Pamela Z
Pamela Z is a San Francisco based composer, performer
and sound artist with a classical musical education from the University of
Colorado. Sound patch-work, puzzles of taped, manipulated and sampled voices
compose the main field of Pamela Z's search for new possibilities of vocal
expression over the last two decades. With electronically manipulated sounds
she brings back bel canto, an enigmatic singing style of Italian religious
singers from the sixteenth and seventeenth century, she plays with singing and
echoes, searches for the best tone and tonal continuity. Pamela Z takes on this
revival differently from contemporary opera singers, since she employs modern
technology to unveil a wider comprehension of vocal expression.
New sonic dimensions are reached with the help of computer, live electronic
processing and the Body SynthTM (which allows her to manipulate sound with
physical gesture), in addition to much more uncommon instruments, giving off
peculiar sound effects - such as the type-writer, metal plates, glasses, water,
etc. With the dramatic changes that came about in her music due to the use of
special digital technology, her hands and body were freed up for gesture and
movement and she became more focussed on the performance aspect of her work: "I
came to see the sound I was making, and my physical behaviour while making it,
as an integrated whole..." (Pamela Z)
Apart from her solo performances, Pamela is also the driving force of the
interdisciplinary trio The Qube Chicks, the other members being Miya Masaoka
and Donald Swearingen. Pamela Z's project-based collaborators include the opera
singer, Nina Hagen, Jim Caroll, the 'spoken word' poet from New York, Brian
Eno, Louis Andrissen, the vanguard Dutch composer, Peter Kowald, the German
double bass player, jazz experimentalist from New York, Elliot Sharp, and the
notorious hip-hop producer D.J. Spooky; she has performed at the Lollapalooza
Rock Festival, in opera houses, museums and modern art galleries in Europe and
America, in dance theatres, traditional houses of Japanese dance and most
recently at Dak'Art, the Biennale of Contemporary African Art in Dakar,
Senegal.
Her compositions have been played by The Bang On A Can Allstars, California
E.A.R. Unit and Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, to name but a few, while she
undertook the arrangement of Stockhausen's works and the scores for movie
maker/painter Peter Greenaway's creations.
City of Women will feature selected parts from Pamela Z's
creations Voci, Gaijin, and Parts of Speech.
Voci, her latest project, is a multimedia performance of multilayered segments,
passing dynamically one into another. She researches not just the sound, but
also the cultural, physical and artistic worlds of voice. Spoken and sung texts
are captured in a research vice of scientific voice evaluation and its
interpersonal perception. She researches the character, identity and anatomy of
voice by electronic processing over video projections created by Jeanne Finley
and John Muse.
Gaijin, an electro-acoustic vocal performance accompanied by video, is a
three-year-old project using 'butoh' music as accompaniment and tackling 'being
different' from several angles. This broad concept was inspired by Pamela's
sojourn in Japan, and unveils a magical journey, provocatively defining the
word 'foreigner'.
Parts of Speech is a 1995 project based on texts from advertisements,
communication systems and slang, united in an integrity of non-linguistic
sounds. By sampling, reading, singing and chanting, the author finds new
meanings in these sounds.
Helena Bozic
Presentation / lecture:
Tuesday, Oct 5th, 4 pm - 6 pm, Cankarjev dom, Club CD
SoundWork
Pamela Z will provide insight into her complex sound practice.
Organisation: City of Women
In co-operation with: Cankarjev dom
