Let Us Allow (2009)

This piece is inspired by Pauline Oliveros' Sonic Meditations and a quote by Olivier Messiaen.

If you'd like the score I'll happily give it to you. Just message me with requests.

So it's easier to understand, here are the instructions for the participants:

1. The choir, participants, or entire audience is invited to explore the music, and contribute to it by singing notes that they hear from the soloist, or other singers in the room. One should sing in a range that is comfortable.
2. When one feels inspired, one is encouraged to take a deep, relaxed breath, and sing a single note until out of breath. Upon running out of breath, one may take another breath, and choose to either sing the same note, or choose another note that that one hears in the room.
3. Although the pitch itself cannot change, the participants have the freedom to choose and change their dynamics, and their timbre (one may crescendo throughout a pitch, and one may also change from an A vowel to an O vowel if he or she chooses).
4. So that the entire audience may hear and enjoy the soloist, everybody is encouraged to only hum during the first... more

lyrics

Let us allow a priori that we are all capable of connecting sound to color and color to sound. Let us allow a priori that we are all capable of being amazed, of being dazzled, by these sounds and these colors and of touching through them something of that beyond.

credits

released September 1, 2010
Madeline Biddle Bersamina - Soprano
Leo Wanenchack - Conductor
Walden School TTI Faculty and Participants - Participants
Olivier Messiaen - Lyrics/Quote