Text: James Wright’s “At The Executed Murderer’s Grave.”
An Expressionistic reading, with many voices of ghosts and madmen.
Recorded June 26, 2010, at the Marylander.
Richard Goldberg (vox), Stephen Edwards (piano, laser harp), Rachel Monroe (vox), Dara Weinberg (vox, dir), Jesse Wharton (saxophone)
Rehearsal notes: The recording alternates between male voice leading with piano and female voices leading with laser harp percussion set. Saxophone throughout.
This is our longest chorus so far: 6 minutes, a 2-page poem. Recorded all in one continuous take, with some editing of volume levels. Stephen walked back and forth between the laser harp and the piano in between stanzas, and I cut out the white space in post, sometimes even creating overlap between instruments where there was none. But it has the energy of an unbroken shot. It reminds me of what we did with “Emperor of Ice-Cream.”
Due to the poem’s length and complexity, we’re going to resume work on it in the next session.
||8ve: the parallel octave chorus 