Voicing the Dawn

a piece for choir and birds

______

I worked with Stevie Wishart on the soundscape for a piece that she composed for the choir Ex Cathedra. ‘Voicing the Dawn’, a new piece for vocal consort or chorus, has been performed by Ex Cathedra under Jeffrey Skidmore on 6 Jun at Hereford Cathedral and through the summer as part of the choir’s ‘Summer Music by Candlelight’.
June 6th 2019 PREMIERE – Hereford Cathedral
June 14th – St Chad’s Church, Shrewsbury
June 18th &19th – Birmingham Cathedral
July 18th – St John’s Church, Buxton Festival

The intense listening sessions to birdsong and field recordings made me aware of a different sense of time that birds should have. It feels like a different resolution. The polyfonic voicing techniques of a Robin are truly magic.

To gather composing material, we experimented with extracting midi data out of audio files and spectrograms.

© Lucas De Cocker
© Koen Lepla
© Kurt Geeraerts
flex pitching for exporting midi in Logic Pro X
spectrograms made with Raven app