Pamela Z
works for solo voice, electronics, and video
THU APR 11, 7:30PM PDT
THU APR 11, 7:30PM PDT
PROGRAM
Quatre Couches (2015)
Flare Stains (2010)
Typewriter (1995)
Declaratives (2005)
Badagada (1988)
Syrinx (2003)
Flock (2024)
Sixteen Actions (2013)
La Vapeur (2019
Le Corps (2019 / 2022)
Unknown Person (from Baggage Allowance, 2010)
Other Rooms (2018)
Scared Song (Monk, 1987)
All works composed by Pamela Z
© Last Letter Miusic (ASCAP)
Except Scared Song (by Meredith Monk 1987)
PROGRAM NOTES
Quatre Couches is a sonic trifle, tiramisu, or mille-feuille – juxtaposing four contrasting layers and toying with them – mixing them and moving them around on the plate until they all melt away. Flare Stains is a sonic poem on the residue left by emergency flares. Typewriter uses voice, processing, and typewriter samples (triggered with a gesture controller). Declaratives combines live and sampled text fragments, which are further fragmented and layered through delay and granulation processes. The text samples were originally created for a six-channel sound installation in an exhibition called “The Art of Artist Statement.” In Badagada one of my early digital delay pieces, the syllables "ba-da-ga-da-ga-da-ga-da-ga" are layered in multiple delay lines to form a harmonic, rhythmic accompaniment to a melody sung in English. Syrinx is named for the avian vocal organ. In this little extract from my longer 2004 sound work, a birdsong is pitch-shifted and consequently stretched until its individual notes are slow enough and low enough to be accurately produced by a human voice. Flock, which incorporates the sampled voice of dancer Jesse Zaritt, is a structured improvisational meditation on the curious naming of groups of birds. Sixteen Actions is a work involving live video capture and gesture-controlled audio and video samples. La Vapeur is a bit of sonic and visual exploration inspired by a flume of steam from a pipe seen through the window of a gallery at MoMA in New York. Le Corps is woven from layered samples of French choreographer Christine Bonansea’s speaking voice, which are played using a gesture-controlled MIDI instrument. Unknown Person is an excerpt from Baggage Allowance, an intermedia work that scans and inventories the belongings (and memories) we all cart around. Other Rooms is constructed from samples of the speaking voice of Paul David Young taken from an interview I recorded as part of the process of making my performance work, Memory Trace. Scared Song is a work by Meredith Monk from her 1987 album “Do You Be”. Tonight’s performance is my live version of the studio arrangement I made for my track on her 2012 tribute CD “Monk Mix”.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist working with voice, live electronic processing, sampled sound, and video. A pioneer of live digital looping techniques, she processes her voice in real time to create dense, complex sonic layers. Her solo works combine experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, and sampled concrète sounds. She uses MAX MSP and Isadora software on a MacBook Pro along with custom MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate sound and image with physical gestures. Her performances range in scale from small concerts in galleries to large-scale multi-media works in theaters and concert halls. In addition to her performances, she has a growing body of installation works using multi-channel sound and video.
Pamela Z has toured extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan – performing in international festivals and venues including Bang on a Can at Lincoln Center (NY); La Biennale di Venezia; San Francisco Symphony’s SoundBox, the Japan Interlink Festival; Other Minds (San Francisco); and Pina Bausch Tanztheater’s Festival (Wuppertal, Germany). She has received commissions to compose live and fixed-media scores for choreographers and film/video artists. Her large-scale, performance works, including Memory Trace, Baggage Allowance, Voci, and Gaijin, have been presented at venues like the Kitchen in New York, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Theater Artaud (Z Space) in San Francisco, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, as well as at theaters in Washington D.C. and Budapest. Her one-act opera Wunderkabinet inspired by the Museum of Jurassic Technology (co-composed with Matthew Brubeck) premiered at The LAB in San Francisco, and was presented at REDCAT in LA and Open Ears Festival in Canada. She has shown work in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (New York), the Whitney Museum (New York); Savvy Contemporary (Berlin); the Tang Museum (Saratoga Springs NY); the Dakar Biennale (Sénégal); Krannert Art Museum (IL), and the Kitchen (NY).
Ms. Z has received commissions from chamber ensembles including Kronos Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, Bang On A Can All Stars; Ethel, Del Sol Quartet, California E.A.R. Unit; Left Coast Chamber Ensemble; and Empyrean Ensemble. She recently composed a work for soprano Julia Bullock and the San Francisco Symphony. She has collaborated with a wide range of artists including Joan La Barbara, Joan Jeanrenaud, Brenda Way (ODC Dance), Miya Masaoka, Jeanne Finley + John Muse, Shinichi Iova Koga (Inkboat), and Luciano Chessa. She has participated in New Music Theatre’s John Cage festivals, and has performed with The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players.
Pamela Z is the recipient of many honors and awards including the Rome Prize, MIT McDermott Award, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Dorothea Tanning Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, United States Artists, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Doris Duke Artist Impact Award, a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation residency, the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts; Creative Capital; the MAP Fund, the ASCAP Music Award; an Ars Electronica honorable mention; and the NEA Japan/US Friendship Commission Fellowship. She holds a music degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.