Out of stock
CD
Sarah HENNIES (Richard VALITUTTO)
“SOVT”
'SOVT' is an album containing one 55-minute piece, written for piano by Sarah Hennies in 2017. SOVT stands for Semi-Occluded Vocal Tract which refers to vocal exercises that strengthens the voice by helping the vocal cords vibrate more efficiently. One may practice SOVT exercises by singing with a straw in the mouth which regulates air pressure and reduces strain on the vocal folds. Hennies encountered these exercises in a class on so-called “voice feminization” for transgender women which also inspired her other works “Falsetto” and “Contralto."
Almost all the strings of the piano in this piece are muted with Blu-Tack poster putty and this along with the rhythmic language of the piece results in a sound that is a hybrid piano/percussion-like sound. By connecting all the strings with putty, a dramatically rich sympathetic vibration occurs throughout the piano similar to the way in which one feels increased vibration in the mouth and throat by singing through a straw.
SOVT was originally commissioned by R. Andrew Lee and for this recording was performed by richard valitutto, who recorded the work at the Bard College studio in the spring of 2024 with Hennies engineering.
SOVT (Semi-Occluded Vocal Tract)
(55:27)
richard valitutto - piano
composed, recorded, and mixed by sarah hennies
recorded march 2024 at bard college, new york
14,00€
In stock
CD
Sarah HENNIES
“Reservoir 1: Preservation”
Black Truffle is thrilled to present “Reservoir 1: Preservation,” a gorgeous new piece by American composer/percussionist Sarah Hennies. Sarah's work explores a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including queer & trans identity, love, intimacy, psychoacoustics, and percussion. The “Reservoirs” are a series of three one-hour pieces based on the relationship between the conscious and unconscious human mind. Jung and Freud described the unconscious mind as a reservoir, a repository for memories that we don’t readily need access to, yet are kept forever somewhere in our minds. Specifically, Freud believed that one function of the unconscious mind is to store traumatic memories, filed away so that we don’t have to confront them every day. The conscious mind has no direct access to the unconscious, yet the unconscious is a constant yet mysterious presence in our lives.
“Reservoir 1: Preservation” is scored for piano and three percussionists, performed by Phillip Bush and Meridian, the long-running experiment in percussion, improvisation, and interpersonal relationships that includes Tim Feeney, Sarah Hennies, and Greg Stuart. In “Preservation” the piano functions as a constant, pervasive, but almost subliminal murmur amid the percussion playing that cycles through a variety of timbral and gestural areas, including gentle droning, frenetic scraping, and bricks violently dropped into metal buckets. The percussion group never interacts with or responds to the piano, while the piano subtly absorbs aspects of the trio.
“Preservation” was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Jeff Francis at the University of South Carolina and performed by Meridian: Tim Feeney, Sarah Hennies, Greg Stuart (percussion), and Phillip Bush (piano). Released in a CD digipak with design by Lasse Marhaug. Cover photo from Abby Grace Drake’s photo series, “Shopping Carts of Southside Ithaca.
14,00€
Out of stock
LP
Sarah HENNIES
“Embedded Environments”
Through a remarkable and singular body of work, over the course of the last decade, like storm beginning as whisper on the horizon, the composer and percussionist Sarah Hennies has slowly emerged as one of the definitive voices of her generation. Initially coming to focus as a member of Austin’s experimental music scene during the early 2000’s, before relocating to upstate New York, with a delicate, clattering grace, she has continuously offered vision, conceptual armature, crucial understanding for the contemporary proximity of avant-garde and experimental practice. Entirely of her moment, she defies what we know and expect, owing allegiance to none. Hennies has been darting around the edges of modern composition for years, but that world has never been an entirely comfortable fit, nor is it the best framework and context within which to approach her work. She is better understood in the proximity of figures like Jim O’Rourke, a creator of a countercultural music, which incorporates everything, while owing loyalty to none. Though not for aesthetics, Hennies could equally be framed with composers like Steve Reich, Arthur Russell, Julius Eastman, and Mary Jane Leach, all of whom struggled to create more inclusive musical hybrids, attacking the institutions as they stood. As these figures once were, Hennies’ position within the contemporary landscape is challenging, bristles, and requires work to understand. Her music isn’t always what it seems. What is unquestionable, is that it is entirely of this moment, and not a product of appropriation or pastiche. What she has to say, has never been said.
Comprised of two site specific compositions - Foragers, and Embedded Environments, recorded in a silo in Buffalo, NY, these recordings are a crowing moment within the long arc of Hennies’ practice. Each work is composed for a quartet of percussionists - Jason Bauers, Tim Feeney, and Bob Fullex, with Hennies contributing on vibraphone and percussion. While Foragers, and Embedded Environments are products of Hennies’ quest for elemental meaning and relationships within sound - those which lay beyond traditional understandings of structure, beat, and tone, here there is a third and unfamiliar actor in play, the space itself. Activated by the silo for which they were composed, Hennies’ broken, staggering rhythms and resonances are offered new freedom through a seductive Trojan horse, pushing them toward even more complex and jarring depths.
Foragers, and Embedded Environments delves into a realm of ideas, proximity, and place, offering a new vision for our sonic present, and what may be to come. Visionary, challenging, bristling, pared to only the essential beats or tones, this music, while beautiful and elemental, is a product of a rigorous form of conceptualism, often unfamiliar within the world of organised sound.
Comprised of two site specific compositions - Foragers, and Embedded Environments, recorded in a silo in Buffalo, NY, these recordings are a crowing moment within the long arc of Hennies’ practice. Each work is composed for a quartet of percussionists - Jason Bauers, Tim Feeney, and Bob Fullex, with Hennies contributing on vibraphone and percussion. While Foragers, and Embedded Environments are products of Hennies’ quest for elemental meaning and relationships within sound - those which lay beyond traditional understandings of structure, beat, and tone, here there is a third and unfamiliar actor in play, the space itself. Activated by the silo for which they were composed, Hennies’ broken, staggering rhythms and resonances are offered new freedom through a seductive Trojan horse, pushing them toward even more complex and jarring depths.
Foragers, and Embedded Environments delves into a realm of ideas, proximity, and place, offering a new vision for our sonic present, and what may be to come. Visionary, challenging, bristling, pared to only the essential beats or tones, this music, while beautiful and elemental, is a product of a rigorous form of conceptualism, often unfamiliar within the world of organised sound.
21,00€
Out of stock
CD
Sarah HENNIES
“Gather & Release”
The 10 last copies !
Gather & Release is the result of years worth of composer Sarah Hennies’ exploration of the vibraphone in synthesis with her experiences of identity, obsession, anxiety, tension, grief, and loss.
Over the course of an hour, Hennies entangles highly focused percussion playing with field recordings, sine waves, signifiers from her personal & family history (including a 20+ year old recording of her grandfather reciting poetry), and bilateral stimulation, a tool for anxiety release and a major component of EMDR therapy (a branch of psychotherapy that focuses on relieving the patient of disturbing memories as a treatment for psychopathology).
Gather & Release is personal, immediate, yet reserved. Coppice welcomes Sarah Hennies to Category of manifestation: with this challenging new work of reclaim.
Sarah Hennies (b. 1979, Louisville, KY) is a composer and percussionist currently residing in Ithaca, NY. Her work is primarily concerned with an immersive, psychoacoustic presentation of sound brought about by an often grueling, endurance-based performance practice that Nathan Thomas of Fluid Radio described as, “a highly sophisticated and refined performance technique…that starts and ends with listening and encourages a different way of listening from its audience.”
Gather & Release is the result of years worth of composer Sarah Hennies’ exploration of the vibraphone in synthesis with her experiences of identity, obsession, anxiety, tension, grief, and loss.
Over the course of an hour, Hennies entangles highly focused percussion playing with field recordings, sine waves, signifiers from her personal & family history (including a 20+ year old recording of her grandfather reciting poetry), and bilateral stimulation, a tool for anxiety release and a major component of EMDR therapy (a branch of psychotherapy that focuses on relieving the patient of disturbing memories as a treatment for psychopathology).
Gather & Release is personal, immediate, yet reserved. Coppice welcomes Sarah Hennies to Category of manifestation: with this challenging new work of reclaim.
Sarah Hennies (b. 1979, Louisville, KY) is a composer and percussionist currently residing in Ithaca, NY. Her work is primarily concerned with an immersive, psychoacoustic presentation of sound brought about by an often grueling, endurance-based performance practice that Nathan Thomas of Fluid Radio described as, “a highly sophisticated and refined performance technique…that starts and ends with listening and encourages a different way of listening from its audience.”
5,00€