We’re just getting started workshopping a new piece for our October 13th performance at Issue Project Room (at Our Lady of Lebanon Cathedral). Composer Thanasis Deligiannis is meeting with the 5 singers for the project individually, to get to know our voices and personalities as he assembles the new work, Ignored Manuals.
Our first few meetings have involved the standard “what’s your range” discussions, but quickly moved into a more exciting creative process, with Thanasis singing to us fragments of the piece for us to imitate. Though we are moving towards a written score in the end, starting off with this kind of rote process affords us a kind of musical communication more focused on timbre and other subtle sonic details of vocal sound. In a way it reminds me of learning a language from tapes in the car; we’re beginning with pure sonic mimicry, and eventually getting to analysis and written communication.
Oh, and Thanasis’s isn’t the only voice that might be imitated…