Natasha Barrett Heterotopia
Persistence of Sound presents a new solo LP from one of the world’s leading voices in electroacoustic music.
Natasha Barrett is known internationally for her intense explorations of the movement of sounds through space. More info
Whilst studying with Jonty Harrison at the University of Birmingham, Barrett worked with BEAST (Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre), which led to a doctoral composition degree supervised by composer Denis Smalley.
Barrett has since established an international reputation as a composer of 3D audio and ambisonics. She treats spatialisation as a musical parameter, and told the New York Times, “I’m really concerned with the idea of tangibility. Sound is invisible, but we can do things that make you want to reach out and touch it.”
Barrett describes her inspiration as coming from the immediate sounding matter of the world around us, as well as the way it behaves.
Barrett's works are performed and commissioned throughout the world, and have received a long list of prizes, including the Giga-Hertz Award and the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Awards.
- Growth [ 6:06 ]
- 2021. During the corona crisis, like many composers I spent time isolated in my studio playing with new ideas and new directions. 'Growth' was one of these pieces.
- Speaking Spaces No.1: Heterotopia [ 23:53 ]
- 2021. I can no longer remember when I realised: rather than hearing the dog bark, the hawk screech, the traffic or the child, I instead heard the forest, the mountain, the rock-face, the city. It was something more than the spaces speaking in their acoustic reflections. These encounters contradicted normal perception, and became transformative experiences during my walks through the landscape. For me these areas now contained more layers of meaning than immediately evident to the eye and ear. 'Speaking Spaces' is a series of works that explore alternative conceptions of common space. Without knowing what to call this first composition I stumbled across Foucault's concept of Heterotopia as a mirror, which seemed to embody much of what I was experiencing. 'Speaking Spaces no.1: Heterotopia' is a journey from a forest to a winter shoreline. The work was commissioned by Electric Audio Unit with support from the Norwegian Composers' Fund.
- Urban Melt in Park Palais Meran [ 9:39 ]
- 2019. The summer of 2018 was rather hot. The cities I visited that were normally a pleasant summer temperature were melting. Is this the sign of summers to come? Experiencing how excessive heat can lead to both mirages and a state of delirium, Urban Melt transports an ordinary, outdoor table tennis game in Park Palais Meran, Graz, to a crazier world on the other side of the mirage. The composition was created using high-resolution (Eigenmike®) recordings of an outdoor table-tennis game. The recordings were then spatially decomposed, or picked apart to isolate the sources in space, and this then allowed the surreal transformations upon which the work is built. The work was supported by a grant from the Norwegian The Composers' Remuneration Fund.