My new 12-channel piece will be shown/heard in Berlin this weekend (Nov 28-29) as part of “12 Bubbles zum Orbanism Festival”!
My contribution (appropriately titled!) “Audio Chandelier: Bubbles” is also on Soundcloud as a 2-channel version: http://bit.ly/1MVNsj8
If you are in Berlin, try to go see this exhibition — should be great (lots of other multi-channel pieces on solar powered audio speakers..
Author: admin
Bio
Dafna Naphtali is a singer/instrumentalist/electronic-musician who composes/performs experimental, interactive electro-acoustic music. For 20+ years, drawing on a wide-ranging musical background in jazz, classical, rock and near-eastern music and using her custom Max/MSP programming, she’s performed in the US, Canada, Europe, India, Russia and the Middle East, with current projects also including: “Audio Chandelier”, multi-channel audio piece presented in US, Berlin, and Montreal (IX Symposium 2017 @Satosphére); “Robotica” (music robots and voice) at Avant Music Fest ’16 and continuing ; “Walkie Talkie Dream Angles”, an “Audio Augmented-reality” sound walk and personalized interactive composition written for NY’s Washington Square Park, and a new walk “Walkie Talkie Dream Garden” to be premiered in June 2018 for the waterfront area of Willliamsburg Brooklyn.
Dafna’s has long-running projects in live sound-processing of voice and acoustic instruments, as her a performable “instrument”. The current focus is on duos with acoustic instrumentalists –pianist Gordon Beeferman (new CD “Pulsing Dot”), trombonist Jen Baker (Clip Mouth Unit), percussionist Luis Tabuenca (CD “Index of Refraction”), Chuck Bettis (electronics/throat – CD “Chatter Blip”) and with Hans Tammen (endangered guitar). Performing as a singer (unplugged!), Naphtali has interpreted the music of Cage, Stockhausen (Stimmung w/choreographer Daria Fain / Magic Names vocal sextet), Eisler/Brecht (Hollywood Liederbuch), and contemporary composers Joshua Fried, Shelley Hirsch, Kitty Brazelton, José Halac, Yotam Haber, Jonathan Bepler, she’s performed Spanish Civil War songs with the genre-transcending band Barbez, and organized “Voice Activated” public interventions for Make Music NY.
Fellowships/awards include: NY Foundation for the Arts (‘13, ‘01), NY State Council on the Arts (’99, ’18), Brooklyn Arts Council (’18), Franklin Furnace, American Composers Forum (’99, ’09), Foundation for Contemporary Arts, American Music Center; residencies: Music/OMI, STEIM, and Signal Culture. Discography includes “What is it Like to be a Bat?” digital punk trio with Kitty Brazelton (Tzadik), “Pulsing Dot” duo with pianist Gordon Beeferman, CDs with Chuck Bettis, Hans Tammen, and many as side-person / singer. Her work-in-progress album, “Machines & Memory”, is commissioned pieces since 2010: “Panda Half-Life” (vocal sextet- electronics), “Marching Men” (voice/chamber group/electronics) and Robotica (voice/music robots).
“…luminary” (Time Out New York)
“extraordinary experimental vocalist” (Bruce Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery)
mechanique(s) duo w/Hans Tammen
(see also “Dangertown” the most current Tammen/Naphtali duo project in 2023- present.. )
Mechanique(s) is a long time aleatoric/improvised electro-acoustic computer music project of mine using live electronics, prepared guitar, voice, and sometimes reeds or other guest instrumentalists, a duo with Hans Tammen with frequent guests. Working together since 1998 in various configurations, the duo has been drawing on many traditions in improvised and electronic music, investigating the overlap of various elements of the performers’ technical and aesthetic practices.
In our performances I create textures, musical elements and gestures using live audio processing of my voice, the sound of the other musician’s with whom I perform, and some audio samples. I use Max/MSP, and an outboard sound processor, both with control in real-time via my voice, MIDI and Wii controllers, Morse code and my various musically mitigated algorithms and composed music processes.
I play my “instrument” by controlling and triggering these processes as musically needed and this has been my primary method of performance since 1995 — in many different musical contexts, with my electronics processing not merely acting as a supplement my voice, but as an important live compositional tool.
Hans Tammen (“endangered guitar”) works in innovative ways with mechanical preparations and for guitar (at times including brushes, small stones, a small electric fan, a cigarette lighters, an Ebow and chopsticks) and Max/MSP sound processing, with further control via the use of pitch-tracking and and a rotating cast of gestural controllers (at one time an infrared-controller to capture some of his head motion during performance). Tammen’s approach has evolved as well and since the mid-2000’s also incorporates Max/MSP in his Endangered Guitar projects.
In our trio are we have recorded with Martin Speicher (saxophone, clarinet, Germany), (recorded in the eponymous CD “Mechanique(s) 2001 live at Logos in Ghent). We have also been joined by Pascal Boudreault (Montreal), and many others over the years with intuitive, sound-oriented approaches to their instruments.
Throughout the collaboration of Mechanique(s) we have focused on the relationship of prepared and acoustic sounds to my electronics sounds, and at times with strikingly similar timbres with completely divergent means. The audio processing algorithms I use are as varied as the possible musical gestures, registers, and density of musical sounds we make, and the various kinds of audio processing intentionally create elements of surprise for each of us — as we listen and adapt our phrases, timing and sound.
ACOUSTIC FORMULAE PERFORMANCE BY DAFNA NAPHTALI & HANS TAMMEN – 6/5/14 from reverseartspace on Vimeo.
reviews:
All About Jazz – Eyal Hareuveni at Hafarot Seder Festival 2005 curated by Ilan Volkov in Tel Aviv:
Mechaniqe(s) Duo, featuring Hans Tammen on “endangered” guitar and lap-top and Dafna Naphtali on vocals and lap-top, came from New York, triggering their sound sources from Tammen’s “endangered” guitar, laid on a table with the strings manipulated and mutilated with sticks, straps and other objects, then with real time processing on his and Napthali’s interacting lap tops. Tammen opts for more minimal sounds that only loosely reference a conventional guitar sound and more often sounds like a distant relative of the Japanese koto; while Naphtali deconstructs these sounds into more detailed ones, pushing them into abstract and noisy realms, then layering her four-octave range vocals on top.
GORDON BEEFERMAN, KATO HIDEKI, MICHAEL EVANS, KEVIN BUD JONES, DAFNA NAPHTALI, YONI KRETZMER, MIGUEL FRASCONI AND CHRIS COCHRANE in ,Brooklyn on Fri, Nov 13, 2015
Related show
Dafna Naphtali solo w/films by Mark Street at Filmmaker’s Coop Benefit in New York on Wed, Nov 11, 2015
Related show
photo3
Lindsay Vickery / Dafna Naphtali -Jen Baker (Clip Mouth Unit) in Brooklyn on Fri, Oct 9, 2015
Related show
Hans Tammen, Dafna Naphtali, Chuck Bettis, Yoni Kretzmer, and friend in Brooklyn on Sat, Sep 12, 2015
Related show
Dafna on Female Pressure Tumblr..
Female pressure is an international network of female artists in the fields of electronic music and digital arts
Dafna Naphtali / Benton C Bainbridge at Outpost (Bklyn, NY) on Sat, May 2, 2015
Dafna Naphtali / Benton C Bainbridge (video) duo show at Outpost was 5/2/15
