Performances

Performance is a throughline in my practice, research and teaching, and a central thread of my experience as a performer is music. Music has been integral to who I am and how I make sense of the world. When I was eight years old I began performing as a vocalist with the Philadelphia Boys Choir, an experience that trained my posture and breathing, my ear and my memory, while introducing me to the joys and rigors of live performance and travel.

By age ten I’d performed worldwide, singing in Japanese, Thai, Belgian, Danish, German, French, Italian, Latin and Hebrew. Memorizing songs in other languages, as well as staying with families of hosting choir members, provided unforgettable immersion in other ways of being. Among my prized memories from this period: the opportunity to sit near Marian Anderson in front of Independence Hall on July 4, 1976, while we performed for the U.S. bicentennial, and a private meeting with Her Royal Highness Sirindhorn of Thailand, Charles S. Whitehouse, the U.S. Ambassador to Laos and Thailand, and the Israeli ambassador to Thailand, Reuven Dafni, during intermission at the Bangkok Opera House, just moments after I performed the soprano solo toward the end of Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms.

Over the years, the physical and mental skills cultivated by singing have translated to other activities. Proper breathing has served well, whether in quiet repose or in the heat of public presentation. A sharp memory was especially critical since we very rarely used sheet music in concert. Over the years, the substance of memory has become a central thread to my investigations. Also, we often wore blindfolds during rehearsal to practice hearing oneself amid an organ of others, since knitting one’s own voice with others’ demands a focus that is simultaneously mental and visceral. Most likely, the “close listening” of ear training implanted my passion for the “close reading” of texts and contexts in my research and design practice.

More recently, close listening and close reading have converged through a series of collaborations with Melissa Grey nd David Morneau, titled Bourdon, and overtone singing directed by Melissa Grey, where I’ve used my voice to elicit the overtones in architectural settings such as the crypt of Francesco Borromini’s San Carlino alla Quattro Fontane.