Kronos Quartet's New York Tundra
14/03/10 08:30 Filed in: Press
Global Beat Fusion: Kronos Quartet's New York Tundra Derek Beres / Global music
photojournalist/DJ/producer, novelist, yoga instructor
"It was 12:45 when we finally stood, after being wrapped into Tundra mythology with the five movements of Derek Charke's commissioned piece for Kronos Quartet. When Charke, who has lived in the Arctic before, was asked to write it, he was immediately trekked to Nunavut, the northernmost edge of Canada, to record shrimp, krill, seals, ice, and ravens. These noises were sprinkled in throughout.
Nunavut is the size of Western Europe and houses less than 30,000 people. Looking at pictures of it reminds me Werner Herzog's documentary on Antarctica, Encounters at the End of the World, a place where humans can only live three or four months a year. So it was fitting that Kronos asked Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq to perform the vocal "parts" of Charke's piece. You often could not tell whether it was the seals and ravens that he recorded or Tagaq herself, which was the point. Her music is so outrageously unexplainable that while even if you can't bear to listen to some of it, you're intrigued and can't turn away. That's the sense I had when listening to her latest album, Auk/Blood, which featured Mike Patton, himself one of the more outlandish vocalists of our time.
Hearing Tagaq vocalize (while some of it is singing, that's really not the proper word) is a lesson in breath control. She is able to both utilize inhale and exhale, not to mention retention, with its own unique tone, while employing the overtone of a second "voice" to the mix. It is a ritual technique for entering trance, a state she most definitely reached while the four men nimbly ran over Charke's composition. The closest thing to compare Tagaq to is Bjork's Medulla phase, a no-brainer considering Tagaq sings on that record and toured the album with her."
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photojournalist/DJ/producer, novelist, yoga instructor
"It was 12:45 when we finally stood, after being wrapped into Tundra mythology with the five movements of Derek Charke's commissioned piece for Kronos Quartet. When Charke, who has lived in the Arctic before, was asked to write it, he was immediately trekked to Nunavut, the northernmost edge of Canada, to record shrimp, krill, seals, ice, and ravens. These noises were sprinkled in throughout.
Nunavut is the size of Western Europe and houses less than 30,000 people. Looking at pictures of it reminds me Werner Herzog's documentary on Antarctica, Encounters at the End of the World, a place where humans can only live three or four months a year. So it was fitting that Kronos asked Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq to perform the vocal "parts" of Charke's piece. You often could not tell whether it was the seals and ravens that he recorded or Tagaq herself, which was the point. Her music is so outrageously unexplainable that while even if you can't bear to listen to some of it, you're intrigued and can't turn away. That's the sense I had when listening to her latest album, Auk/Blood, which featured Mike Patton, himself one of the more outlandish vocalists of our time.
Hearing Tagaq vocalize (while some of it is singing, that's really not the proper word) is a lesson in breath control. She is able to both utilize inhale and exhale, not to mention retention, with its own unique tone, while employing the overtone of a second "voice" to the mix. It is a ritual technique for entering trance, a state she most definitely reached while the four men nimbly ran over Charke's composition. The closest thing to compare Tagaq to is Bjork's Medulla phase, a no-brainer considering Tagaq sings on that record and toured the album with her."
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