Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist working primarily with voice, live electronics, sampled sound, and video. A pioneer of live looping, she processes her voice to create complex sonic layers. Her solo works combine experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, digital processing, and wireless MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate sound with physical gestures.
She has been commissioned to compose scores for dance, theatre, film, and chamber ensembles including Kronos Quartet, Roomful of Teeth, the Living Earth Show, Eighth Blackbird, the Bang on a Can All Stars, Julia Bullock with SF Symphony, and the LA Philharmonic New Music Group. Her interdisciplinary performances have been presented at venues including The Kitchen (NY), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF), REDCAT (LA), and MCA (Chicago), and her installations have been presented at such exhibition spaces as MoMA (NY), the Whitney (NY), Savvy Contemporary (Berlin), and the Krannert (IL).
Pamela Z has toured extensively in the US, Europe, and Japan, performing at festivals like Bang on a Can (NY), Interlink (Japan), and La Biennale di Venezia (Italy). She has received numerous awards, including the Rome Prize, Berlin Prize, MIT McDermott Award, and the Guggenheim Fellowship. Pamela holds a music degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder.
On Sunday, 23rd March, Pamela Z will perform at the Maerz Musik festival at Haus der Berliner Festspiele.
FACTS
1. The voice is an instrument.
2. Music is sound art.
3. Sound art is music.
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
I’m inspired by the work of other artists (from all disciplines). I’m also sometimes inspired by sounds (and images) that I hear (and see) in the world around me – even when they were not intended to be art.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
I’ve been making music and playing with sound ever since childhood. My earliest memories of music-making are singing and using found objects for percussion, as a five-year-old.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
I find it impossible to rank music in that way. Five isn’t even enough to encompass the number of music genres I love let alone albums or works. So I’ll just name (off the top of my head) several (albums or works) that I love or have found important over the years. These are by no means my top picks. They are just the first titles that happen to come to mind at this particular moment.
Philip Glass: /Einstein on the Beach/
Talking Heads: /Remain in Light/
Bach: /Goldberg Variations/
Meredith Monk: /Do You Be/
Joni Mitchell: /Blue/
Carl Stone: /Al Noor/
Caroline Shaw: /Partita/
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
I think of Dock 11 (the venue) because I had an engagement there, a few years back, when I was here for an artist residency composing the score for a work by choreographer Sarah Shelton Mann. I enjoyed performing there, and I saw some wonderful concerts on the same festival.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
My favorite performance venue (for presenting my work and for seeing other aritsts’ work) is a space called “Theater Artaud” which is located in an artist live/work building that was once a can factory. The building is three stories high and takes up an entire city block. The theater, which takes up one wing of the building, is a flexible black-box with modular raked seating, and has a fly area that extends up through all three floors. It’s a marvelous place for performance work.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
Maybe I would be a foley artist for film. I’ve always fantasized about doing that. (Am I cheating by still including sound in my choice?)
7. What was the last record/music you bought or listen?
It was a recording by Dutch composer and performance artist Jaap Blonk.
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Maybe someone like the experimental theater director Robert Wilson.
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
Again, this is very difficult for me to do. I’m terrible at ranking things I love. But a few stand-out experiences that come to mind include playing with Bang on a Can at Lincoln Center, playing with Roomful of Teeth at Mass MOCA,and mounting my work /Simultaneous/ at MoMA in New York.
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
Very important – to the extent that I tend not to categorize “technology” separately from other tools I use in my work. I consider my instrument to be the combination of my voice and the electronics I use.
11. Do you have siblings and how do they feel about your career/art?
I have several siblings. They all have had different professions, but each has, to varying degrees, been involved with music in some way. And all of them – some more than others – have an appreciation and respect for what I do.
