{"id":892,"date":"2009-06-10T11:45:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-10T11:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/wordpress\/?p=892"},"modified":"2011-03-02T21:19:53","modified_gmt":"2011-03-02T21:19:53","slug":"joan-la-barbara-in-the-presence-of-greatness-part-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/2009\/06\/joan-la-barbara-in-the-presence-of-greatness-part-4.html","title":{"rendered":"Joan La Barbara (In the Presence of Greatness? part 4)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like most things<\/a> in life, it seems, I first came across Joan La Barbara<\/a>‘s music unwittingly when watching Sesame Street<\/span><\/a> as a kid. Apart from that, although I knew she was a composer I’d never (consciously) heard any of her own music. I suspect I wasn’t the only one in that situation who went to hear her free recital at the ICA the other weekend.<\/p>\n

In the introduction to one of her pieces, La Barbara herself made a passing reference to her fame lying elsewhere, as a singer and interpreter of other people’s music<\/a> (cue the rollcall: John Cage Morton Feldman Morton Subotnick Philip Glass…). Presumably it was a mixture of admiration for her vocal talent and curiosity about her compositional talent that resulted in the little room being filled to capacity on a rare sunny Sunday afternoon, with a bunch of us having to stand. (Including myself: the last available seat was nabbed by my ex-girlfriend.)<\/p>\n

Afterwards, I asked the ex what she thought of her comfy concert experience. At first she said it was “a bit hippyish” but then revised her opinion: it’s not La Barbara’s fault that her pioneering work in experimental vocal music has helped spawn a couple of generations of inferior imitators.<\/p>\n

There’s also the methodical approach to much of La Barbara’s music that saves it from self-indulgence. She performed two of her earliest works, from the early 1970s, beginning with Circular Song<\/span>. This piece requires her to sing sliding scales using circular breathing<\/a> – a technique never really intended for singing – embodies two distinct approaches in her music, exploring new techniques while following a clearly defined process.<\/p>\n

Performance Piece<\/span> played most dramatically with these two tendencies. Essentially it’s a improvisation, with one caveat: whenever La Barbara realised she was thinking consciously of the sounds she was making, she had to verbalise those thoughts. The performance then became a balancing act between sound and speech, one half of the brain holding the other at bay.<\/p>\n

Only one piece required anything more than La Barbara’s voice and a microphone. The more recent 73 Poems<\/span> was a multitracked vocalisation of Kenneth Goldsmith’s poetry, mimicking the overlaying of Goldsmith’s texts. You can see and supposedly hear the collaboration here<\/a>, but the sound doesn’t seem to be working. Some functional sound examples are here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like most things in life, it seems, I first came across Joan La Barbara‘s music unwittingly when watching Sesame Street as a kid. Apart from that, although I knew she was a composer I’d never (consciously) heard any of her own music. I suspect I wasn’t the only one in that situation who went to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=892"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4743,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892\/revisions\/4743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}