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Vulneraries Vol. 5 with Pamelia Stickney, theremin

by Garlands with Pamelia Stickney

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1.
Waters Fall 23:02
2.
Winds Rise 22:55

about

Liner notes by David Garland:

The theremin is a remarkable instrument invented in 1920, played without physical contact between performer and instrument. The player moves their hands in the vicinity of antennas to control the pitch and volume of a voice-like electronic sound. Well, most players play with the sound, but few control it as Pamelia Stickney does. She has uncanny skill on her uncanny instrument. I first heard her play about 20 years ago, at Tonic in New York City. She’d only recently taken up the theremin and was already masterful. I invited her to perform on my WNYC radio show Spinning On Air, and soon learned that her unique virtuosity goes hand-in-hand with her unique, playful personality, and other extraordinary traits like her ability to write backwards as quickly as you or I write normally. Her mind works delightfully differently.

Pamelia lives these days in Vienna, Austria, but happened to be near my home in the Hudson Valley of New York State in June, 2019, during my wife Anne’s cancer treatments. As we’ve documented in the other volumes of Vulneraries, my son Kenji and I made music together during that period to help Anne and ourselves cope with what she was going through.

While Anne rested and listened upstairs, Pamelia plugged her theremin into the connection between my modified 12-string guitar and Kenji’s modular synthesizer array so that both she and Kenji could resonate my strings, Kenji could influence and extend the guitar and theremin sounds, I could help color the timbres, and a unique musical interaction among the three of us became possible.

A big vase filled with late-season peonies was in the living room where we recorded, and we could see chipmunks racing and foraging outside. Pamelia recently wrote us that she is “still remembering how beautiful, peaceful and so in the present the energy was with you, while recording and seeing the ghostlike taps that made the petals fall off the flowers on the table.”

Vulnerary is an archaic term for a substance – such as herbs or, in this case, music – used to promote the healing of wounds. At the time of this recording we knew to expect that Anne’s illness would be terminal, but couldn’t foresee that she would die just over four weeks later. I’m glad we can share this music with you now, as we did with Anne then.

—David Garland, November 2020

credits

released November 6, 2020

Modified 12-string guitar
played by hands, modular synthesizer, and theremin
Performers:
David Garland, Kenji Garland, Pamelia Stickney

David also plays Pro-One synthesizer on Waters Fall

label: Tall Owl Audio TOA09
Produced by David Garland and Kenji Garland
Recorded June 17, 2019
Music copyright © 2020 by David Garland, Kenji Garland, and Pamelia Stickney
Published by Garland Control Songs ASCAP

Images and design by David Garland

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David Garland New York, New York

Composer/singer/multi-instrumentalist David Garland has been steadily shaping songs in new ways since 1980.

"Like many great songwriters before him, Garland pushes the limits of acceptable harmony and dissonance, yet never at the expense of beauty. If it's not possible for popular music to reach the heights of the great classical masters, it seems no one has told David Garland."
--Sean Lennon
... more

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