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RANDI PONTOPPIDAN & THOMAS BUCKNER Voicescapes DIGI, CD, VINYL Chant Records CR2101RA Release date: January 22 randipontoppidan.com / thomasbuckner.com / chantrecords.com Randi Pontoppidan and Thomas Buckner started singing together almost immediately when they met in 2017. From a serendipitous session at Pontoppidan’s home to performances at Copenhagen’s Monday Club, they discovered a shared language of improvisation, musical invention and spiritual connection. In 2018, they recorded at Karmacrew Studio with engineer John Fomsgaard, on the beautiful island of Møn, Denmark. With no preconceived musical material, no overdubs and no sound sources other than voices, Voicescapes documents the spontaneous music of two kindred souls. Randi Pontoppidan is an internationally acclaimed Danish vocalist, improviser and composer working with free improvisation, jazz, performance art, electroacoustic composition and sound poetry. She creates vast sonic landscapes full of organic warmth and poetic sensibility and is known for her extended vocal techniques, often mixed with live electronic processing. She works with jazz luminaries including Greg Cohen, Joëlle Léandre, Sissel Vera Pettersen and with Danish poet Morten Søndergaard. Pontoppidan is also an in-demand vocalist in the contemporary classical world, working with Paul Hillier’s Theatre of Voices and performing works by Steve Reich, David Lang, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage and others. Pontoppidan was a nominee for the 2020 Steppeulven award for best vocalist in Denmark. Thomas Buckner has dedicated himself to the world of new and improvised music for more than 50 years. In collaboration with a host of prominent composers and improvisers, Buckner continues to commission and perform numerous chamber works, orchestral pieces and song cycles, as well as developing new approaches to solo and group improvisation, spontaneous musical invention, a full spectrum of extended vocal sounds and new forms of opera. Long term collaborators include multi instrumentalist and composer Roscoe Mitchell (with whom Buckner has worked every year for 40 years), Robert Ashley (in whose opera company he sang leading roles and toured the world for 35 years), Annea Lockwood, Alvin Lucier, Wadada Leo Smith, Muhal Richard Abrams, Bun Ching Lam, Petr Kotik, Christian Wolff, Earl Howard, Matthias Kaul and many others. Randi and I are grateful to our friend the drummer Kresten Osgood for introducing us virtually when I was in Copenhagen to perform at his Monday Club, a wonderful community of musicians and supportive listeners Kresten has organized. He thought we might be a good fit musically, and he was right. I went to visit her at her home the day before my performance, and we started singing together right away. We sang all morning, made and ate lunch, and sang all afternoon, sometimes with her live electronic processing of her voice and sometimes with just our voices. The improvised music poured out. No one had to make any suggestions. So, naturally, I invited her to join my performance with Kresten the next evening, and the same thing happened, spontaneous musical invention. I returned the next season to sing once again at the Monday Club, and Randi had arranged a recording weekend on the beautiful island of Møn, where her friend the wonderful recording engineer John Fomsgaard has a studio in his home. The first piece on this album, divided into four sections, is the first thing we sang after sound check. One thing led organically to the other. No preconceived musical material. No telling each other what to do. It felt natural and spiritual. Thomas Buckner |
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