipes (2023)

(Excerpt of Botanical Lament) From "Root, Blood, Fractal, Breath" at Allan Gardens, Toronto. Recorded on a roving mono video camera microphone by Alison Gray, during a 2017 workshop performance of this full length spatialized work created for and with the Contact ensemble for performance among the flora and constructed landscapes within the Allen Gardens Conservatory in Toronto. Performed by Wallace Halladay, saxophone; Bryan Holt, cello; Alex Kotyk, bass; Rob MacDonald, guitar; Jerry Pergolesi, percussion & trumpet; Allison Benstead Wiebe, autoharp; and Tina Pearson, flute/voice.

Botanical Lament Live (excerpt)

produced by David Rothenberg
artwork and visualization by Michael Deal

What record album was so important that ten million copies of it needed to be pressed at once? You guessed it. Songs of the Humpback Whale. In 1979 National Geographic Magazine inserted a flexible "sound page" inside the back cover of all of its editions in twenty-five languages, and that is supposedly how many they printed. No human pop star has ever received such magnanimous treatment, so what is it that is so special about the songs of the humpback whale?

Well, for one, humans knew nothing of this fabulous sound until the US Navy released its classified recordings at the end of the 1960s, at the very moment the world was most poised to listen to the unknown, the psychedelic, and the trippiest of sounds. Humpback whale song fit the bill perfectly. From high wails to deep growls to rhythmic scratches to tearful moans, it encompasses the full range of emotions in the longest song performed by any animal, a tune that can go on for nearly twenty-four hours at a time. People are often moved to tears when they hear such intensity for the first time. Some cannot believe it could ever come from a place as silent as the sea. This song inspired the global movement to Save the Whales which continues unto this day.

People tend to assume humpback whale song just a "whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaooooh" and leave it at that. But if you sit down and listen to a complete humpback performance you will find that the long moan is only one note in a complex composition, with distinct phrases, repetition, structure, organization, shape and form akin to many kinds of human music. This is no random outburst of cries and whispers, but a song with power, verve, identity, and design.

It is a desire to go beyond memory and into the sounds of reality that has led us to release New Songs of the Humpback Whale, which aims to gather the best recent recordings of scientists and whale listeners the globe over to give all of us a chance to assess what has happened to whale song over the past few decades. One can hear gradual changes in humpback song from year to year, with some phrases lengthening, others shortening, others disappearing altogether as new variations appear. The change can be heard month to month, and even week to week within a single season. Today's whale songs should sound quite different from what he fondly remembers from the sixties. But is their musical culture going downhill? Or is it on the rise? Or just changing? Can we humans even tell the difference?

To tell the difference Michael Deal, designer of the Pinterest logo and a veteran of Google and Splice, has created a new way to visualize humpback whale song, based on sonograms familiar to sound scientist but simplified into colorful glyphs making the structure of this grand underwater music easier to understand than ever before.

Though humpback whale song did not evolve for humans to appreciate, it may be no accident that we do. Upon hearing the great song for the first time, whale scientist Roger Payne said he heard the size of the ocean, "as if I had walked into a dark cave to hear wave after wave of echoes cascading back from the darkness beyond.... That's what whales do, give the ocean its voice."


Humpback Whale in Madagascar from New Sounds of the Humpback Whale CD

Yoshi Wada - Off The Wall LP (SLT-003)

First vinyl reissue of composer and Fluxus artist Yoshi Wada's second album, Off The Wall, originally released in 1985 by famed free jazz label FMP. Recorded in Berlin on May 11 and 12, 1984, by a quartet featuring Yoshi Wada and Wayne Hankin on bagpipes, Marilyn Bogerd on adapted organ (hand-built by Wada), and Andreas Schmidt Neri on percussion. Edition of 750. Mastered by Rashad Becker and housed in old-style gatefold jackets printed by Stoughton.

"Off The Wall belongs somewhere between the exuberant harmolodic ritual of Ornette Coleman's Dancing In Your Head, a damp, medieval dirge and the inner ear soundings of composer Maryanne Amacher." – David Keenan, The Wire

"It may be more accurate to think of Wada as a sculptor than as a composer, because his music seems to be a physical reality, like wood or stone, and also because of the way he treats this material. Most composers work with ideas. Their basic interest is in melodies, harmonies, thematic relationships, tone rows, tonal centers, emotional qualities, and other rather abstract things, all of which can then be conveyed in sound, but none of which really are sound. Wada, on the other hand, works directly with the sound itself. His music would sound silly arranged for church organ for example. And if he prefers to preserve some improvisatory freedom rather than to notate specific musical ideas, this is at least partly because he is not so interested in the kinds of musical ideas that can be written down on paper. He wants to maintain direct contact with the physical reality of the sound." – Tom Johnson

Yoshi Wada – Off The Wall I (excerpt)

'Sandstorm', by Bill Parsons and Blair Mackay, references the Sundanese song 'Sorban Palid' (Floating Turban). It's performed by Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan (degung) with kacapi soloist Bill Parsons with vocalists-lyricists Maryem Hassan Tollar (lead) & Jennifer Moore, plus guest violinist Parmela Attariwala. The recording is from Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan's CD 'Bridge' (2017).

Sandstorm

Distant Calls

Reverse Dance

London Contemporary Orchestra, 
Robert Ames director, 
Tate Modern, Sept 2017

Prisma Interius V (2017)

ELSE MARIE PADE & JACOB KIRKEGAARD
SVÆVNINGER

IMPREC382   LP

Else Marie Pade (born December 2, 1924 in Aarhus) is a Danish composer. An educated composer, Pade pioneered electronic music and concrete music in Denmark. In 1954 Pade became the first Danish composer of electronic and concrete music. She knew and worked with Pierre Schaeffer and Karlheinz Stockhausen.  Pade was active in the resistance during the Second World War, and was interned at the Frøslev prison camp from 1944 till the end of the war. An archival collection of Else Marie Pade's electronic work will be released on Important in 2013.

Jakob Kierkegaard is a Danish artist who explores sound art from a scientific perspective. He has released 3 solo records and a collaborative work with Phillip Jeck for the esteemed Touch label.

 Despite an age difference of 51 years, Else Marie Pade and Jacob Kirkegaard speak a similar musical language and are prominent listeners and communicators of sounds that we tend to overhear. For the first time these two pioneers are collaborating on a new work: SVÆVINGER investigates the variations that one can hear when sound waves collide. Both artists have previously worked on this phenomenon; Jacob Kirkegaard in his work Labyrinthitis (2007) and Else Marie Pade in her work "Faust Suite" (1962). For their new joint piece SVÆVINGER, they remixed some of Pade's early (and hitherto unreleased) sound experiments with some of Kirkegaard's recordings from his own ear, thus leading the audience straight into the undiscovered labyrinths of their own hearing.

"Cirrocumulus, Cirrostratus, Stratus" by Else Marie Pade & Jacob Kirkegaard IMPREC382

Tina Pearson is a Canadian composer, sound artist, facilitator and performer who dwells in soundworlds that are unusual, provocative and intimate.

Association of Canadian Women Composers

The ACWC is a professional organization for Canadian women composers, their supporters, and the performers of their music.

On Your Winds (excerpt)

Tina Pearson

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