Meditations on a Landscape (2015)

Meditations on a Landscape is for soprano with live processing and fixed media and is composed for the acclaimed American soprano Juliana Janes Yaffé. These are studio recordings of the first two songs, ‘It’s Bleak’ and ‘Helter Skelter’.
The texts of these songs are from the poetry of Penny Ann Windsor. Penny Ann Windsor’s volume ‘On the Edges of my Skirt’ explore the poet’s return to the land of her childhood, the Somerset Levels (the South West of England) reflecting on the land, waterscapes and the change of seasons. This is reclaimed land from the sea that has a natural tendency to flood.
These songs explore musically some of the images and qualities embedded in the poetry. The composition is a personal musical reflection upon the land and the singer’s (poet’s) relationship to it.
This is a through-composed piece where the voice is transformed with digital delays, pitch shifting, filtering using Max/MSP software. The piece includes sounds recorded in the environment as well as electroacoustically composed material.

The title of the three songs are:

  1. Bleak
  2. Helter Skelter
  3. Invitation

Soprano: Juliana Janes Yaffé

 
Performances:
1. Sound + Environment conference, Hull University, Middleton Hall (1/7/2017) (soprano Juliana Janes Yaffé)
2. NYCEMF2017, Abrons Arts Center, NYC. (22/6/2017) (New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival) (soprano Juliana Janes Yaffé)
3. CMRC, York University PaR session – invited lecture with performance 25/4/2017 (soprano Juliana Janes Yaffé)
4. THIS Festival ‘non-classical night’, Leeds, 16/3/2017 (soprano Juliana Janes Yaffé)
5. INTIME2015 Symposium, Coventry University, (25/10/2015) (soprano Juliana Janes Yaffe’)