Roger Reynolds – Voicespace [CD]

"Voices, language, and space interested Roger Reynolds since The Emperor of Ice Cream was written for the ONCE Festivals in Ann Arbor in the 1960s. In the 1970s, at the Center for Music Experiment in La Jolla, he heard the daily rehearsals of the Extended Vocal Techniques Ensemble and, in the evenings, read his my daughter to sleep, trying to capture an individual and consistent vocal behavior for each character in the story. A demanding critic, she stimulated Reynolds's reflections on vocal identity. Electronics offered rather precise control over auditory space (a particular sound's size, location, distance, the character of the host space in which it was heard). Choosing spare but evocative texts (Borges, Melville, Stevens, Coleridge), Reynolds conjures up unfamiliar yet appropriate vocal behaviors with which to present them. The five works in the series thus far share a concern with the potential of auditory imaging: this is a subject still only tentatively broached. They attempt to create a personal theater through the mind's ear. Yet they are distinct. Three of them are presented on this CD release: The Palace (Voicespace IV), Eclipse (Voicespace III), Still (Voicespace I)."

Lovely Music, 2017