Reviewing

Cyclone

Joan La Barbara

Harvestworks in Association with Knockdown Center Presents CYCLONE (1977) by Joan LaBarbara

CYCLONE is a quadraphonic sound performance/installation of the newly restored multichannel work by Joan La Barbara scored for multiple voices, percussion and Arp 2600 synthesizer sounds, for “semi-live” performance on multiple speakers with the original light panning device custom designed by Ralph Jones.

Installation Open from 6 pm – 10 pm

Performance with the original light panning device starts at 7 pm

Saturday May 7th, 2016
Knockdown Center

52-19 Flushing Ave Maspeth NY 11378

Tickets: $15.  for both shows

ORDER TICKETS HERE

The work was last performed in 1977 at PS1 in NYC (Queens) and was an award-winning sound sculpture installation/performance work (independent artist submission) at ISCM World Music Days (Weltmusiktage) in Bonn, Germany. Both installation/performances were done with analog audio tape (mixed to mono) and moved in the space using light-panning device and penlight.

photo
The Original Light Panning Device circa 1977

1bbcd3df-15d8-4264-984d-9050f5315b82

Joan La Barbara (born June 8, 1947 in Philadelphia, PA) is an American vocalist and composer known for her explorations of non-conventional or “extended” vocal techniques. Considered to be a vocal virtuoso in the field of contemporary music,[1] she is credited with advancing a new vocabulary of vocal sounds including trills, whispers, cries, sighs, inhaled tones, and multiphonics (singing two or more pitches simultaneously).

The Immersive Early Music of Joan La Barbara will be available on Mode Records.  This project was supported by the Aaron Copland Fund, New Music USA and the Harvestworks Artist in Residence Program.

Joan La Barbara

Joan La Barbara’s career as a composer/performer/sound artist explores
the human voice as a multi-faceted instrument expanding traditional boundaries,
creating works for a wide array of media, developing a unique vocabulary of
experimental and extended vocal techniques (multiphonics, circular singing,
ululation, and glottal clicks that have become her “signature sounds”), which has
garnered awards in the United States and Europe and numerous commissions, recently
from the West Deutscher Rundfunk; Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company; a choral work for the
University of Iowa Center for New Music; and the solo cello work A Trail of
Indeterminate Light. 73 Poems, her collaborative work with text artist Kenneth
Goldsmith, was included in The American Century Part II: SoundWorks at The Whitney
Museum of American Art. La Barbara has collaborated with artists including Lita
Albuquerque, Judy Chicago, Ed Emshwiler, Kenneth Goldsmith, Peter Gordon, Bruce
Nauman, Steina, Woody Vasulka, and Lawrence Weiner. She has premiered landmark
compositions by noted American composers, including Morton Subotnick’s chamber opera
Jacob’s Room, his Hungers, and Intimate Immensity; the title role in Robert Ashley’s
opera Now Eleanor’s Idea, his Balseros, and Dust; Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s
Einstein on the Beach; Morton Feldman’s Three Voices; Steve Reich’s Drumming; and
John Cage’s Solo for Voice 45 from Song Books. In addition to her internationally
acclaimed discs of Feldman and Cage (New Albion), Sound Paintings and the reissue of
La Barbara’s seminal works from the 1970s Voice is the Original Instrument (Lovely
Music) and Shaman-Song (New World Records), she has recorded for A&M Horizon,
Centaur, Deutsche Grammophon, Nonesuch, Mode, Music & Arts, MusicMasters, Musical
Heritage, Newport Classic, Sony, Virgin, Voyager, and Wergo.