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this project is underwritten by the american composers forum with funds provided by the jerome foundation (for more information see: below).
kathy is a fiscal year 2010 recipient of an artist support grant from the arrowhead regional arts council (www.aracouncil.org) which is made possible through an appropriation from the mcknight foundation (for more information see: below). the funds from this grant were used to purchase the equipment used to record, mix, and master this work
$8 (includes shipping)
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track » night crow no time track » washington avenue bridge track » blue iron track » graffiti angel track » ghost wind 1 track » s/he track » river talking sky track » dream song track » ghost wind 2 track » icarus track » flight track » i was sky / i was water |
listen to the album .....
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The narrative arc centers around a transgendered young person's experience in the urban / river landscape around the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis. It is about a brush with death. I wanted to express the disintegration/disorientation felt by a tender-hearted, raptured icarus and the fragility of flight.
In creating this soundscape I used both chance and mindful intention, an expansive textural palette (using strings, bow, wood and echo) and the tonal "infinite between" of a fretless instrument. I employed an "alone/together" type polyphony intertwining sound beings that also stand alone. Each track is described below.
$8 (includes shipping)
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track » the swan - 1 track » the swan - 2 track » the swan - 3 track » the swan - 4 track » the swan - 5 track » the swan - 6 track » just a girl - 1 track » just a girl - 2 track » just a girl - 3 track » just a girl - 4 track » just a girl - 5 track » the swan - 7 track » just a girl - 6 track » just a girl - 7 |
listen to the album .....
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$8 (includes shipping)
between2deserts / one begins the journey of one or more unreliable narrators through the story of that time / place drawn in the album river icarus. ... single-line cello .... exploring possibilities for the fall premeiers
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track » one - 1 track » one - 2 track » one - 3 track » one - 4 track » one - 5 track » one - 6 track » one - 7 |
listen to the album .....
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$8 (includes shipping)
exploring echo delay times ... creating a dome ... halogen, neon, cement, a circling of sound ... the last ... a trapped bird
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track » no. 1 track » no. 2 track » no. 3 track » no. 4 track » no. 5 track » no. 6 track » no. 7 track » no. 8 track » no. 9 track » no. 10 track » no. 11 track » no. 12 track » no. 13 track » no. 14 track » no. 15 track » no. 16 |
listen to the album .....
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$8 (includes shipping)
graffiti / 2 hands explores "2-part" polyphony ... it emerged from the character "graffiti angel" that appears in river icarus .... graffiti music
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track » one track » two track » three track » four track » five track » six track » seven track » eight track » nine track » ten track » eleven track » twelve track » thirteen track » fourteen track » fifteen track » sixteen track » seventeen track » eighteen track » nineteen track » twenty track » twenty one track » twenty two track » twenty three track » twenty four track » twenty five track » twenty six track » twenty seven track » twenty eight track » twenty nine track » thirty |
listen to the album (first half).....
listen to the album (second half).....
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$8 (includes shipping)
north sea is a compillation of light & shadow sketches recorded while exploring the river icarus project. these sketches also explore sparse & dense textures ... 1 thread, 2 threads, 3 threads ... layering .... alone / together ...
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track » north sea 1 track » north sea 2 track » north sea 3 track » north sea 4 track » north sea 5 track » north sea 6 track » north sea 7 track » north sea 8 track » north sea 9 track » north sea 10 track » north sea 11 track » north sea 12 track » north sea 13 track » north sea 14 track » north sea 15 track » north sea 16 track » north sea 17 track » north sea 18 track » north sea 19 track » north sea 20 track » north sea 21 track » north sea 22 track » north sea 23 track » north sea 24 track » north sea 25 track » north sea 26 track » north sea 27 track » north sea 28 track » north sea 29 track » north sea 30 track » north sea 31 track » north sea 32 |
listen to the selections .....
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$8 (includes shipping)
sheila packa & kathy mctavish
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track » immersion (3:16) track » strange symmetry (3:13) track » after (3:233) track » eurydice (2:05) track » vigil (2:25) track » what sea (3:10) track » river begins (2:11) track » invisible embrace (3:07) track » drift (1:57) track » morning (1:48) track » hull (2:59) track » helpless (1:56) |
listen to the whole album .....
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$18 (includes shipping)
from sheila:
echo and lightning is a chapbook of poems and an audio cd. the poems are about migration and rapture. on the audio cd, the poems are set in an experimental, free improv cello sound, a song of ascension, composed by kathy mctavish. the story is rooted in the body and in the winged migration of the north. sources that inspired this work are the kalevala (the epic poem of finland) finnish poets, greek mythology (leda and the swan) and the gnostic book, thunder, perfect mind. the poems examine a woman's intersections with the divine, "an act of god." disaster, loss, even falling in love is both mystical and unsettling. when we immerse into something new it takes us outside the self; an intense experience is bound to break the ties that bind you to your old life. we don't expect those intersections; we don't expect loss or know how to frame death and rebirth and change. the poems in this collection are about this.
ellie schoenfeld, author of the dark honey, writes:
wind turns the body and ground falls away
geese unafraid of silence or empty sky must go must go must go...
"and so begins one of the poems in packa's newest collection. these poems are the story of following one's own instincts to, in one way or another, migrate. they bring us to the exact moment when we surrender to our truest selves, when we allow ourselves to be transported, transformed, and resurrected. in these poems this occurs with the ease and necessity of taking one breath, letting it go and then receiving another. these are ecstatic poems. they are at once ethereal and profoundly grounded in the body. this has always been one of packa's greatest strengths and every piece in this collection is an awe-inspiring testament to that gift. these poems can help us find our way to the places we most need to go, to where "...music you haven't heard/didn't know you needed/opens deep."
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track » dream (1:49) track » 12 tone geese (2:03) track » rain sky / low clouds (1:51) track » loveroot, silk thread (3:08) track » leda (7:03) track » thunder / perfect mind (1:59) track » migration (3:36) track » wolf moon (2:36) track » waking (2:12) track » a journey yes (2:45) track » in green (1:55) track » 2 skies (3:15) |
listen to the whole album .....
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cd only ($8 includes shipping): cd and chapbook ($18 includes shipping): |
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The American Composers Forum / Jerome Commissioning Program grant for the project "river icarus: rusted bridge / deep water" has been pivotal. I am very thankful for the financial support. It has allowed me to immerse. As an experimental, free-improvisation musician, this commissioning program's expansive definition of what it means to be a composer and support for all musical genres was welcome. I perform regularly but do not frequently write about what I do. Taking time to create a detailed project proposal, gather representative work samples, update a resume and write an artist's statement was a valuable experience. Framing this project and organizing the premier performances for this application also led to a grant for much needed recording equipment from the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council / McKnight Foundation.
Having time to focus has boosted my productivity in these last several months. It has been a time of growth. I have honed my sound and sharpened my technical skills through long hours of exploration. In attempting to uncover "river icarus: rusted bridge / deep water", the work funded by this commission, I have produced the following:
I began work by spending two weeks deconstructing my palette into very small tone/texture elements. Recordings made during this period were largely discarded as I moved back towards longer, more independent sound threads or sound beings. I then embarked on a series of sketches of light and shadow. I explored my own style of polyphony, playing with intertwined threads and threads alone. I used chance, intentional layering and simple phase shifting (from the early work on tape delay).
During this time I also started exploring the narrative arc of the river icarus story. I delved into current work by the poet Sheila Packa that explores the story of Leda and the swan. Her re-interpretation of this Greek myth as a woman's rapture experience had resonance for me in the Icarus myth. We collaborated on a "song cycle" which resulted in the album and poetry chapbook called "echo & lightning". My light and shadow sketches and some of the music behind her words were then collected in the solo cello album, "north sea". In turn, Sheila was inspired by "north sea" to develop another set of poems and we again recorded a spoken word / cello album called, "undertow". I felt the river's presence.
My work is generally more abstract expressionist so working along a narrative arc was challenging. As "river icarus" started forming, five characters or sound beings emerged: icarus, night crow, graffiti angel, the washington avenue bridge and the river. The ghost of John Berryman (the poet who jumped to his death from this bridge) hung in the air.
I wanted to further study polyphony. I started down a path of what I called my "post-punk 2-part harmony" studies. (a bit of an inside joke as I remembered laboring over four-part traditional harmony when I was younger). What wasn't discarded from this journey was compiled into the album, "graffiti / 2 hands". It felt like the work of the graffiti angel, an expanded look at that character.
River icarus is a deeply personal work. The difficulty in uncovering the narrative for this composition fueled so much of my productivity on these other related projects. The character "night crow / no time" came into being (a song with this title starts the river icarus album). This provided a third person approach to the story. I translated the prose concept of the "unreliable narrator" into a musical frame. A useful example of this was Patti Smith's "Birdland". This concept helped me create a more ambiguous, disoriented narrative journey.
I knew the arc was about a transgendered young person's experience in this urban / river landscape and that it was about a brush with death. Composing was hard and I discarded many recordings getting to the final version. I could almost touch the time and place but had trouble articulating things musically. I wanted to express the disintegration/disorientation of a tender-hearted, raptured icarus and the fragility of flight.
I have used both chance and mindful intention, an expansive textural palette (using strings, bow, wood and echo) and the tonal "infinite between" of a fretless instrument. I employed an "alone/together" type polyphony intertwining sound beings that also stand alone.
I am now delving into the question of how composed, recorded soundscapes differ from live performance when both are freely improvised. It feels vital to understand this more fully before the premiers scheduled for the end of the year. Live performance for me is single threaded (with echo). I have started to record a series of "between2deserts" compositions that are single-threaded. I am using the concept of the unreliable narrator to reflect on this stage of the process, viewing the improvised cello as a soliloquy by night crow, the graffiti angel or icarus or simply the voice of the river or the bridge. I am using the wandering storyteller approach of, for example, "The Gospel at Colonus" as a model for this next phase.
This has been a rich, creative time for me. I am grateful for the opportunity made possible by this commission. It came at just the right time.
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