Kate Soper

Composer/performer Kate Soper talks about her favorite music to sing and the “strange and wonderful world of electronics and the voice” in advance of her NYFOS Next evening on March 28 at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music. As you are especially known...
Tori Amos:  Yes Anastasia

Tori Amos: Yes Anastasia

Tori Amos is a truly captivating performer.  Example: I made the mistake of keeping the youtube track running as I was coming up with this intro and quickly forgot how to form words in my brain and type them, as her voice overrode my mental circuits.  Amos runs the...
Guillaume de Machaut:  Doulz Viaire Gracieus

Guillaume de Machaut: Doulz Viaire Gracieus

Many works by the famed medieval poet-composer Guillaume de Machaut are formes fixes: complex musico-poetic structures requiring skill and finesse to create.  This is an example of one such form, a rondeau.  In order for a rondeau to work, the first phrase has to...
Laurie Anderson:  O Superman

Laurie Anderson: O Superman

What is it about vocoders?  They add a distance to the human voice that, in the skilled hands of Laurie Anderson, renders it omnipotent, supernatural.  And marching through the uncanny valley right alongside her processed singing is that “ah ah ah”...