The singing subject is both site-of and author-of her practice. This practice-based, artistic research unpacks the entangled process of making new music, conscious that the performer-author is the site where embodied problem solving takes place. The principal focus of the paper is the author's realization of Alexander Garsden's [ja] Maser, for voice and electronics, created by recording and reconstituting vocal elements using traditional compositional and performative methods as well as studio recording and granular synthesis. The author approaches the realization of this new work as an experimental practice in dialogue with theoretical frames that inform and situate the research. "The grain of the voice" (Barthes) is a central theoretical touch-point for this case-study which also engages with ideas derived from texts by Connor, Deleuze and Guattari, Dolar, Chion, Auslander, Cavarero and Harraway. The author contends that theoretical grounding can be utilized to support and parse vocal practice, mediated by technology and the collaborative process, to more effectively negotiate performer subjectivity in the realization of new music. The results of these investigations through artistic research provide insight into the approaches a performer might devise to solve practical and philosophical problems in new electro-acoustic music while negotiating the granular, unstable nature of subjectivity.
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Collaborative and Distributed Processes in Contemporary Music-Making presents work by members of the Royal Musical Association's Music and/as Process Study Group. It is a useful compendium, drawing a realistic and often compelling picture of the current state of artistic research in collaboration, composition and performance. It brings together authors whose practices stretch beyond the academy to show how practice-research functions as part of the cycle of music-making in the broader context. Recently, artistic research into collaborative practices has experienced a groundswell of interest and a book like this feels timely. The editors, composer-performer-musicologist Lauren Redhead and composer-academic Richard Glover, have structured the volume in four parts with an introduction, and with contributions from researchers who are active composers, performers or composer-performers. The book features several essays each loosely grouped around themes of collaborative approaches in contemporary composition, distributed group processes, and the composer-performer relationship. A few chapters shine brightly. Well-written reflections on real practice by high-level working musicians, they give effective, compelling and thoroughly contextualised examples of best practices in artistic research today. Besides those excellent exemplars, a couple of contributions raise issues to tackle for future research. 'A Common Method?: Distributed Creativity in Composition and/as Practice Research' by Lauren Redhead is a skilfully written and thoroughly researched chapter describing myriad approaches to composer-performer power dynamics, practice and creative decision-making. Redhead provides examples from her own practice, contextualised by canonical and historical composer-performer relations. She demonstrates a contemporaneous breadth of approaches while holding up those practices in relief against the weight of tradition and systemic biases. It is a fascinating essay that highlights the
Bethany Beardslee was a composer's singer. Dedicated and accurate, she is best known for her beautiful realisations of new compositions from the thorny end of the new music spectrum. She premiered over one hundred works, including important pieces by Europeans such as Webern, Krenek, Stravinsky and Schoenberg. She also worked closely with a number of influential American composers. Several pieces composed for her voice have earned their place in the canon, including Milton Babbitt's Philomel. I Sang the Unsingable is a detailed account of a life in twentieth-century music, plainly conveyed with humour and humility. The author tells her story in a tone that flirts almost with gossipbut in an endearing and reverent way. Reverence for the composers with whom she worked is the thread that binds this book. Beardslee features an impressive roster of celebrity cameos in her memoir, providing ample opportunity for zingers, portraiture and good-natured lampooning: 'I have often wondered if Stravinsky would have tried twelve tone when the master [Webern] was alive? I doubt it. Composers have huge egos'. (p. 112
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