#3574: Unusual Uses of the Voice

Listen to other ways of making music with the human voice on this New Sounds.  Hear music that occupies the space between speech and song by the late American composer Robert Ashley, responsible for the development of video- or television-operas. Revisit his work, “The Backyard,” featuring keyboard, tabla, and the composer’s voice, which is perhaps a comic opera about reincarnation (touching on bank robbery, cocktail lounges, geriatric love, adolescent elopement) and includes camera directions, because after-all, it is a “television-opera.”

Then, a telescoped version of Alvin Lucier's 1969 piece "I Am Sitting In A Room," which uses a room's natural resonance to produce the music over time as the initial utterance decays.  Plus, music from veteran new music figure, Pauline Oliveros, who came up during the very early years of electronic music.  Hear music that uses her voice and an accordion as its sound sources, treated with electronics to create an ambient soundscape.

PROGRAM #3574 Unusual Uses of the Voice (First aired on 3/6/2014)