||8ve: the parallel octave chorus

Text: James Wright’s “At The Executed Murderer’s Grave.”

An Expressionistic reading, with many voices of ghosts and madmen.

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Text: William Blake’s LONDON.

Two different chorus recordings combined, with the voices completing the poem at different points:

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Texts: Dylan Thomas’s “A Refusal To Mourn The Death, By Fire, Of A Child In London,” John Donne’s “Song,” and, yes, again, Wallace Stevens’s “Emperor of Ice-Cream.” The text is quiet on a lot of these, which I think may be due to the acoustics of the Sherwood Room.

“Refusal” on Banhart / Bob Dylan / ballad mode:

“Refusal,” soprano sax, percussion & text as musical element:

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Texts: Allen Ginsberg, “A Supermarket In California” and
Shakespeare, Sonnets 126 and 128. One of the interesting things about the laser harp is how quickly it can be triggered, making one note follow another more rapidly than on a traditional instrument. This shows up in all the files from this session.

Sonnet 126, with laser harp on percussion set:

Ginsberg, slow and reflective, two-voice chorus, plus a surreal laser harp sound set:

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Text: John Donne, “The Apparition.” Just because you never imagined it with a saxophone before this…right? This session was a good example of adapting the text to the chorus players at hand.

Saxophone, two voices:

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Text: [poet redacted], “Die Rich.” (This is one of my favorite sessions so far. The takes are very different.)

Solo voice, once-upon-a-time-piano, accelerated background chorus:

Sinister, staggered chorus, piano, trombone:

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Text: W.H. Auden, “Death’s Echo”
[Sound files from this session being edited, somewhere in Berlin]

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Text: Wallace Stevens, “The Emperor Of Ice-Cream,” reprise

Chorus vocals only:

Same vocals, plus trombone and piano:

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Texts: Plato, selections from Republic
Wendy Cope, “Bloody Men”
Philip Larkin, “This Be The Verse”

So, what happens when you have two twelve-line poems with similar forms and tones? This. First BM on its own, then TBTV on its own, then a death-match of the genders to see who’s more depressed.

And now, “Bloody Men” and “This Be The Verse” as a round/mashup.

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Texts: W.B. Yeats, “No Second Troy,” “A Drinking Song,” and “Two Years Later”
This was the first week where things got really experimental. It was a theme-variation week: in each of these recordings, there’s a fairly straightforward statement of the text, and it gets wilder from there on out.

“No Second Troy” mix, with chorus vocals and guitar:

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