14 Jun 2018

Sound Lounge: San Francisco Looper Amy X; Al Fraser and Phil Boniface's Ponguru

From Sound Lounge, 1:32 pm on 14 June 2018

9:30

Amy X Neuburg: The Queen of Live Looping

Amy X Neuberg

Amy X Neuberg Photo: Supplied

Composer, performer and electronic music pioneer Amy X Neuburg has forged her own brand of electrifying performances and a genre-defying style of music that she calls avant-cabaret.

A classically trained singer from Oberlin Conservatory, with a four-octave range, she then went on to the famous electronic music course (MFA) at  Mills College in Oakland, California, home to names such as Darius Milhaud, Pauline Oliveros and Robert Ashley who created roles for her in his operas which she toured abroad. She still lives in Oakland: and now, 30 years later, is commissioned by a wide range of prestigious artists and ensembles in genres that range from solo instrumental to chamber music, orchestral, vocal, many of them multi-media in collaboration with a wide range of performance groups in the Bay Area; she’s in demand at festivals and residencies across the States and abroad; and when Jack Body discovered her at the Other Minds festival in San Francisco he immediately invted her to NZ, where she came twice, for festival performances and a residency in Christchurch.

“Wow! That was the one simple word that best described the one-woman musical hurricane that was Amy X Neuburg last night” (Otago Daily Times).

Charlotte Wilson joins her in her studio in San Francisco to talk about her music, her background, and the joys and challenges of live looping.

AMY X NEUBURG: Every Little Stain
Amy X Neuburg (voice, percussion, electronics)
Residue, Other Minds 2004

AMY X NEUBURG: Difficult, from The Secret Language of Subways
Cello ChiXtet, Amy X Neuburg (voice, electronics)
The Secret Language of Subways, MinMax 2009

AMY X NEUBURG: Earth had birth
Amy X Neuburg (voice, electronics)
Private

AMY X NEUBURG: Flaky Strudel, from Fill As Desired
Solstice, Amy X Neuburg (voice, electronics)

AMY X NEUBURG: Nonette
Kate Stenberg and Eva-Maria Zimmerman
Scenes from a New Music Séance, Other Minds 2012

AMY X NEUBURG: Shrapnel, from The Secret Language of Subways
Cello ChiXtet, Amy X Neuburg (voice, electronics)
The Secret Language of Subways, MinMax 2009

AMY X NEUBURG: My God
Amy X Neuburg (voice, percussion, electronics)
Residue, Other Minds 2004

Ponguru

FRASER/BONIFACE: A selection from the album Ponguru
Al Fraser (taonga puoro), Phil Boniface (dbass)
RAT D079

11:05 Relevant Tones: Music of Burying and Marrying

Since earliest times, music has always had a ritual purpose in human society, but these ritualistic functions are often forgotten in the hustle and bustle of the modern world. We’ll play music by composers Ionel Petroi, Ross Edwards and Tan Dun who still think of the ceremonial importance music can play in our lives. (WFMT)

Ross Edwards

Ross Edwards Photo: Supplied