A

Earth and the Great Weather (1990) A work about the sonic geography of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska, and about the voices of the elements. From the texture of wind, rain and melting ice, flowing water, animal cries and birdsong, emerges the sound of drums playing the pulsing 5/8 and 7/8 beats of Inupiaq Eskimo drumming. At other times, the deep whooshing of bullroarers and the ethereal voices of aeolian harps grow out of the sounds and recede again. And within this sonic space, the voices of a woman and two men talking and reciting in English, Latin, and Inupiaq -- leading us toward the Eskimo shaman's song from which the piece derives its title. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

JOHN LUTHER ADAMS (Fairbanks, AK) was born in 1953. He studied at the California Institute of the Arts, where his teachers included James Tenney, Morton Subotnick, and Harold Budd. He has received numerous commissions, awards, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, the Rockefeller Foundation and others. Recently, he was named by Meet the Composer to a three-year position (1994-97) as composer in residence with the Anchorage Symphony, the Anchorage Opera and the Alaska Public Radio Network. His best-known works include Songbirdsongs, A Northern Suite, Night Piece and Forest Without Leaves. An active environmentalist, Adams continues his work documenting the sounds of Alaska's natural environment and translating them into instrumental music. top

Reminiscence de la Musique Concrète (1990) An homage to some of the masters of musique concrète. Composed of processed excerpts from such works as Etudes des bruits by Henry Schaeffer, Diamorphoses II by Yannis Xenakis and Exit Music II by Kenneth Gaburo, the piece is shaped into a surreal voyage through the early days of electronic music. It features two "story lines" that interact and complement one another: a machine sound line -- evolving literally from machine sounds into more instrument-like elements; and a human voice line -- evolving from nonlinguistic sounds to a "conversation." Commissioned by Dutch National Radio (NOS).

ARMENO ALBERTS (Hilversum, Holland) studied piano at the Conservatory in Arnhem and electronic composition at the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht. An editor for contemporary music at Dutch radio VPRO's Channel 4, Alberts also composes music for traditional instruments, and creates electronic tape compositions and radio pieces. Currently, his main interest is in the relationship between music and visual arts. He is the artistic director of VPRO's International Audio Art Project. top

A Sound Education (1990) (20:00) With visual artist Ward Tietz. The work contains humorous and informative lessons on speaking and writing English; on whistling as a forgotten form of communication; on the past, present, and future tenses. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

SCOTT ALBURGER (Philadelphia, PA) is a video and performance artist. He studied independently with composer Pauline Oliveros, performance artist Carolee Schneemann and sound artist Jackson Mac Low. For years he has made the human whistle an integral part of all his performances and video work.

WARD TIETZ (Philadelphia, PA) is a visual artist who developed his concept of "word sculpture" -- i.e., the objectification of words as sculpture which lexically addresses its environment -- while an undergraduate in the creative writing department at Carnegie-Mellon University. He has received two commissions from the City of Providence, Rhode Island, to create temporary word sculpture installations in a large public park. The first of these was selected for a major retrospective exhibition on installation art in New England. top

See Allen, Jo Harvey, "Every Three Minutes."

Every Three Minutes (1989) With Bukka Allen. Every three minutes in the U.S., a child is abused; each day three children die from abuse. This is the story told by the Allens, mother and son, making use of many hours of authentic material: interviews with abused teenagers, statements by their abusers, stories of neglected children recorded by themselves. The materials are combined with statistics and original music by the two artists to shape a powerful plea for humane treatment of children. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

JO HARVEY ALLEN (Santa Fe, NM) came to national attention as a playwright/performer while touring her critically acclaimed plays Counter Angel, Hally Lou, and her one-woman show As It Is in Texas; and as actress and co-writer in her co-starring role as "The Lying Woman" in David Byrne's film True Stories. Her other film credits include Cold Sassy Tree, Fried Green Tomatoes, and The Client. Her most recent plays include collaborations with her husband, multimedia artist Terry Allen, in the opera Pioneer and in the avant-garde country and western musical Chippy, presented at the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia and at Lincoln Center in New York City.

BUKKA ALLEN, a musician and songwriter, collaborated with Jo Harvey, Terry and Bale Allen in the critically acclaimed family play, Do You Know Where Your Children Are Tonight? He is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, and is currently the keyboard player for the highly acclaimed rock and roll group, The Ian Moore Band. top

Bleeder (1990) A fictional audiobiography of an enigmatic Texas gambler, religious fanatic, possible gangster, magician, and hemophiliac. With a riveting voice performance by actress Jo Harvey Allen and original music by Terry Allen. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

Dug-Out (1993) The fictionalized history of two people: a man born in the late 1800s who runs away from home to play baseball, and a woman born in the early 1900s in a half-dugout (a small house partially built into the side of a slope or hill), who grows up to be a piano player and a beautician. Told by Terry Allen, Jo Harvey Allen, and Katie Koontz, with music by Terry Allen. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

Reunion (A Return to Juarez) (1992) Written as a movie screenplay, this work entails a series of simultaneous events -- described from a variety of vantage points. Its four main characters: a Texas sailor, a Mexican prostitute, a Mexican-born pachuco (gangster) and his girl friend, an enigmatic "witch." Moving in violent motion through the modern-day American West, they are as much atmospheric conditions hurtling through space as they are human beings of flesh and bone. Told in a sonic environment of raw musics and sound effects, Reunion is a desperate journey across the borderlands of the American psyche, the dreams of surviving it and passing through the wilderness to the promised land . . . that hopeless rapture. Told by Jo Harvey Allen with music by Terry Allen. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [listen]

Torso Hell (1987) Written as a movie screenplay, Torso Hell's darkly surrealistic plot centers around the fate of four soldiers blown to pieces in Vietnam and brought back to life by "some weird miracle." The hero is literally a torso. A radio horror movie, Torso Hell is also a commentary on Hollywood Vietnam films. With voice performance by Terry Allen and Jacki Apple and original music by Allen. Created for Soundings, KPFK-FM, Los Angeles (host: Jacki Apple), and High Performance.

TERRY ALLEN (Santa Fe, NM) was born in Wichita, Kansas; raised in Lubbock, Texas. He studied at Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles and received a B.F.A. in 1966. He has been an independent artist since 1966 pursuing a wide variety of artistic interests, including musical and theatrical performance, sculpture, painting, drawing, video, radio works, and installations that incorporate any and all of these media. In addition to his numerous one-man and group exhibitions, stage performances and music recordings, Allen produced four major works for NEW AMERICAN RADIO, two of which—Return to Juarez and Dugout—have been used in installations and performances. Allen is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, 1986; a Bessie Award, New York, 1986; and numerous others. He was inducted into The Buddy Holly "Walk of Fame" Lubbock, Texas in 1997. top

Hide and Seek (1989) (3:04) With Christina Egloff. A dreamlike encounter with a chimpanzee who communicates in sign language.

Killer Whales (1989) (1:26) With Christina Egloff. Killer whales and what they sound like.

Noah's Ark (1989) With Christina Egloff. And the question is: do animals suffer when they die in the slaughterhouse or don't they? And who's to say?

JAY ALLISON (Woods Hole, MA) is one of the country's leading independent radio producers. Over the last eighteen years, often with his partner Christina Egloff, he has created hundreds of radio documentaries, dramas, special series, and audio art pieces for national and international broadcast, most often for National Public Radio's All Things Considered. Allison has won most of the major awards in the industry, including two Peabody's and the duPont-Columbia. He teaches radio production around the United States, helped create the Association of Independents in Radio, and is the founder and host of the Radio Producers Forum on the WELL computer conferencing system. He is also president of Cape and Islands Community Public Radio, an organization he founded to build a new community public radio station in his hometown on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Allison's essays have appeared in the New York Times Magazine and he is a special producer/reporter/ cameraman for ABC News Nightline.

CHRISTINA EGLOFF (Woods Hole, MA) is a longtime producer for public radio. Often working in partnership with Jay Allison, she has created dozens of documentaries and special series for National Public Radio and other venues. She also works as a consultant and editor for other public radio producers. Her collaborations and productions have won numerous broadcasting awards, including the Clarion, CPB, AIR, and Ohio State. Egloff also writes, produces, and consults in film and television. top

Oppidan Skew (1992-93) (20:00) A sound exploration of a uniquely Philadelphia phenomenon: "From Alexis de Tocqueville to W. C. Fields to David Lynch, people have come away (from Philadelphia) with such strongly negative impressions that it hardly seems reasonable to blame it on the city alone. Yet they do -- even the people who live here. New Yorkers may hate the fast-paced enormity and danger of their city, but they take pride in the fact that they endure it. In Philadelphia you see intense loyalty to the neighborhoods that make up the city, but a distinct loathing for the city as a whole." (Alls) An eerie and humorous sound composition. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

JAMES ALLS received his B.A. in communications from Temple University in 1990. Since then he has collaborated with a number of independent media producers in various aspects of sound production, and produced music for various community-based organizations in the city. He is currently employed as technical coordinator at the Neighborhood Film/Video Project, a media arts center in West Philadelphia. Opidan Skew is his first work for radio.

American Dining: A Working Woman's Moment (1989) Drawing from her own experience as a waitress, Allyn creates song-narratives that offer fascinating insights into a world usually unnoticed by customers--the bizarre and very human world of the over-worked waitress. It's a world of men showing off their improvisational genius for sexual word play; of ambiguous relationships to the union; a world where an old and forgotten lady, who once introduced American radio audiences to broccoli is rediscovered. Combining perceptive writing with a skillful delivery, a folksy sound score by Bob Davis of Earwax Productions, and a delightful sense of down-home humor, this work will change your image of American diners and their waitresses forever. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

American Dining: A Working Woman's Moment (Part 2) (1991) Jerri Allyn returns to bring us more stories about waitressing. Perceptive and skillful, with a delightful sense of humor.

Angels Have Been Sent To Me (1991) With soundscore by Helen Thorington. Poignant and humorous stories about Allyn's ninety-year old immigrant grandmother, Maria Alvarez, and her cronies in a critical care home. Interwoven with music and hospital sounds: wheelchairs, medical equipment, alarms, and the voices of patients and staff. Allyn's insightful writing and skillful delivery, and Thorington's imaginative sound score are reminders that there are human beings behind the health care budget. And that they are as alive and passionate about their existence as any one of us.

Religious Obscenity (1991) (5:17) A selection from Allyn's series of performance commentaries on censorship. Allyn reflects on the contradictory relations between Christian worship, art censorship, and bilingual education. With sound by Helen Thorington.

JERRI ALLYN (New York, NY), the co-founder of the Los Angeles Women's Video Center, and the Waitresses and Sisters of Survival public performances art group has worked extensively with video/audio artists' books and computers. Her projects and performances are often designed for public spaces, thus making a break with the museum or art gallery and forging relationships between art and communities. Allyn's installation, American Dining: A Working Woman's Moment, was a site-specific, interactive artwork that was installed in restaurants throughout the United States. Allyn is now director of education at the Bronx Museum in New York City.

Collaborators:

BOB DAVIS, music for American Dining, Part 1. (see Earwax Productions)

HELEN THORINGTON, sound design and composition, Angels Have Been Sent To Me and Religious Obscenity. (see Thorington, Helen) top

Mental Radio (1994) Classic radiophonic proto-rap with America's lost practitioner of text-sound composition. The work includes a 100th birthday salute to musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky, who achieved the century mark on 27 April 1994 in Los Angeles. Mental Radio is a retrospective of Amirkhanian's classic analog speech tapes along with some recent Synclavier digital updates: Radii (1971), Chu Lu Lu (1991), Just (1972), Heavy Aspirations (1973), Vers Les Anges (1990), Dot Bunch (1981), and Mugic (1974). Produced especially for NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [listen]

Pas de Voix (Portrait of Samuel Beckett, 1987) (1986-87) "An impressionistic, cyclical, narrative sound portrait, touching on various aspects of Samuel Beckett's life." (Amirkhanian) Created from ambient recordings of the lobby of Beckett's apartment building, the open-air Metro stop across the street, the bells of Notre Dame, a sound sculpture, plus some extended-technique electric guitar sounds and a selection of sonic bodily functions. Commissioned by Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne, Germany.

Politics as Usual (1989) A series of audio explorations incorporating both abstract (instrumental) and representational (ambient) sounds, processed in the synclavier studio of Henry Kaiser. Featured are the gong collections of Lou Harrison and Toni Marcus and an assortment of talking parrots. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

Walking Tune (A Room-Music for Percy Grainger) (1986-87) An homage to Australian-American composer Percy Grainger. Grainger's Walking Tune for solo piano was conceived in 1900 during a tramp through the Scottish Highlands. In this work, Amirkhanian uses the Synclavier digital synthesizer -- a tool Grainger would have embraced eagerly -- to combine sounds recorded out-of-doors (tramping in Utah; the shriek of geese; a swarm of humming birds)with musical sound. And he shapes a sensual and powerful sound-music piece that is true to Grainger's own song of praise to the natural world. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

CHARLES AMIRKHANIAN (Woodside, CA) is a composer, percussionist, sound poet, and radio producer. For many years music director at KPFA-FM in Berkeley, Amirkhanian was also founding co-director of the acclaimed Composer-to-Composer Festival in Telluride, Colorado. He has produced numerous works for international venues such as radio station WDR Cologne, Germany, and Swedish radio. An internationally known radio artist, Amirkhanian is currently executive director of the Djerassi Resident Artist Program in Woodside, California. top

The Amazon (1985) (13:08) From The Amazon, The Mekong, The Missouri, and The Nile, a four-part work exploring language and colonization. This collaboration between audio/performance artist Jacki Apple and composer Bruce Fowler is a rich mix of "animal" vocalizations, human incantations, Brazilian instrumentation, and Fowler's haunting trombone. A powerful evocation of the destruction of nature and culture. (#15,90 with Moss and Whitehead)

Fluctuations of the Field (1989) (10:20) Drawing upon texts by leading theoretical physicists, this piece is a hypnotic incantation that transforms scientific theory into a poetic cosmic narrative, a fluctuating field of sonic waves and textual particles in which form and content, matter and mind are interchangeable. With music by Ruben Garcia, and Harold Lott's Spirits of the Drum.

Frenzy in the Night (1990) With writer, performer Keith Antar Mason. Frenzy in the Night is about growing up black and male in America, finding your own voice and becoming an artist, the pain of racism, and the dream of freedom. It is a spiritual quest for cultural and personal affirmation. A poetic suite in three parts, it traverses the American landscape from the "banks of the muddy Mississippi" of Mason's St. Louis boyhood, through a mythical "free state of Illinois," to his artistic coming of age in the "boom box of L.A." Mason's provocative, emotionally charged text is set in Apple's lush cinematic sonic landscape of West African tribal drums and wailing jazz saxophones, riverboats, police sirens, street rappers, birds, all caught in the ebb and flow of the river that is replaced by the freeway, as it travels from a bittersweet blues in the night to an urban frenzy. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

One Word at a Time (1993) The Traveler "clicks" through twenty three "stories" set in sonic spaces that shape a virtual journey exploring consciousness, life, art, language, the universe, and the whole ball of wax. . . . Composed of discrete yet linked vignettes, geographies, inhabitants, information, instructions, conversations, and cross referencing wordplays, situated in real and imaginary time, real and virtual space, that can be traveled through along any number of paths as we explore how thought materializes in the world, how we perceive, understand, and communicate the nature of our existence and what we define as "reality." This solo piece evolved from the narrative work, Going Between, by Helen Thorington which became Going Between\One Word at a Time\Docs**, a collaborative performance duet with Helen Thorington at the 1993 On The Air Festival, Transit Art/ORF, Austria.

Palisade: A Cliffhanger in Five Acts (1987) Set in the precarious emotional terrain between the thought (the disembodied voice) and the act (the vocal body), a fractured "narrative" traverses male-female relationships on the edge of a cliff. Accounts assemble and reassemble as remembered, as imagined, as desired, as perceived, as experienced. In riveting vocal and musical performances Jacki Apple, Jeff McMahon, and David Moss create a quick-cutting montage of cinematic images counterpointing evocative interior texts set in a dissonant soundscape. Produced and directed by Jacki Apple as a site specific performance spectacle commissioned by the Santa Monica Arts Commission for the 1987 SMARTS Performance Festival, Santa Monica, California.

Redefining Democracy in America (1991-92) A six-part series confronting the deep schisms and contradictions in an America in crisis: includes,

Parts 1, 2, & 3: Episodes in Black and White (1991) With collaborating writer/performers Linda Albertano, Keith Antar Mason, and Akilah Nayo Oliver. Raises questions about who speaks, who is listened to, who is heard, who is silenced, and how that has shaped our present social reality. In various poetic and narrative forms underscored by sound and music, the two black and two white Los Angeles artists explore issues of race, sex, money, power, drugs, family, children, violence, language and censorship. Interior voices of hope, rage, despair, tenderness, indignation, pain, pride, fear, desire, angels, and madmen are juxtaposed against the exterior voices of "the witness," "the reporter," and "the judge." The social and creative process of making art together played an important part in the development of this powerful and uncompromisingly honest multicultural piece. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

Parts 4 & 5: The Voices of America 1992 (1992) With KPFK-FM, Los Angeles. Posed the questions "What would you say to your fellow citizens if you were running for president? What should we aspire to and how should we get there?" In the fourth and fifth parts of this series, Americans across the political and cultural spectrum speak out on education, the environment, racism, greed, government, the power elite, spiritual values, and more, as they struggle to articulate a vision for our future. Their voices, compiled from two months of on-air listener call-ins at KPFK (before and after the L.A. "uprisings") with additional contributions from KPFT, Houston, orchestrated into a multilayered montage of hopes, dreams, frustrations, angers, and fears, spanning the distance from utopian ideals to cynical pessimism.

Part 6: A Leap of Faith (1992) With writer, performer Keith Antar Mason. A (white) Euro-American woman and a (black) African-American man born in America in the middle of the twentieth century on opposite sides of the dividing line, take us on an imaginary journey through time as they wait for the ghost train in the place where our dreams are born and die. They traverse a landscape that reveals the schisms between official history, memory, and experience, as we eavesdrop on their private conversations in post-rebellion Los Angeles. . .This piece is, in part, a personal response to the conditions, events, and rhetoric surrounding the L.A. "uprisings" of 1992, and an attempt to place such events in both a broader historical and intimate personal context.

Soundings (1993) A portrait of Apple's long-running (1986-95) weekly one-hour live radio show, featuring performance and audio art at KPFK-FM, Pacifica Radio, Los Angeles. With commentary by Apple and the voices of Anna Hommler, David Moss, Meredith Monk, and others.

Swan Lake (1989) A satiric, ironic film noire "ballet" for radio, the original Swan Lake narrative is recast and resituated amidst the glittering surfaces and dark underside of late eighties Los Angeles where dreams are manufactured in medialand, art and entertainment tongue kiss, the third world coexists in a parallel realm, and the weather is unnatural. Using radio as a cinematic medium, Apple's remake employs various pop genres including Raymond Chandler's detective novels, TV fashion commercials, and a sensational murder trial. This filmic version is about seduction, voyeurism, and the consumption of images, with the Swan playing the part of Art. The lush romanticism of Tchaikovsky's original ballet music is juxtaposed against a percussive, techno-eclectic, edgy filmscore by L.A. composers Joseph Berardi and Kira Vollman. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

The Culture of Disappearance (1991) A radio "opera" about extinction, and the conditions of loss and denial endemic to industrial and post-industrial society. It is a dirge for the exterminated species of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a grieving. It raises questions about the terms of human survival in a social order that defines us as "separate," and reveals how those values are manifested in our socio-economic and political relations -- i.e., conquest vs. cohabitation, consumption without regeneration. We eradicate cultural memory just as we eliminate species. The sung "mass" of names of the dead from insects to languages is sometimes obliterated by the relentless pounding of machinery. Embedded in the litany are anecdotes of annihilation.

The Garden Planet Revisited (1982/1992) Past and present history resonate through ruins of the future as American astronaut Captain Charlie, a paragon of late twentieth century technological man, hurtles through time and space. Stranded on a station, abandoned and alone, he is on a mission without end. Simultaneously, the Inhabitants of an unnamed place search amongst the architectural remains, gather stories, rumors, myths from Messengers and Witnesses, as they try to reconstruct what happened in the time before "the cities shifted and the Earth turned." Is it a memory, a dream, a hallucination, a prophecy? Originally presented as a thirteen scene, hour-long multimedia performance written, with music by trombonist Bruce Fowler, the audio was edited and remastered by Apple as a twenty-eight minute work for radio in 1992.

Voices in the Dark (1991) A radio work for outer and inner space, in four sections. The cosmos is an audio archive of information broadcast to the stars, a repository of human (and perhaps other) histories in which time melts and language dissolves into signals. All those "voices" traversing the universe looking for a pick-up! Imagine gridlock in the big data bank in outer space. Voices in the Dark is about interstellar conversations, radio waves, and sonic archaeology. Is there anyone listening and how do they interpret what they hear? How do we/they distinguish between real events and people, and media-generated fictions? Are we the "they"? We say we want to make contact with the Other, when in fact what we search for is a mirror of ourselves. This composition combines a narrative text with various musical, vocal, and sound components snatched from the airwaves, overdubbed, sampled, remixed, and electronically orchestrated.

JACKI APPLE (Los Angeles, CA) Spanning more than three decades, the 70s in New York and the 80s and 90s in Los Angeles, visual, performance and media artist, audio composer, writer, director, and producer Jacki Apple's diverse artistic career has encompassed a wide range of media and forms—interdisciplinary performance, multimedia installations, audio, radio, video, film, photography, artist books, drawings, conceptual works, and commissioned public art works. Her works have been performed, exhibited, and broadcast in art spaces, galleries, museums, theaters, festivals, on radio and cable TV throughout the United States and Canada, and in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

In addition to creating her own pieces, Apple has also produced other artists works. From 1982-95, she was the independent producer/ host of Soundings, a weekly one hour radio show featuring performance and audio art, new music and interviews, at KPFK-FM, Pacifica Radio, Los Angeles. In 2000 she conceived and produced EARJAM Music Festival, which has since become an annual festival.

Collaborators:

LINDA ALBERTANO (Los Angeles, CA) Collaborated on Redefining Democracy in America, Parts 1, 2, & 3: Episodes in Black and White. Albertino is an iconoclastic, neo-feminist performance poet/artist with a satiric political bent whose work has been seen at numerous Los Angeles venues since the early eighties. Her work is on several New Alliance spoken word anthology CDs.

BRUCE FOWLER (Los Angeles, CA) Collaborated on The Amazon. Fowler is a composer/musician is renowned for his exploration of the numerous sound possibilities of the trombone. His musical repertoire encompasses everything from experimental new music to jazz to rock to film scores. Since the early seventies he has played with everyone from Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart to Toshiko Akiyoshi and Barbara Streisand (for her opening night in Las Vegas), as well as with his own performance band The Enormous Bones, and the Fowler brothers' band Airpocket. He appeared in Robert Altman's film Short Cuts, and his recent CDs include Ants Can Count, Terra Nova Records, 1990, and Bruce Fowler Entropy, Fossil Records, 1993.

KEITH ANTAR MASON (Los Angeles, CA) Collaborated on Frenzy in the Night; Redefining Democracy in America, Parts 1, 2, & 3: Episodes in Black and White, and Part 6: A Leap of Faith. Mason is a poet, playwright, performance artist, and founding director of Hittite Productions, a black male performance/ theater collective. His controversial and often inflammatory works about being black and male in America have earned him international notoriety and have been presented at major venues throughout the U.S. Atlantic Crossing: The People's Journey, a spoken word epic written and performed by Mason and Blackmadrid, is on a CD from New Alliance Records.

AKILAH NAYO OLIVER (Boulder, CO) Collaborated on Redefining Democracy in America, Parts 1, 2, & 3: Episodes in Black and White. Oliver is a poet/performance artist who brings a powerful feminist and spiritual perspective to the African-American experience. She is a member of the Sacred Naked Nature Girls collaborative performance group. top

See Gomez-Pena, Guillermo, "I Don't Speak English Only, Vato!"; "Menage-a Trade"; and "Temple of Confessions." top

Theme—Repairing the Elements of Rust (1993) With poet Mbali Umchlaba Umoja and pannist Collin Mauge. Blends chants and wails, rap music and the rhythm of steel drums, and poetry to celebrate music and words as tools for cultural survival and healing. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. (#6,93 with Levin, Postcards)

ASCHAK (Philadelphia, PA) is a painter, poet, and performer originally from Trinidad/Tobago. He has appeared as a performer throughout the United States, in South Korea, Germany, and Russia. He is co-founder of several artist organizations that promote art as a tool for affecting positive change.

Collaborators:

Trinidad born COLLIN MAUGE (Philadelphia, PA) is a pannist, who for the last twenty-seven years has developed both the art and concept of steel drum music. In Trinidad, he performed with such bands as The Silvertones, Motown, and most notably, The Steel Kings. Mauge has also toured the United States and Canada. More recently he has been involved in experimental work fusing steel pan with other musical instruments and voices.

MBALI UMCHLABA UMOJA (Philadelphia, PA) is a poet whose work has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary magazines. She is also an art therapist. Mbali's stage performances include Tomorrow the Whirlwind, directed by Amira Baraka in New York City. She is the former host of The Spoken Word radio program on WXPN in Philadelphia, and she has been heard nationally on Pacifica Radio and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. top

Resonance (1995) With composer, musician Bruce Odland. A fascinating series of short sonic compositions that make the hidden hearable. Works include: (1) Rome: Traffic Mantra—"In an installation in the Trajan Forum, three Roman amphorae were used as resonators to transform the sounds of passing cars, busses, trucks, and motorcycles into melodic pools of harmonics. A microphone inside sent the real-time sound to a solar powered planet speaker placed in the archway over an old Roman road." And, (2) Yampa—"On a rafting trip down the Yampa River in Colorado we collected oar strokes, and many types of wind, through the interface of a small wind harp." (the artists) Uniquely expressive sound-music, with commentary by Bruce Odland, edited and produced by Regine Beyer.

King of Time (1992) With composer, musician Bruce Odland. Explores different types of time: car time, metal time, water time, people time, linear and non-linear time. It communicates in the international language of sound. Recordings of the crumbling infrastructure of modern cities become a rhythmic alphabet spelling out the dance of metal time. Reiterative syllables of water strain at the strings of a demon harp interface, singing a song of water and stone time. Time tumbles like a fractal tree, backwards and forwards, through an electro-acoustical alphabet of sound removed from the impact of its function. King of Time is based on Russian futurist Velimir Khlebnikov's sound language of the future. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

SAM AUINGER (Linz, Austria) is a composer, musician, and conceptual artist who has realized many projects under the name of SWAP with Werner Pfeffer. Auinger has also presented several major installations, including, an interactive Sound Cosmology at Linz Castle on the Danube; and a Sonic Drama for the City of Salzburg on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Mozart's death -- both with long-time collaborator, Bruce Odland. [see Odland, Bruce] top

Radio Alarm (1987) A "colloquial operetta" commissioned by David Moss for his OpeRadio project in 1987 (with Thorington and Whitehead).

See How She Sorrows (1998) is "a colloquial operetta, drawing on events from my own life and on my acquisition of a Haitian Loa flag, a piece of religious folk art made of beads and sequins, visually representing a Loa (god/spirit). The Loa of my flag is Erzulie Danthor who, as I understand it, is the goddess of love in her dark incarnation. Though I relate to the flag as a piece of art, I cannot help but be affected by its visual imagery of hearts, knives and blood and by the almost palpable energy that emanates from the object. As well, the piece uses imagery relating to the Catholic female icon, the Virgin Mary, to address the larger issues of the personal nature of religious expession, succor in emotional turmoil and the reclamation of traditional elements in an idiolectic spirituality." - the artist

Musically the composition explores the relationship between multiple vocal lines which build upon each other to form a textual audio landscape punctuated by loosely narrative lead voices. A stunning and deeply moving piece of music ritual. [listen]

Yoga (excerpt) (1998) is a choral piece that features the artist and members of her yoga class. It uses stringing pearls as a metaphore for breathing: each breath is a pearl. Optimally, a fine round, even parl, yet none canbe discarded no matter how rough or uneven. Like life...[listen]

CHRISTINE BACZEWSKA (New York, NY) is a composer and vocal performer who uses the multitrack capabilities of the recording studio as an added compositional tool to produce solo, primarily vocal works. top

Vivos Voco (1988) An excerpt from Barber's composition for five bellfries. Commissioned by the town of Valencia, Spain.

LLORENC BARBER (Spain) Biography unavailable. top

Survivors of Hama (1992) With writer Martin Hebel. A docu-fiction with an original sound score about the bombing of the Syrian city of Hama by its president Hafez al-Assad in 1982. This massacre, which was intended to stop rebellious dissent, killed thousands of innocent civilians and went almost completely unnoticed by the Western media. The story is told through four fictitious interviews with survivors and with Assad himself. The instrumentation for the sound score includes experimental home-made percussion instruments, Middle Eastern folk instruments, and electronic instruments. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

DAVID BARNES (Philadelphia, PA) is a musician and composer who specializes in studio recording. He has written and recorded many scores for modern dance and theater groups, including Philadelphia's ZeroMoving Dance Company and Mum Puppet Theater. Barnes has also released ten albums of his compositions and songs. Many of his recent compositions include experimental percussion instruments which he designed and constructed from industrial materials such as PVC tubing, threaded rods, springs, and conduit piping.

MARTIN D. HEBEL (Philadelphia, PA), writer. Hebel attended orthodox Jewish schools until he was seventeen, where he developed a strong interest in the politics and government of the contemporary Middle East. He has since studied art history at Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed a master's degree. Hebel spends a great deal of time grappling with issues of cultural identity and morality, and now and then he attempts to address them by writing about Middle Eastern matters. He has traveled and worked in Israel. top

Euroanthem (1990) (10:00) With playwright Herbert Kapfer and students from twenty-nine countries. A composition that uses as its raw material the names of leading politicians, greetings, currencies, sayings, tongue twisters, and folk songs spoken in many European languages . A witty and concrete pan-European vocal composition. Commissioned by Bayerischer Rundfunk, Munich, Germany.

ULRICH BASSENGE (Germany) Biography unavailable.

HERBERT KAPFER (Germany) Biography unavailable. top

Blodder (1994) An experimental music/ theater piece for radio that exploits the untapped theatrical and musical potential of a form of solo speech that gives the effect of simultaneous speech. It presents multiple narrative views and repetitive narration in the description of a convenience store robbery.

Blabber Mouth (1994-95) Live electronic music based on the counterintuitive notion that intelligible speech emerges from noise by continually increasing the restrictions placed on the sonic raw material of human vocal cords. Beginning with a wash of sound, the raw materials of my speech gradually transform from walls of phonemic screams into random linear combinations, from there into some semblance of words and, finally, into actual English words.

Bounced Around (1995) (22:00) Tells the story of a head-on collision between an idealistic law student and a veteran policeman. It is another exploration of what Belgum calls "polyphonic storytelling," a technique that reveals multiple narrative aspects simultaneously.

ERIK BELGUM (Minneapolis, MN) is a writer of experiential fiction and an audio artist. His fiction has been published in many literary journals, among them Chicago Review, Black Ice, and Caliban. Belgum's literary/audio/ soundtext works have been played throughout the United States, in concert, on radio, and on the CD audio magazine, Aerial. In 1994, he curated a concert of spoken word performance at the Walker Art Center. His international residencies include STEIM in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and the Banff Center for the Arts in Banff, Alberta, Canada. top

Families We Choose (1992) Glimpses into the arrangements made by gays and lesbians of all ages and ethnic backgrounds, who are living in long term relationships. A colorful, poignant and humorous mosaic of voices, music, and sounds that reflect on the home environment of its interviewees, the work deals with the myth that gays and lesbians are "by nature beyond the family." It looks at the reality of homosexual couples who are redefining kinship and constructing new parenting models -- in the context of the overall changing make-up of the American family.

The Deaf Way, Parts l & 2 (1990) A look at another culture, another language, another way of life. In these programs, deafness is presented as a variant of the human condition with its own remarkable history, achievements, and resources and not as a pathological problem, or inferior existence. The producer talked with deaf people of all ages and professions. Some chose to use their voices, others preferred to use a sign language interpreter. She visited schools for the deaf, deaf clubs, and churches for the deaf, and she participated in many activities related to deafness, among them the conference and festival, The Deaf Way, held in Washington, D.C. in July 1989.

REGINE BEYER (Berlin, Germany) was born and raised in Germany, where she produced over thirty documentaries for various public radio stations. She lived and worked in the U.S. as Associate Director of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. and Associate Producer of the NEW AMERICAN RADIO series from 1981 to 2002. While she continues to produce cultural documentaries (distributed independently and by National Public Radio), Beyer also gives workshops, curates radio art exhibits, and participates in international radio competitions and conferences. top

Garland Hirschi's Cow (1994) (11:58) "I awoke one morning to the sounds of cows mooing in the pasture next to my home. Music to my ears, the moos became the inspiration for a concerto in three 'moo-vements'. . . . The piece also includes the voice of the cows' owner as he tells the story of growing up with cows and what makes them moo." (Bimstein)

PHILLIP KENT BIMSTEIN (Rockville, UT) is a graduate of the Chicago Conservatory of Music. Stimulated by the Talking Heads and Elvis Costello, he formed his own new wave rock group Phil 'n the Blanks, and produced three albums. After further musical studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, Bimstein now lives next to the Zion National Park. Fascinated by language and the ability of music to tell a story, he frequently incorporates text in his music. top

Sender Freies Berlin Presents (1995) An audio essay on Sabine Breitsameter's show International Digital Radio Art on the multicultural channel of the radio station, Sender Freies Berlin, Germany. With comments and observations by Breitsameter, edited, mixed, and intercut with examples from some of her most recent shows. Produced by Regine Beyer.

SABINE BREITSAMETER (Berlin, Germany) is an independent feature documentary producer, curator of sound art events, critic, and the originator and host of the Sender Freies Berlin show, International Digital Radio Art. She is also one of the most knowledgeable German experts on the national and international radio/audio art scene. top

Inside Pandora's Box (1991) (16:00) Makes use of the myth of Pandora, the most beautiful woman in the world, who opens a box placed in her trust releasing all the plagues and suffering in the world. The box in this composition is the television set. The script for Inside Pandora's Box may be viewed as a collection of shards excavated from the TV medium, including real and fake commercials, jokes, excerpts from series, and commentaries. Musically speaking, the work straddles the fence between "serious" electroacoustic music and popular music, especially TV music. Formally, it is an attempt to apply film/video editing concepts to the structure of music. Commissioned by the Swedish National Institute for Concerts.

WILLIAM BRUNSON (Stockholm, Sweden) was born in Dallas, Texas, and has been living in Sweden since 1980. He is a composer, freelance music producer, and recording engineer for film, radio and record productions. Brunson is best known for his electroacoustic music (Tapestry II, Unseen, An Open Place, and others) which has been widely performed in Europe and the United States. top

The Ballad of Mistuh Jack (1992) A nonlinear narrative that unfolds in patterns similar to those of blues lyrics. There's a bar on the outskirts of a small Northeastern town. A bottle smashed against a table. A gun cocked. And for the first time Mistuh Jack, former steel mill worker, bar owner finds himself poised to do what he has always said he would do -- shoot anyone who disturbs the peace of his bar. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

J. RUFUS CALEB (Philadelphia, PA) received his Master of Arts from John Hopkins University and joined the english department at the Community College of Philadelphia in 1975. His plays have been produced for television, radio, and for the stage. He has also published poetry and short fiction in various magazines. He serves on the boards of the Philadelphia Young Playwrights Festival and the Theatre Association of Pennsylvania. top

Manananggal (1994) With Laetitia Sonami and Marie Goyette. Carnahan's story is about two powerful women who come under each other's influence, thereby releasing unconscious contents. Each begins to see the other as evil, bringing to life a type of vampire -- a woman who can cut her body in half -- the once-metaphorical beast known in Philippine folklore as "the manananggal." During the unraveling of their history, the two women again draw close, the leitmotif of each is firmly underscored as she projects onto the other woman emotions and elemental forces she has repressed in herself. Originally commissioned for stage by STEIM in Amsterdam. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

The Bench (1995) With Laetitia Sonami. This story takes place in a city square, depicting an episode in the lives of two street people, a man and a woman, as observed by a narrator who watches from her hotel balcony. Focusing in, the narrator begins to "hear" fragments from the minds of the lovers: The young man, once a classical pianist, now produces a hellish blues, which fuses with the courtyard's musique concrète, with shards of his narcissistic dreams, and with dehydrated strings of the older woman's distorted understanding. The narrator doesn't move to interfere, yet she is compelled by what she witnesses: Is the woman rescuing or destroying the man? Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO. [listen]

MELODY SUMNER CARNAHAN (Santa Fe, NM) received an M.F.A. in writing from Mills College where she began working with composers, including Robert Ashley. The author of story collections, The Time Is Now and Thirteen (Burning Books), and a Tibetan man's biography, In the Presence of My Enemies (Clear Light), she has published thirty works of fiction and essay in periodicals and anthologies including the San Francisco Chronicle and the City Lights Review. Experimental Intermedia Foundation commissioned a one-hour radio program featuring her collaborative works with composers, and other programs featuring her writing have been aired by KPFA, Berkeley, WEVL, Memphis, and CFUV in Victoria.

LAETITIA SONAMI (Oakland, CA) Originally from France where she studied with composer Eliane Radigue, Sonami moved to the U.S. in 1976, and has since been composing and performing live electronic solo works in numerous venues in the U.S. and abroad, including The Kitchen (NYC) and Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria. For three years she was awarded residencies at STEIM in Amsterdam, where she developed and adapted new gestural controllers for musical performance and composed works with them. Her compositions have been recorded Imaginary Landscapes (Electra Nonesuch), Jewel Box (Tellus 26), and Another Coast (Music & Arts).

Collaborator:

MARIE GOYETTE (Berlin, Germany) Co-composer/co-producer Manananggal. Goyette, originally from Montreal, studied piano at McGill University and with Radu Lupu in London. Since 1989 she has been working in the field of electronic music, collaborating with dancers, artists, and performers. She developed her interactive electronic shoes and belt—used in creating her vocal and musical composition for Manananggal—during a residency at STEIM in Amsterdam. top

Hommage to D.G. (1992) Metal pipes, pneumatic tubes, radio and television recordings, vocal articulations, processing equipment -- all combine to shape impulsive and aggressive sound textures with great impact. (#18, 93; #23, 95 with Messina and Rydberg)

CASPAR (Germany) Biography unavailable. top

World Soundprint: Pacific (1993) With composer/performer Jin Hi Kim. Two widely traveled musicians and well-known new music artists combine their creative sensibilities in search of the indigenous "soundprint" of four Asian countries. Many location recordings, such as, of aboriginal drones, the clanging cymbals of Korean shamans, the double reeds of Japan, the winds of New Zealand, sounds from airports around the Pacific Rim, and overheard conversations, identify and capture an aspect particular to and characteristic of a site or location on the composers' travels. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

JOSEPH CELLI (Connecticut) is the only oboist in America who has devoted his career to the performance of new and experimental music. For the past eighteen years Celli has commissioned and collaborated with composers to create an extensive body of new work for oboe and English horn. These works range from solo acoustic works to works with ensembles, live electronics, multimedia works and improvisation. Over the past decade Celli has studied and worked with the musics of Africa, India, and recently, Asia.

JIN HI KIM (Connecticut) was trained as a traditional musician in her native Korea. She came to the United States in 1980. She is a pioneer in the fusion of traditional and contemporary music in both her komungo (a six-string instrument) improvisations and her compositional activity. Kim has given solo concerts in the U.S., Canada, Belgium, Holland, Germany, and South America. She has worked with such contemporary improvisers as Elliott Sharp, Malcom Goldstein, and Henry Kaiser, and she has been commissioned to compose works for the Kronos Quartet, the California EAR Unit and other ensembles and soloists. top

Falling Free (1989) In a curious repeat of the history of Asian immigrants, this work focuses on an elderly Chinese-American woman left behind in an American suburb by a husband who wishes to return to his native China. More Americanized than he, her solitude proves a liberation. Told as a monologue with flash-backs to scenes from her earlier life, Falling Free is a delicate, poetic rendering of ambiguities: the ambiguity of the Chinese-American experience, and of human desire. An adaptation of a short story by the same name. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

DIANA CHANG is an accomplished writer whose poetry has appeared in such magazines as Chelsea, The New York Quarterly, The Nation, and The American Scholar, and whose novels have been published by Random House and Harper & Row. As a painter, Chang has had one-woman shows and appeared in many group exhibitions. An adjunct professor of English and the arts at Barnard College, New York City, she currently teaches creative writing in the English department, and imagery and form in the arts program. top

New and Curious Subjects (1994) (13:00) Using recordings of animals at Sydney's Taronga Zoo, this work is an "animal performance piece" that seeks to provide the quintessential zoo experience: curiosity, a feeling for the exotic, entertainment, and reflection. Cheney's outstanding sound recordings and studio mix were created with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's award-winning producer/engineers Phillip Ulman and John Jacobs.

The Listening Room Presents (1995) A portrait of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Listening Room series, which, since 1988 has commissioned and aired an amazing variety of sound expressions under the guidance of Roz Cheney. This program features an interview with Roz Cheney about the series' concept and most recent activities, along with excerpts from award-winning productions, edited and produced by Regine Beyer.

ROSLYN CHENEY is a founding member of Double Jay, Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Sydney station of contemporary music, cultural ideas, and politics, which began broadcasting in 1975. A former producer and director with the drama and features department as well as the comedy unit, Cheney is currently executive producer of the experimental audio/radio series, The Listening Room. top

Borderland (1990) With Alan Powell. An exploration of a psychic aural space just south of our consciousness. That very special location defined as "between the GRASS and where the GRASS is always greener". . . Borderland . . . plotted by scientific method and the Western white male gaze . . . that ever so elusive place of American media myth." (the artists) A collage that blends stories and found sounds in a contrapuntal assemblage of gender encounters and questions of "otherness." The stories include R. Gordon Wasson's recounting of his first psychotropic mushroom experience with the Mexican-Indian shaman, Maria Sabena, and Rosemarie Waldrop's tale of Washington, D.C., and the sacrifices of younq Aztec virgins. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

Ground Wars (Parts 1 and 2) (1991) With Alan Powell. An experiment with real life stories from neighbors and friends who knew soldiers in the Gulf War, juxtaposed with military statements taken off the air. Part 1: "The Interior" (internal/being within). The combat of daily living in a free and open society wherein politics and technology draw the lines of battle and everyone chooses sides. Part 2: "The Exterior" (outward/ foreign). Has the Third World War finally begun, or have we only just noticed the battle that's been raging for some time? Language appears to be the ultimate camouflage. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

CONNIE COLEMAN (New Jersey) received her education at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she majored in textile design. She is currently a lecturer at the University of the Arts, photo/film/animation department, in Philadelphia. As a video artist, Coleman has worked collaboratively with video artist Alan Powell for well over a decade. Their work has been presented in numerous exhibitions nationally and internationally.

ALAN POWELL (New Jersey) is currently an assistant professor in the radio/television/film department at Temple University. Coleman's and Powell's work has been presented in numerous exhibitions nationally and internationally, and has been shown on Swiss television, Montreal Cable TV, Swedish television, the Learning Channel, and WHYY-TV 12, among others. top

The Spark Heard 'Round the World (1989) A sonic portrait of the world as revealed through electromagnetic phenomena. It is shaped out of the tremendous buzz, hum, and squawk of the international communications systems: commercial FM and AM, short-wave and long-wave transmissions, HAM and CB radio, public service bands, Morse code, telex and other coded signals. A frenzied noisy striving for communication that thickens into an almost tangible morass of sound, then loosens into sound patterns and light textures. The human voice and its messages seem strangely lost in this environment—distorted, barely audible—while the transmission system itself sounds vibrant and amazingly alive. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

NICOLAS COLLINS (Chicago, Illinois) Nicolas Collins is currently Assistant Professor, Chair, Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Born in New York City in 1952, he began composing in 1972. He attended Wesleyan University (BA, 1976 and MA, 1979), and worked for several years with David Tudor. An heir to Tudor's school of "home-made" electronic circuitry, and a pioneer in the use of microcomputers in live performance, Collins has also made extensive use of radio and found sound material in his compositions and sound installations.

From 1992-95 Collins was visiting Artistic Director of Stichting STEIM (Amsterdam), and in 1996-97 a DAAD composer-in-residence in Berlin. Since 1997 he has been editor-in-chief of the Leonardo Music Journal. In September 1999, he joined the faculty of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. top

New Voices and Sounds is an inspired collage by NEW AMERICAN RADIO producers Helen Thorington and Regine Beyer, created from audio art works, improvisations, and compositions by women composers from across the country. Listen to the playful, punk-influenced avant-cabaret song, "I want a bald boyfriend" by the Qube Chix juxtaposed with Celia's surreal music/poetry influenced by the mysticism of her Aztec background (San Francisco). Hear Anna Hommler's pseudo-language explorations (Los Angeles) echo against the delicately meditative "Clearing, Mode of Dream" by Lynn Book (Chicago). Get into the spirit of Christine Baczewska's silly lyricism in "Letter From Home" and the wild and angry vocalizations of Elyse Kermani (New York). These artists have something to say, and they express themselves with passion, intelligence, and sensitivity.

A Beginner's Guide to Attracting Birds (1995) A tone-poem for radio that draws on a number of never used sounds from the composer's archives, as well as newly recorded materials such as the magical singing tones of high-tension wires in the wind, and the elusive musical hums of the Bay of La Speza (Italy). These sounds are as much about acoustic spaces as they are about geographical ones, and while all vastly different, are powerful sources of natural melody, rhythm, and harmony. Above all they are sounds that suggest the presence of "voices," human, ghostly or otherwise. The definitive character of A Beginner's Guide to Attracting Birds is given by the gradual and continuous digital transformation of these sounds into those of human voices. The work culminates in the slow emergence of John Cage's voice, based on fragmented samples of his Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard (1988-89). Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

ALVIN CURRAN (New York City/Oakland/ Rome) Alvin Curran is known internationally for his compositions, solo performances, and large scale sound installations. Inspired by the legacy of the American experimental music tradition, his 100 plus works embrace all the "contradictions." From these he forges a very personal musical language from all the "languages." He is dedicated to the restoration of dignity to the profession of making non-commercial music as part of a personal search for future social, political and spiritual forms. Curran has been the Milhaud Professor of Composition at Mills since 1992 where his seminars and private lessons embrace every aspect of being a professional in today's new-music world. Curran's work is recorded on CRI, New Albion, Catalyst/BMG, Tzadik, Centaur Wergo, Ellipsis, BTC, Music from Mills. top

Conundrums (1990) (13:00) A work reflecting aspects of the paradox of personal and cultural origins. Weaving together experiences from daily life and of the mass media, D'Agostino explores the soundscape around us all—its direct information and subliminal suggestions. Commentary challenges the assumptions of the listener in tying sound references to particular places. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

PETER D'AGOSTINO (Philadelphia, PA) was born in New York City in 1945 and educated at the School of Visual Arts, where he studied painting and sculpture. In the 1970s he began to work with video and video installations. Since that time, he has created works for numerous exhibitions, including the 1981 Whitney Biennial, and the 17th Biennial in Sao Paulo, Brasil, in 1983. Currently an assistant professor in the radio/television/film department, School of Communications and Theater at Temple University, Philadelphia, D'Agostino is widely recognized as one of the most important figures working in the video medium today. top

Napoli (1993) (12:00 excerpt) In spare, deliberate "snap shots," Napoli explores the sounds of one Italian city: steps and screams, songs and invocations, a celebration at Mount Vesuvius, traffic noise. . . At times, the microphone is used as a lens to enlarge acoustical fragments otherwise almost inaudible. In this way, micro-listening and macro listening exist side by side, adding to a sense of mystery: An immersion in the city through the mystery of hearing. Originally produced as an 8 channel sound installation produced for Kunstradio/ORF, Vienna, in collaboration with Audiobox/RAI, Rome.

ROBERTO PACI DALO (Rimini, Italy) A musician, composer, theater playwright and director, Dalo is considered among the most innovative contemporary European clarinetists. His composition Nodas was commissioned and premiered by the Kronos Quartet at the Vienna National Opera in 1993. His radio art works and audio installations have been presented in Austria, Italy, and Germany. top

Natchez to New York (1989) It's one of those quiet evenings on the front porch in Natchez, Mississippi. Just crickets, the distant sound of a few cars, and a bluesy song for harmonica and guitar—as sweet as the sugar shack it talks about. But there's trouble ahead as Neville, a down-home juke-joint man and Diana, who pursues a career at New York's Metropolitan Opera, collide. In Neville's words: "Good Lord woman, send Madam Butterfly back to bed. What's left to eat? I can't stand no opera on no empty stomach." They sing and fight and sing and fight until eventually, they go together—from Nachez to New York. An improvisational work in a fixed form! Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

OLU DARA ( is a jazz innovator who has been described as "part band leader, part jazz soloist, part soul singer, and part West African storytelling bard." Village Voice) Dara leads two New York groups that serve as backdrop to his bluesy humor and upbeat antics: the Okra Orchestra and the Natchezsippi Dance Band. Whether on cornet, harmonica or Tupperware, Dara's philosophy is to keep his approach to music within the traditions he learned as a child in Mississippi. He has recorded and performed with such talents as David Murray, Brian Eno, TaJ Mahal and Nona Hendrix. top

Requiem for Something Lost (1990) (7:00) The opening sketch for a larger musical work-in-progress. A child is being taken up the stairs by an older person. "Although the work is about some sort of abuse, I am not interested in what will happen but what is happening. At the given moment there are sounds of ascent: the dry scratch of the little shoes, the creak of wood, the smooth varnish of the banister, the gentle insistence of the adult's voice, the nonspecific reluctance of the child. The moment is one of sadness, loss, and anger." (Davidson) Requiem for Something Lost is a piece for solo saxophone, multiple saxophones, and sounds set within a sound environment created by Gregory Whitehead. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

TINA DAVIDSON (Philadelphia, PA) was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1952 and raised in the United States. She has written for orchestra, mixed instrumental and vocal ensembles, soloists, live performers, and prerecorded tape. Her music has been performed throughout the United States and parts of Europe by many orchestras and ensembles, including the Kronos Quartet, the Relache Ensemble and the Mendelsohn String Quartet. top

The Opponent's Queen: Detail (1990) A strategy of moves between two players who are interested in preserving passion through competition. Speculations, emotions, and philosophies are developed through meetings and endings as the opponents struggle to attain their highest forms. (Derived from the epistolary novel, The Opponent's Queen, written in collaboration with Melody Sumner Carnahan.) Created especially for NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

What Is the Matter in Amy Glennon? (1989) "A magnificent postmodern alchemical opus, the story of Amy Glennon who faces the dark ground of herself and thereby transmutes her bitterness into wisdom, who unites her matter and mind, and who redeems a human soul from the body of a putrefying snake -- all toward the fruitful marriage of pure science and mythological philosophy." (from the work) Winner of a Special Commendation at the 1991 PRIX FUTURA Berlin. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

SHEILA DAVIES (Berkeley, CA) Sheila Davies studied short story writing at the University of Oregon, San Francisco State University, and Mills College. She is a past member of the vocal trio Girls Looking for Husbands. Her work as an experimental writer, singer, and radio producer has been aired on KPFA-FM (Berkeley), and through National Public Radio. Together with her husband, graphic designer Patrick Sumner, Davies also created One of One (Burning Books), an art book in magazine form. She has completed two works for New American Radio: What Is the Matter in Amy Glennon? (1989) and The Opponent's Queen: Detail (1990). After an eleven year break (1991-2002), Davies is now beginning new work in fiction and memoir. top

See Allyn, Jerri, "American Dining: A Working Woman's Moment"; and Earwax Productions' "Bloody Angle," and "Ecomania, Parts 1 and 2."top

Birds of the Cathedral (1993)(14:10) A musical exploration of man's relationship to birds. Specifically, it deals with the age-old connection between those birds living in the vicinity of the Budapest cathedral and the human inhabitants of the city. The two basic sound layers are sounds from the world of man and from the world of birds. They can be heard separately from each other, entwining and "rhyming" with each other, and contrasting each other. Ultimately, with the help of computer programs, they are transformed and completed in a synthetic world of sounds. Produced for Magyar Radio.

JANOS DECSENYI (Budapest, Hungary) is a composer whose interests cover a wide range of musical ground. He has composed symphonic and chamber music, chorales, film music, electroacoustic music and incidental music for radio and theater. Since 1951 he has been on the staff of Magyar Radio, Budapest. Among his many awards are the Erkel Prize (1975), the prize of the Hungarian critics (1981 and 1991) and Honored Artist (1986). top

The Seattle Sound (1994) (14:20) "When I was asked to do a segment for AUDIOBOX/ RAI, Italy, with a special theme, I decided to work with the cliché "The Seattle Sound." There is so much hype and media attention given to the music, fashion, and "Generation X" attitude coming from the grunge phenomenon in Seattle. But Seattle has many other subcultures and forms of expression from the streets. . . So one day, I took my tape recorder and walked around . . . I found many natural rhythms and interesting tones in the streets, and so I constructed a piece of "music concrète". . . To complete the work, I composed and played music on alto saxophone, accordion, percussion, guitar, bass guitar, voice, and Celtic harp." (the artist)

AMY DENIO (Seattle, WA) is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and composer. A founding member of the rock groups Tone Dogs and Nudes (with Chris Cutler and Wadi Gysi), she regularly tours with the all-female Billy Tipton Memorial Saxophone Quartet. Denio also composes for theater, dance, cinema, and television. top

Vanishing Act II (1993) (10:00) With sound design by Brenda Hutchinson. A woman journeys from the inner city to the country -- to return a lost pet to its eighty-four-year-old owner, Alice. A journey through memories takes place as Alice searches among her possessions for an appropriate reward. Her voice and the sounds that accompany memory bring life to a collection of inanimate objects. Their invisible pasts and unseen meanings, good and bad, are released like genies from the lamp. Co commissioned by Harvestworks, Inc., the Wexner Center for the Arts, and NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

CONSTANCE DEJONG (New York) is an award-winning author who has made performance a natural extension of her writing. Since 1977 she has toured extensively in the U.S., Canada, and Europe presenting oral adaptations of her texts. She was the librettist for the Philip Glass opera Satyagraha and has recently collaborated on several video works. top

Flying Apples (1995) (10:10) An algorithmic composition that takes the listener into the colorful, playful, and fantastic realm of an unfinished childhood dream. Programmed in Small-talk language, using extremely nested patterns based on a repeated three-note motive, the work was completed on newly developed software operating on a Mac workstation at the Computer Center of Research in Music and Acoustic, Stanford University.

KUI DONG (Mountain View, CA) was born in Beijing, China in 1967. She is currently completing her doctoral degrees in composition and computer music at Stanford University. Her credits include a 1995 ASCAP Grant for young composers and a 1995 Djerassi fellowship (San Francisco). Her music has been performed by the China's Women's Philharmonic (Beijing), the Windsor Symphony (Canada) and Alea III (Boston, Massachusetts) as well as others. top

Mesmer—Secrets of the Human Frame (1991) Both abstract and sensual, sci-fi and reality, Mesmer traces the way we construct human identity and subjectivity, and reflects the images we have created of our relationship to technology: "There was a story to tell, and the story was about the century we're about to exit. It starts with Thomas Edison, the birth of cinema, the phonograph. With Freud and psychoanalysis. With the gothic novel and the Industrial Revolution. And the story is about how we changed as the century changed. This story is about building an Android." (from the work) With a soundtrack by the artist composed entirely from electronically processed vocal sound. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

The Blessed Abyss—A Tale of Unmanageable Ecstasies (1991) A composition that began with the idea of the popular song as a story or narrative of romantic love. "I then started applying one of my favorite themes to the topic: our changing social constructions of identity in an era of transition (technological revolution) and the dialectic between private intention and social narrative." (Dove) The result: a sensual and powerful series of narrative songs that deal with desire and repression and the return of the repressed in the form of excesses and ecstasies. Composed from a variety of texts— ecstatic Persian poetry, erotic literature, snips of film dialogue, excerpts from nineteenth-century American writings on sexual and social mores, and lyrics from opera and contemporary song—The Blessed Abyss includes a duet between "Repression" and "Desire," and a polyvocal chorus of "Rapture and Ecstasy." Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

TONI DOVE (New York, NY), originally from Boston, began her career as a painter. In the 1980s she started to work with electronic media—visual and audio. Her credits include one-person exhibits in San Francisco and Brookline, Massachusetts; group exhibits at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, and the David Adamson Gallery in Washington, D.C. Her first major radio work, Mesmer was originally presented in 1990 as an installation in Brooklyn, New York, commissioned by Creative Time, Inc. for Art in the Anchorage. top

After Roe (1992) A blend of documentary and fiction, in which everything is true and false, credible and incredible, real and imagined. The work explores the social and cultural consequences of the criminalizing of abortion in America. It not only looks back at life before Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion, but projects itself forward into an imaginary near future when the U.S. once again denies women the right to legal abortion. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

JULIE DRIZIN (Washington, DC) is a former long-time independent producer and former News and Public Affairs Director at WXPN-FM in Philadelphia. She has received numerous national, state, and local awards for her radio productions, which include documentaries, features, newsmagazine programs, live special events, and commentaries. Her nationally distributed documentary work includes: Kitchen Table Talk: Women and Sexuality in the Soviet Union; and Unfriendly Fire: Lesbians and Gays in the U.S. Military. Drizin is currently news director of the Pacifica News Network. top

Killing the Cat (1990) (10:00) A sound story about Dufty's family's contradictory history of one-upsmanship and secrecy about disease, and the endless battle of choosing to act or flee when faced with the necessity of decision. The title refers to the culminating moment in one week of Dufty's life, when, in the space of a few days "I got mugged, then attacked, and then discovered that my mother had an incurable cancer, her secret. After an all-night drive to confront her, and just a few miles before arriving, I ran over a cat. Stopping, I sat in the darkness next to it, waiting for it to die." (Dufty) Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

ALLISON DUFTY (San Francisco, CA) received her B.A. in English with honors from Temple University, Philadelphia. She is the president and founder of Talk/Story Productions, and has supported a habit in radio as a waitress (retired), fashion model, and radio feature reporter/producer for Philadelphia station, WHYY-FM and the nationally syndicated public radio program, Fresh Air. Dufty is currently with San Franciso's Magic Theater. top

The Logic of Waste (1990) How does Japan dispose of the tremendous amount of waste its gift wrapping tradition creates? What proposals have been developed in the Soviet Union to eliminate nuclear missiles? And what methods seem to help Anglo-Saxon middle-class Canberra, Australia deal with the uncomfortable culture of its Hispanic immigrants? These questions are pursued in this audio-art documentary with remarkable subtlety and intelligence. Commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Voices Lost and Calling (1989) A highly original and intriguing radio art suspense story. It opens with a woman friend telling the narrator that she'd been hearing voices in the middle of the night but that no one was there, and that she had the uncanny feeling that it was she herself who was speaking, but in a voice not her own. The narrator does not know how to respond and is relieved when the telephone rings. But as soon as she picks up the phone the call is terminated. More terminated calls follow. "Voices without bodies. Calls without callers. I had the impression of a massive but anonymous switchboard dialing in, perhaps to check on my continued existence." Will she be able to listen and thus be truly "called"? Who is the voiceless caller from the other side? Commissioned by The Listening Room, Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

FRANCES DYSON (Sydney, Australia) is a sound designer and freelance radio producer. She has produced a number of experimental audio works for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. top

Audiographs: Songs from the Tenderloin (1987) Barney Jones, Marcos Kounilakis, and Jim McKee. Condensed and dramatized portraits of people living on the streets of San Francisco. Recorded interviews form the basis of this work, but interviews set in alternating environments: in the street and within a musical score. In the music, the edited and repeated voices become part of the rhythm: recurring beats that intensify the toughness and tenderness of the people's reflections— the pain, humor, and ethics that govern their lives. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

Bloody Angle (1990) Bob Davis with Naut Humon. On 5 May 1864 Generals Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant commenced a bloody and relentless struggle that would finally end eleven moths later at Appomattox Court House. The climactic point was reached on 12 May at the Bloody Angle, where the longest sustained hand-to-hand combat in recorded history was fought. In 1989 the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park sponsored a series of lectures, tours, and symposia in commemoration of the battle. Naut Humon, leader of the industrial culture band Rhythm and Noise, attended and recorded these events. With sound designer Bob Davis, he created an astounding, larger-than-life acoustic spectacle that echoes the inhuman mania of war. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

Ecomania, Parts 1 and 2 (1992) Barney Jones and Bob Davis with students from the Redwood High School's Ensemble Theater. Addresses the complicated and controversial issue of commercial logging in Northern California, its long-term effects on the communities involved and the planet. Students from the Ensemble Theater Company conducted numerous interviews with members of lumber companies in Arcata and Eureka, California, with loggers, housewives, protesters, business people, Earth Firsters, hippies and foresters, as well as recording their own impressions of the people and the area. They then made the material into a stage play excerpts of which are woven into this documentary. Ecomania is musical, dramatic and informative, and takes an open-minded approach to its subject matter.

Metal—Views from the Karamozov Vista (1989) Jim McKee with Andy Newell. A curious, sympathetic glimpse into the heavy metal music industry and its social environment: the music, the artists, the producers, the fans, the parents, the opposition. Meet Sandy Pearlman who coined the term Heavy Metal. Listen to bands like "Exodus" and musicians like Joe Satriani. Hear what Debbie Abonos, at sixty-four the oldest female roady in the business, has to say. Never mind you don't like the music and you're strictly anti-violence, anti-Satanic cult, anti-Nazi cult. Metal offers some unexpected observations and is presented with a remarkably artistic/digital touch. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

Virtual Paradise—The Reality Tape (1992-93) With David Lawrence. An exciting production created in the spirit of the technology it focuses on. Virtual Paradise examines the ideas, issues, and attitudes that currently surround virtual reality. As this technology evolves, it brings with it the potential for redefining our most basic assumptions about media, experience, and reality. Virtual Paradise features many voices recorded at Cyberthon, a 24-hour virtual reality event presented by Whole Earth Institute in 1990. It also includes interviews with such visionaries as science-fiction author William Gibson, VR architect Jaron Lanier, artificial reality pioneer Myron Krueger, and Timothy Leary—all intercut with music and sound effects and shaped into a highly entertaining and insightful "virtual" tape composition. Virtual Paradise was the winner of the 1994 AIR Award for Innovation and Excellence. Production assistance by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

Wake for Tom (1991) A follow-up on Audiographs—Songs from the Tenderloin created in 1987. Using the techniques developed for the earlier work, Wake for Tom takes interviews with people living on the streets of San Francisco and sets them in alternating environments: in the street and within a musical score. It explores the lives of the same close-knit group of alcoholic panhandlers. Many have died in the intervening four years, including Tom Scanlon, one of the principal voices in the earlier work. Interviews with him made just before his death are intercut with interviews with his friends and with the professionals whose job it is to deal with the death of indigents. A moving continuation of a sad, humorous, and virtually untold story about America's homeless. Barney Jones and Jim McKee are the producers.

EARWAX PRODUCTIONS, an award-winning sound design facility in San Francisco, founded in 1984, produces original sound design and music for all media. In addition, it offers a wide array of professional recording studio services (recording booth, CD mastering, audio clean-up, voice editing, etc.). Its group of designers and composers, along with the company's owners, Barney Jones and Jim McKee, work in film, television, radio, multimedia, as well as design/provide audio for tours, museum and theme park installations, toys and electronics, and the Internet. Their projects range from major Hollywood features to educational CD-ROMs, and from online cartoon episodes to interactive museum installations.

Earwax Productions Inc. was voted best sound design team in San Francisco and has won honors in The Bay Area Critics Circle awards, Northern California Broadcasters, Association of Independents in Radio, as well as the Academy Award for Francis Ford Coppola's production of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Composers/ Sound Designers/ Engineers:

BOB DAVIS (San Francisco, CA) has worked as a composer and musical director with San Francisco-based SOON 3 Theater since 1980; during 1982-83 he was sound engineer for over seventy-five performances of Laurie Anderson's "United States." Davis has also collaborated with dancers Karen Epperlein, poet G.P. Skratz, and cartoonist Dori Seda.

BARNEY JONES (San Francisco, CA) is a composer and sound designer, and a partner in Earwax Productions. He is also a conductor. For over fifteen years he has been the principal conductor of the Chicago Light Opera Works. He has produced numerous radio dramas for public radio, including the Sheila Davies production, What Is the Matter in Amy Glennon? for New American Radio.

JIM MCKEE (San Francisco, CA), a partner in Earwax Productions of San Francisco, is a composer and sound designer. He worked on such Antenna Theater productions as Amnesia and Russia, which were presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's "Next Wave" festival. McKee has also worked on many large-scale radio drama productions with Eric Bauersfeld for KPFA, Berkeley, and National Public Radio.

ANDY NEWELL (San Francisco, CA), a visiting professor of composition at the University of Illinois for three years, and the producer of several rock groups in the Chicago area, is also one of Earwax's principal composer/ producers. He has recently completed work for Apple's Multi Media Group, and a new song demo with singer/writer Sheila Riley.

Collaborators:

NAUT HUMON (San Francisco, CA) collaborator: Bloody Angle. The leader of Rhythm and Noise, an industrial culture band featuring a combination of state of the arts technology and original percussion creations. R&N works to understand the harmonics of noise as well as its dissonance. Their live performances are startlingly grand in gesture: big dissonant sounds and a choreography in which every movement is related directly to the production of the sounds.

DAVID H. LAWRENCE (San Francisco, CA), collaborator Virtual Paradise—The Reality Tape. Lawrence is an independent designer and producer. From 1986-88 he worked with the San Francisco-based Lukas Film Education Group in interactive media. He also produced a series of interactive video discs that teach American history (Geography Society), and produced The Mystery of the Disappearing Ducks (for the Audubon Society). In 1991 Lawrence was an Artist-in-Residence at San Francisco's Exploratorium. top

Shoot the Moving Things (1987-89) The story of an early morning hunting trip, told by the artist using electronic voice manipulations, evocative sound, and his exceptional singing voice. The music is Eckert's own—original new age, rap, rock, and country gospel. It drives his narrative along giving intensity and passion to its unfolding. Shoot the Moving Things was created for Soundings (KPFK-FM, Los Angeles, Jacki Apple host) and High Performance in 1987 and reworked in 1989 especially for NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

Cold War Diary (1990) A thought-travelogue. Somewhere in Europe a woman stands at her hotel window. She looks out over a public square, contemplates the monuments, writes mental postcards, and more importantly, asks about a person apparently missing. An intriguing blend of new music/audio art and performance. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

Four Songs Lost in a Wall (1995) An elaborate multi-vocal and instrumental piece based on the story of the famous eighteenth century castrate Carlo Broschi Farinelli. In 1737 Farinelli was commissioned by King Philip V of Spain to sing the same four songs every night. Philip reigned nine years thereafter! Four Songs Lost in a Wall evolves around the repetition and evolution of those songs, ranging from the sentimental ballad to aria to contrapuntal choral arrangements to processed voice overlays. The piece focuses on Eckert's own exquisite falsetto voice, which over the years has become a major aspect of his musical life. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

RINDE ECKERT (Santa Monica, CA) Rinde Eckert is a singer, writer, composer, actor, and director known internationally for the remarkable flexibility and inventiveness of his singing voice. His solo pieces and collaborations with other composers, dancers, and musicians have been performed throughout North America and abroad. Long celebrated for his performances in multimedia with the Paul Dresher Ensemble and the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, his more recent work as a solo artist has won him wide acclaim. Described as "the most exciting performance artist this writer has encountered since the early days of Laurie Anderson" by John Rockwell, critic for the New York Times, Eckert's musical approach transcends stylistic pigeonholes. He is a classically trained singer who has expanded his vocabulary to reflect a wide range of contemporary musical styles. This modern treatment of a variety of vernacular and classical music straddles the boundary between the time-honored and the new, the mysterious and the familiar, taking the listener on an uncommonly fascinating journey. top

See Allison, Jay, "Hide and Seek," "Killer Whales," and "Noah's Ark." top

Brick Bread Oven (1989) Quality bread, the product of an old world craft is a commodity much sought after by today's health-conscious new world consumers. But what of the way it is made? What of the brick oven in which it is baked. Tucked away in the tenement basements in New York's lower Manhattan, the brick bread oven is still the heart of some small bakeries. This work presents a night and day in the life of a 100-year-old coal-fired oven in one of these family businesses. Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

STEPHEN ERICKSON is a radio producer, sound recordist, and audio engineer. For ten years he has produced news, features, documentaries, drama, sound installations and books-on-tape. Among his most notable documentary productions for radio are two works for the series, The Territory of Art: Radiowaves and The Exile of Breyten Brextenbach. Erickson has also collaborated with award-winning playwright/composer Elisabeth Swados on the radio production of Jerusalem, an oratorio for twenty voices and percussion. His work, The Undead, recently won a Special Commendation at the 1995 PRIX FUTURA Berlin. Erickson now works in New York City and in Berlin, Germany, where he has audio studios. top