Barbara White – “Sanctuary” Proposal – Work Samples

I’ll provide a few excerpts from works that relate to my proposal, with more information below. Note that these works are less installation-orientated than the proposed work will be.

Source Material: Iceberg Field Recording

First, the iceberg that appears in my field recording:

A short clip of the crackling, melting iceberg:

Excerpts from Compositions

Excerpt from Macha

This Irish myth “The Curse of Macha,” or “The Weakness of the Ulstermen,” forms the basis of this spoken-word track, which appears on an album with my opera Weakness, which is based on the same story. For this track, Tom Cowan wrote his version of the story and performed it. I coached and did the sound design, using field recordings from the Canadian Maritimes and additional materials.

Excerpt from She Moved Away From Me

This is a work in progress, based on the Irish traditional song “She Moved Through the Fair.” The vocal material is Steve Stanislaw singing outdoors at an Irish session in Pennsylvania. The other material is multiple tracks of Riley Lee playing the song on shakuhachi. I directed/coached Riley in varying the material and completed the montage. This will be revised both compositionally and engineering-wise.

Excerpt from Where Stone Flows

This is a concert work that came about as a “spinoff” from a 50-minute fixed-media work, Neither Earth Nor Sea, which is in progress and which was inspired by my encounter with the iceberg. The longer work is intended as an installation and uses field recordings, journals of 19th-century explorers who travelled to the South Pole, and fragments of sung voice and shakuhachi. In the process of creating that longer work, I created an additional concert work, Where Stone Flows, that features more continuous vocal material and incorporates a bit of the field recordings and speaking. The sung text is my own, inspired by the Welsh poet Taliesin; the stone text is from explorer Charles Wilkes’s Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition: During the Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842. The words imagine the consciousness of the iceberg as it is “discovered” and as it shape-shifts. (Live performance: Charlotte Mundy, soprano; Riley Lee, shakuhachi; Michael White, spoken voice. The field recording and speaking were projected in surround sound in the hall; this is a recording from the hall. (Live performance: Charlotte Mundy, soprano; Riley Lee, shakuhachi; Carlos Diaz, engineer.)

Excerpt from Lorica

This is a chamber work, all acoustic. It responds to a shakuhachi work from the 1930s by Chikuho Sakai I called Ryūhei (“Exile”) and is based on the idea of refuge (repositioning materials from Chikuho’s solo work in a communal setting). Although it is a concert work, it may give some idea where I am coming from aesthetically and in regard to the notion of sanctuary. (Live performance: Charlotte Mundy, soprano; Riley Lee, shakuhachi; Heather O’Gara, clarinet; Adam Sliwinski, vibraphone.)

Additional Links – Complete Works

Links to complete versions of works excerpted above:

Additional Info: Links

Composer Website, additional audio clips: iammakingthisup.com