Sonoscura
Ghostly, spacious and verbal, the work addresses raw issues and societal concerns only more acutely highlighted by the pandemic’s confinement.
OVERVIEW
Sonoscura was created as a film sequence during the first global lockdown. Commissioned by and premiered online “in” Berlin and globally, June 2020. Beautifully shot and edited with long-time collaborator Andrew Delaney, & sound design by Jamie Hamilton, it is structured as a sequence of four slow moving and meditative sections of treated landscapes, immersive spoken text and soundscapes of drones and field recordings.
Through an attention to a few treated elementals: breath, voices, sea, night-sky, tree, bridge, which merge with sound and text, I wanted to combine moods that can promote thought processes and transform fear into openness. Paradoxically an opportunity to rethink, rekindle one’s relationship to place, to intimacy, to movement and shelter, and the way one lives and works with others, near and far.
DURATION
38 mins – undetermined
4 MAIN PIECES
From A to B | Refugio | Night & Refuge | Heare
PRODUCTION TEAM
Caroline Bergvall, Lead Artist
Michaela Freeman, Project Manager
Harriet Cook, Project Assistant
Planet P, Live Streaming Production
Jamie Hamilton, Sound
A Sonic Atlas project
COMMISSION & SUPPORT
Planet P / Berlin International Poetry Festival
Cement Fields
Arts Council England
IN PREPARATION
Live Performance – Sonoscura is in the process of being recomposed and expanded on to premiere as a live performance in the Autumn 2021.
This will be the final work of my Sonic Atlas cycle dedicated to sounding multiple languages, and migratory landscapes, in unusual settings. It includes the outdoor sunrise performance Ragadawn (2016) and the evolving soundwork discussion Conference of the Birds (2018).
As a companion piece to the site-specific settings of Ragadawn‘s sunrise rituals, this final piece will be a sunset or evening piece. Again it will play off the ambiguities and perceptual shifts of these mysterious moments of twilight into day and into night.
My ongoing interest in variations and breath-led mantras will again take the lead of the spoken rhythms as they had in Ragadawn. Some of the sound and voice duos of Sonoscura developed with Jamie Hamilton will be integrated to this new piece.
This evening work will also include a new vocal score by British composer Gavin Bryars who reprises his role as the vocal composer of this cycle. His memorable “Canso” and the sung parts he wrote for soprano brought a powerful and transformative dimension to Ragadawn.
Remixed for release on digital label Takuroku, Cafe Oto.
Dec ’20.
“Another Great Unhoming”
Commissioned for Place 2020, Centre for Place Writing, MMU.
Curated by Rachel Lichtenstein. Expanded into opening text “From A to B.”
From A to B
ADDITIONAL THANKS
Leonce Lupette, translator of libretto into German.
Matthias Kniep, director Planet P, Berlin.
Sue Jones, Cement Fields art agency, UK.
PERFORMANCE 2021
Vocal composition by Gavin Bryars, Data Projection
FILM
Andrew Delaney. First presented as a film stream during Covid lockdown Berlin International Poetry Festival June ’20
Includes edited footage from my online collaborative writing event Night & Refuge with poets Vahni Capildeo, Will Harris, Nisha Ramayya and Leo Boix.