Category: Magic Names

new releases June 2026

  By , , ,

Panda Half-Life

Panda Half-Life (Dafna Naphtali, 2010, rev. 2014/2024).
for vocal sextet & electronics

Magic Names Vocal Ensemble:
Robert Osborne, Peter Sciscioli, Nick Hallett, Dafna Naphtali, Gisburg Smialek, Daisy Press. Dafna Naphtali, live electronics, voice processing.

Text excerpts from Genesis 11 story of Tower of Babel
(track 1)
v1: “Now the entire earth was of one language and uniform words”
v4: (the people said) “Come, let’s build ourselves a city,
and a tower with its top in the heavens,
and make ourselves a name”

(track 3)
v7: (God said) “Come, let us descend and confuse their language”
v9: “Therefore, He named it Babel.. and confused the language of the entire earth,
and scattered them upon the face of the entire earth.”

Commissioned by American Composers Forum (2009)
for Magic Names vocal ensemble. Dafna Naphtali, composer.
Recorded 2014 at NYU Dolan Studios
Dafna Naphtali – mixing, editing, electronics: (2014, 2024)
Charles Mueller – mixing, mastering (2024)
released June 8, 2026
Image: The Tower of Babel – Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1563) (via Wikimedia Commons)

Scatternet re-release on new compilation

no pulse __________only color — new compilation presented and curated by △ thoHk ▽

Gridlines dissolve. Time stops. This is a canvas of pure texture, frequency, and weightless gravity, where traditional rhythm is stripped away to expose the raw, vibrating spectrum of avant-garde sound. Six visionary composers, no pulse______only color.

Track 4: Dafna Naphtali – Scatternet (2016) [29:02 – 37:55] — Performed by Dafna Naphtali (voice, electronics, live sound processing) and originally released on the album Silver Shift. This track is a masterful study in real-time digital alchemy, using custom electronic patches to fragment and scatter her own voice across the stereo field, turning a human instrument into a complex, shimmering web of pure electronic color. full album here.

01. Katharina Klement – Vortex (2018/2021) [00:00 – 09:28]
02. Dganit Elyakim – One On 1.1 for metal percussion and electronics (2021) [09:29 – 17:56]
03. Alen Ilijic – sHe knows (2024–2026) [17:57 – 29:01]
04. Dafna Naphtali – Scatternet (2016)
05. Guy Barash – Proteus: Electric Monologue (2008–2009) [37:56 – 46:19]
06. Arie Shapira – Left-Right (1996/2000) [46:20 – 1:01:03] — A monumental electro-acoustic work from the late Israeli modernist master, originally featured on his retrospective album Electronics Plus and layered with text by poets Meir Wieseltier, Dan Pagis, Aryeh Sivan, Natan Zach, and Raya Harnik. Left-Right serves as a stark, dense sonic commentary on political polarisation, stripping away traditional harmony to expose the clashing, static friction of words, memory, and social structures.

Magic Names vocal sextet

  By ,

Magic Names is a six-member self-led vocal ensemble, founded in 2007 to champion Stimmung, the rarely performed vocal masterpiece of Karlheinz Stockhausen (written in 1968). The group’s premiere concert after an intensive 18-month rehearsal period was in May 2009 at the New Museum in New York City. We are an eclectic group of New York performing artists. We come together as composers, classical singers, pop singers, dancers, sound-artists, and film-makers. We are all avid improvisers – united by a shared passion for contemporary repertoire, and new experimentation. Current and sometime members of the group have included Gisburg, Nick Hallett, Dafna Naphtali, Robert Osborne, Daisy Press, Peter Sciscioli and Margot Basset.

Stimmung is a formidable 70-minute work for six singers, and a subtle sine-wave drone B-flat 9th chord.  The score calls for nearly constant singing of quickly fluctuating phonemes in polyrhythmic overlapping patterns, creating a Western-influenced overtone singing style.  Aleatoric sections of the piece pit one singer against another’s rhythmic disruptions and pitch deviations, creating beat frequencies, and other sound events that are reminiscent of the composer’s work for tape and electronics.   The atmosphere is interrupted intermittently by lusty singsong texts, and by “magic names” of ancient gods and goddesses.  Poetic levity is incorporated into otherworldly intonation.

Working With Stockhausen’s Stimmung (1968) Filmed by Iki Nakagawa from daria fain on Vimeo.

We are an eclectic group of New York City performing artists. We come together as composers, classical singers, pop singers, dancers, sound-artists, and film-makers. We are all avid improvisers – united by a shared passion for contemporary repertoire, and new experimentation.

 

Stimmung was only the starting point for Magic Names.  In recent seasons we have incorporated original works written by members of the group. Including “Fassbinder Songs”, written by Gisburg for the Vital Vox Festival 2010, and “Panda Half-Life” by Dafna Naphtali,  commissioned by American Composers Forum Jerome Commissioning Program.

As well, we have  a strong collaborative relationship with choreographer Daria Fain, an acclaimed New York choreographer  who who invited the group to participate with her in her piece “Working with Stockhausen’s Stimmung” commissioned and presented by Danspace Project in New York City as part of PLATFORM 2010, with other performances in the past few years as Judson Church and 92nd street Y.

www.myspace.com/magicnames