Isolated Field Recording Series: Shelley Hirsch - Generating Text In Quarantine In Several Parts

This collection of "field recordings" are a view into Hirsch’s multiplicitous at-home practice of generating text. For this recording Hirsch has recorded elements of her current process: improvising text by vocalizing with a multi effects unit as well as speaking/writing with and sans effects in tandem with recordings of Morton Feldman music, specifically Piano With String Quartet (1985), Patterns In A Chromatic Field (1981), and Violin & String Quartet (1985). As a whole, the practice illuminates the various ways of “generating text” across Hirsch’s vocal techniques, unique storytelling, free improvisation, and writing.

In the first half of the recording there are several miniature "duets" with Hirsch and her Eventide Harmonizer. She responds and adapts to the various effects applied to her vocal signal. She describes “I lick the dial, press load, and immediately find myself enveloped in electronically produced spaces where words speak through me according to the space and the persona the setting suggests. ” In the second half of the recording Hirsch submerges herself in Morton Feldman’s magnificent music and explores how the physical act of typing on a keyboard or writing by hand on paper of different sizes and speaking the words simultaneously in Feldmans slowly unfolding sonic landscape, spawns her stream of consciousness.

Throughout the duration of Generating Text, the audio recordings are heard while the screen is intentionally black. Snippets of images appear in between each individual audio recording, which range in duration. They were extracted from a video recording of Hirsch’s process, from earlier written text, and photos taken in her apartment in Greenpoint.

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Part 1: Short Goofy Bursts for Voice and Harmonizer - A Demonstration of How A Harmonizer Can Change Your Mind

* = named for the Harmonizer Setting Used.

Air * (00:24)

Basket (00:21)

Before You Sip (00:18)

Chant-al? (00:18)

Circles * (00:20)

Edvard (00:35)

Flat Slap * (00:36)

Harvey (00:24)

Hosties (00:24)

Hump Verb * (00:38)

Moriah (00:17)

Moribund (00:12)

My Green Glasses (00:17)

Old Brain (00:29)

Pernicious (00:49)

Polka Dot (00:21)

Really? Avante Garde? * (00:25)

Thick Loop * (00:32)

Turkey Wings (00:16)

Ultra Tap * (00:19)

Valedictorian (00:22)

Part 2: Simultaneous Stream-of-consciousness Writing, Speaking, and Effects Alongside the Music of Morton Feldman: For String Quartet and Violin (1, 9) Music for Piano and String Quartet (3 through 8) and Patterns in a Chromatic Field (10)

1. Writing On The Wall (00:54)

2. I Didn't Want A Story (2:12)

3. Fragile (1:12)

4. Patrick Catapano (4:16)

5. Lilypads (3:41)

6. Red Shoes (4:17)

7. Golden (1:45)

8. Evangelist (7:20)

9. Fathy (8:31)

10. Steam Heat (1:45)

11. Tantalize (4:40)

12. Sol to Nodding (6:24)

Below are a few stream-of consciousness texts written while listening to the music of Morton Feldman by Hirsch:

Bespectacled semaphoro
Terminated and deflated but
Oh! rise again
I happened to see the backside of the moon
Triumphant tribulations
Evacuate evacuate evacuate.
Incarcerate behind bars
I am locked out of your prison let me in let me in.

In the equidistance
I heard a blackbird who snatched silver from the picnic table
The sound of his wings and the rattling of the silver
He flew around in circles
Circumventing
The pandemonium that lay ahead.
Circa circa

Glorious us- here now -nominally
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

And summations don’t do it justice
Why bother to explain.
No expedition would take you to where I am
Currently submerged
i'm
Interiorized
incubating period
Incubation
Shoulder the bellicose
And foster the nationwide delirium .
Delirium of yes’s
Let us
Fervor further
My subsequence went into the back door
Sub consequential
Slippery slope
Snooping around
Elastic corrridors
Play plaaaay plaaaaay planetary
Evangelists
My kind of
Evangelissssssssssts

His name was Evangelis.They called him Vangelis.without the E
I loved him. They wanted to cover up the old flowered wallpaper in the closet . His son told him it was necessary\ He wanted something more modern..More clean.
Van gelis knew I was so sad to lose the sight of the beautiful old flowered wall paper.
And so he cut out one pink flower for me when I was not looking
And he gave it to me
And then they covered all the rest with thin sheets of masonite.
But I still have the flower and
It hangs on
My wall
Near to all my other plants.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Tantamount to a trail of feathers and dried leaves and soft petals.
But not quite that
The clouds hovered and a light from inside the pink house was turned on. a neon magenta inside of all the softness that the pink house is…
The trees were practically crying.
They could not smell the proverbial roses…
green buds were holding out..but it is already spring spring 2020
Spring -outside on the street people keep their distance when walking by but they smile in the sun when they see the pink house.
I get to see it everyday..I would take the blue felt off of the window at night so I could see the pink house first thing in the morning but waiting -waiting for the sight of it..that’s okay with me.
There must be at least one canopy bed in the house..A four poster..Today 2 different asian people came out of the house and checked the mail box and I believe a garbage can that was obscured by a forest green colored tree. An Evergreen.
I’d never seen them before .Those people.
An older elegant blonde haired woman is a person who I’ have seen.before .and a man wearing knee length khaki shorts -but he only once..
Now the radiator sizzles in my room as I listen to the music of Morton Feldman.I had thought at first that it was part of the music.
But the sizzling gets louder at this time and recognizable for what it is.
Steam heat in the cool room.
The light outside is fading and now it is the light from the computer which illuminates the peach satin dress I am wearing. It’s funny to call it a dress.This raggedy thing that once had little white raised cotton dots on it-now gone,..but the dress. I must have had it for more than 35 years. I guess you might call it a frock. A frock. Let’s say its a frock..unless “smock” is a word..and then let’s call it a smock.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Born and raised in East New York Brooklyn, vocal artist, performer, composer, storyteller Shelley Hirsch, has been pushing boundaries with her unique vocal art and performance work, drawing on her life experiences, her memory and her vivid imagination for decades. The New York Times called her "A woman of a thousand voices... She offered an enthralling demonstration of the way songs, vocal styles and language might have evolved out of more primal musical impulses.” Hirsch's multimedia performances, compositions, improvisations, electronic music pieces, sound installations, collaborations and radio plays have been presented at concert halls, museums, theaters, galleries, clubs, radio, worldwide in venues including Alice Tully Hall, Roulette, Experimental Intermedia Foundation and CBGB's in NYC and many internationally. In 2018, The Fales Library at NYU acquired decades of her work to be archived for their Downtown Collection. Honors include The John Simon Memorial Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition 2017; The Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants for Artists for Music 2017; The Creative Capital Grant for Music Performance 2002; New York Foundation of the Arts in Music/Sound 2010, Multidisciplinary/ Performance 2003, Music Composition 1996 and the New Forms Category 1987; Two NYSCA Grants in Vocal Music 2016 and Electronic Music in 2007; and The International Prix Futura Media Competition 1st Prize in New Work for Radio 1993. Residencies include the prestigious The DAAD Residency Grant in Berlin1992; a record six Artist in Residency Grants at Harvestworks Digital Media Center in NYC from 1985-2016; Three at The Montalvo Art Center, in California; The Golden Mask Residency in Moscow; The Alpert/Ucross residency prize and a residency at Yaddo.

In 2017, she was composer in residence at the Prismatic Park Residency at Madison Square Park in NYC and presented Book-Bark-Tree-Skin-Line for eight vocalists and musicians and a visual artist. In 2018/2019 Hirsch was Artist in Residence at Queenslab in Queens, New York. A collection of the writing and images which she produced during her Residency at QueensLab will be published in Fall 2020. Hirsch’s most recent commission was to compose the music for an Opera for babies, sung by three Opera Singers. “Kuckuck” which premiered in January 2020, is now in Repertoire at the State Opera in Hannover Germany. Hirsch can be heard on over 70 recordings with several on the Tzadik, FMP, Intakt, and on Nonesuch, Sound Aspects, Tellus, Apollo, Innocent Records, Don Giovanni and many more. She leads the workshop “Explore Your 1000 Voices” in NYC, nationally, and internationally.