I knew,
from the very beginning,
from the first syllable resonating in the air,
from the first image coming into view,
that I fell in love with it.
I have watched many voice performances, I buy music videos often and I am quite familiar with digital audio. However, I thought I knew nothing about these four things when I sat in the audience that night: voice, video, electronics, and imagery. Mary Jane Lamond, Laurel Macdonald (voice) as well as Philip Strong (sound mixing) converge them in such a beautiful way, and I can’t find a suitable word to describe how beautiful it was.
Lamond and Macdonald reimagined and reset some traditional Canadian folk songs collected by Helen Creighton. By using electronic sounds and effects, they made songs rich, continuous and intuitive. There were three elements to the performance: the video with electronic sound and the voice with live recording and looping. Lamond’s and Macdonald’s voices were realistic sounds in that room and I could feel it through the vibrating air, parting lips, and even the emotional eyes. The electronic sound track and the video were like something beyond the real. Rigid video often influences the way audiences think, especially during a feeling process of musical performance – in this case the video images gave me a way of exploring and enjoying the music. [READ MORE]