L.O.Q.Shun

on By

Yesterday marked the start of a week for premieres including:

– He korokoro tūī : a soundscape for a site-specific dance work by Karen Barbour, featuring taonga puoro by Alistair Fraser. This will be premiered at a conference held at Waikato University.

– Flutter and Cut Away the Masts on Saturday at the Otago Museum.

But first, was the premiere of a new vocal piece L.O.Q.Shun premiered on Radio NZ on Sunday afternoon during the Standing Room Only show. It was part of a larger interview about my ongoing work as the Mozart Fellow.

You can check out the full interview here:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/remote-player?id=20158331

This piece was developed through discussions with the singer Julia Booth about the work of Alexander Melville Bell on the study of elocution. We started talking about creating a loop-based performance piece in November 2013, and finally ended up in November 2014 with a completed recording of the work!

I had found a book online that he had written called “The Principles of Elocution” from 1887, and based the text of snippets from that book – particularly the second on difficult combinations.
The work is all voices (with reverb and delay effects).
Two vocalists:
soprano – Julia Booth
vocal noises – Jeremy Mayall

Here the work in the audio player below: