Phil and Lauren met for the first time on stage at the "Festival A Voix Haute 2010" at Bagnères de Bigorre, France, on August 13th. Nothing but pure improvisation with nothing but our naked voices. C'est fou! LN
Writers remarks:
"This was a first meeting? Incredible, but it makes sense. This is the kind of music you might have heard in the morning of the world: new encounters, not so much innocent as free from any preconception; a testing not just of human relations but of that extraordinary vocal apparatus that pretty soon only gets used for pretty dull stuff - Hello, goodbye, can I have a pound of steak? I love you, I don't love you any more, this is war - and for tutored singing that doesn't call on more than 10% of our capability. It's remarkable music, as sophisticated as it is primal." Brian Morton
"If Lauren Newton and Phil Minton simply got together and compared vocal virtuosities it would be a wonderful thing, but instead they have entered fully into the spirit of this extended improvisation, charting moments of mystery and intimacy, suggesting other species, other emotions, other evolutions. At times—like ”once and for all”—even another voice seems to arise in response to Newton or Minton, one so close as to not be Minton or Newton, but perhaps a NewMin, a MinNew, a TwoTon or a TonTon." Stuart Broomer
"Newton and Minton immerse themselves together in the primal stream, emerging from it bearing nonword of their discoveries couched in contemporary aesthetic sensibility, weaving patterns of tone and overtone, melody and pure sound objects, univocal chording and oral acrobatics. it is here intense, there soothing, and everywhere exhilarating." Paul Dutton, Soundsinger, Poet,
www.pdutton.ca
"cette musique est du pur art brut. le premier instrument de tous les temps, la voix, multipliée par deux, les voix d'une femme et d'un homme, dans une joute, pas un combat car la violence n'existe pas ici. le souffle, les souffles, rien d'autre. Pendant que l'une tient la note ou halète, l'autre respire, sifflote, susurre, grimace. la tessiture couvre du balbutiement du bébé jusqu'au grommellement du vieillard en onomatopées croisées ou dans l'expressionnisme du chant. Une rencontre inévitable entre deux grands de la respiration, au sommet de leur art." Philippe RENAUD/IMPROJAZZ
"An extraordinary dialogue! Lauren Newton and Phil Minton's performance is abstract, expressive, and sometimes like a 'Theater of the Absurd'." Kazue Yokoi (JP)
"Atemgeräusche, eine Grille zirpt, ein federleichter Kolibri zwitschert im tropisch-feuchten Regenwald, ein Zischen erklingt aus dem Unterholz, Sprachfetzen aus erfundenen und realen Sprachen erklingen. Lauren Newton und Phil Minton improvisieren Geschichten und verleihen so der eigenen Phantasie Flügel. Fredi Bossard (CH) "Sounds of breathing, a cricket chirps, a feather-light humming bird twitters in a tropical forest, sizzling sounds from the underbrush, fragments of imaginary and real languages...Lauren Newton and Phil Minton improvise stories endowing our own fantasy wings." transl.LN
released August 13, 2010
Einstein on the Beach, Copyright 1976 Dunvagen Music Publishers,
used by Permission
www.einsteinonthebeach.net
recorded by Jérôme Casamayou on Aug. 13, 2010, Bagnères de Bigorre, France
edited by L.Newton
foto Phil by Francesca Pfeffer,
f.pfeffer@bluewin.ch
foto Lauren by Joerg Becker,
m.j.becker@web.de
cover art by Koho Mori