This is an excerpt of a Site Singing session I led at St Leonards Church in Shoreditch on April 23rd 2017. I showed the main principles I have been working with in my Site Singing project, and as a group we used them as starting points with which to experiment and interact vocally withe the acoustics and objects in the space.
This audio later became the basis of a live Site Singing performance work, Sanctuary.
Many thanks to Conny Prantera, and Alice and Kayleigh from The Sun At Night for the invitation to explore and fill the incredible space with our voices.
facebook.com/sunatnightlondon/
Pre-workshop outline of the session:
Site Singing vocal session for The Moon Choir
Guided by Ellen Southern
Ellen Southern will be bringing her field-recording based project, Site Singing, to the Moon Choir, for the next step in the development of a new vocal live work.
Following on from recent live debut at The Arnolfini, Bristol, this workshop will be the latest testing ground of a new experimental vocal work in-progress. Participating singers will work directly with sound, vocal elements and approaches developed through solo field trips to heritage sites in the South West. They will be encouraged to adventurously explore their voices, while fully utilising the acoustic characteristics of the space as an instuement, to share in generating new material toward a new experimental live work in-the-making.
This will be a practice-based session, where live work and recordings (both digital and analogue) will be layered, treated and played back as we go. Participants will also be invited to discuss the work while being able to view and physically handle maps, photographs and drawings created over the course of the project so far. We will present a rush or ‘scratch’ style performance, of the resulting material for the Sun At Night evening session.
A hint of what to expect? Think spatial sound, immersive voices, sonic layering, unexpected harmonies, microtones and harmonics, combinations of live and recorded voices, some amplified treatments and effects, distance and proximity, interesting vocal dissonances and textures, improvisation and exploration.
More from the session here:
sitesinging.bandcamp.com/track/site-singing-session-with-the-moon-choir-st-leonards-church-shoreditch-london
Live performance video:
vimeo.com/214973576
sitesinging.bandcamp.com/track/site-singing-session-with-the-moon-choir-cassette-tapes-1-and-4
sitesinging.bandcamp.com/track/site-singing-session-with-the-moon-choir-cassette-tapes-2-and-3