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SONGS OF RADIANCE: Audio Recording: Three Independent Songs, 2016
Total Duration: 16:39
Song #1: “Softly the Morning’s Radiance”, 5:22
SOFTLY THE MORNING’S RADIANCE is the first of three contemplative songs created in 2016 using Priscilla McLean’s own voice and a mix of electronically-influenced sampled and electronic sounds through the KYMA 7 Symbolic Sound System. Text of this first song is by Priscilla McLean: “Softly the morning’s radiance steals into my consciousness.” Available on YouTube, the accompanying photo was taken by the composer on a lakefront beach from a campground in British Columbia.
Song #2: “There Was a Time”, 5:52
The second song in this set, THERE WAS A TIME, is a meditative piece reflecting on the words by Henry David Thoreau: “There was a time when the beauty and the music were all within, and I sat and listened to my thoughts and there was a song in them.” (from Thoreau’s Journal, May 23, 1854). All vocal sounds, singing, and narratives are by Priscilla McLean, processed through the KYMA 7 Symbolic Sound System. Available on YouTube, the accompanying photo is Victoria Mountain in Alberta, as McLean is sitting on the top of Fairview Mt. and contemplating.
Song #3: “Time is But the Stream”, 5:25
TIME IS BUT THE STREAM is the third of three contemplative songs created in 2016 using Priscilla McLean’s own voice and a mix of electronically-influenced sampled and electronic sounds through the KYMA 7 Symbolic Sound System. Text of this first song is by Henry David Thoreau: “Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.” (from “Walden”). Carla Scaletti, president of Symbolic Sound, Corp., writes in the magazine “The Eighth Nerve”: “Songs of Radiance 3 (Time is but the stream) begins delicately, with hybrid flute-birds. Pierrot Lunaire-like Sprechtstimme, and a scurrying of instrumental samples evoking small mammals. Spoken text, pointillistic vocal effects, laughter, careening vocal glissandi and other vocalizations merge, blend, and morph into instrumental and electronic sounds. Here the voice is employed as an orchestra — its full range from speech, to bel canto, to isolated sibilants, to staccato laughter, to vocoder-like multitrack harmonies, coalescing into fresh and unexpected ensembles.” The photo is of Thompson Creek in Alberta.
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