S2 E01: The House That Dan Built with Director Danielle O'Keefe
This week, we’re chatting with the brilliant Danielle O’Keefe of The House That Dan Built from Sydney, Australia about how her organization aims to activate women across the world to feel empowered. We speak about how to achieve a balance of learning, teaching and doing, so that singers can create works of meaning and become the best people they can be.
Music Excerpts
Cat Sneezing, by Luka and Sylvie of Toy Choir
Soul Song, by Claudia of Toy Choir Mentors
Assembly, by Angelica Mesiti
The Howling Girls, by Damien Ricketson
Carriageworks 3-part documentary on The Howling Girls
Tender Young Creatures, by Danielle O’Keefe and The House That Dan Built
Salt 360, by Danielle O’Keefe and The House That Dan Built
Theme Song: Mr. Puffy by Avi Bortnik, arr. by Paul Kim. Performed by Dynamic
Episode Transcript
Intro [00:00:07] Hello and welcome to In Unison, the podcast for choral conductors, composers and choristers, where we interview members of our choral community to talk about new music, new and upcoming performances, and discuss the interpersonal and social dynamics of choral organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. We are your hosts. I am Zane Fiala, Artistic Director of the International Orange Chorale of San Francisco. And I'm Giacomo DiGrigoli, a tenor in IOCSF, the Golden Gate Men's Chorus and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. And this is In Unison.
Zane [00:00:44] This week, we're chatting with the brilliant Danielle O'Keefe of The House That Dan Built from Sydney, Australia, about how her organization aims to activate women across the world to feel empowered. We speak about how to achieve a balance of learning, teaching and doing so that singers can create works of meaning and become the best people they can be.
Zane [00:01:08] So joining us today, we have Danielle O'Keefe and in fact, I first met Danielle in 1998, 23 years ago when we were housemates in Denver, Colorado, preparing for a tour with Up With People. But we'll save a conversation about that for another time. Danielle is an interdisciplinary contemporary artist and the founder and CEO of The House That Dan Built. And we'll tell you all about that in a little bit. Danielle has worked in the arts for over 18 years, beginning as a performer and a vocalist. She studied conducting in London at the Royal Academy and finished up with that in 2003. And then from 2003 to 2012, she conducted the Australian Youth Choir in Sydney. In 2012, she became the artistic director of the Outback Theater for Young People, and has worked with the Australian Theater for Young People, the Sydney Chamber Opera and the Australian Institute for Performing Arts. In 2014, she founded The House That Dan Built, and Danielle will tell us more about that, but from their website, it states that it is a not for profit, female focused arts association that aims to activate women across the world to feel empowered to speak; to feel like they belong, like they are part of an army. It's an ecosystem that supports female artists to achieve a balance of learning, teaching and doing so that they can create works of meaning and become the best person they can be. Welcome to the show, Danielle.
Danielle [00:02:39] Hello.
Giacomo [00:02:41] Hooray! And I know our listeners can't see us, but I am actually wearing on our Zoom call today my The Future is Female sweatshirt in honor of Danielle and The House That Dan Built. So welcome, Danielle. For those folks that aren't familiar here listening, can you tell us a little bit about The House That Dan Built?
Danielle [00:03:02] Well, we were talking about how not to speak about COVID, but it's something that the House has really had to pivot and shift considerably in the last 12 months because of restrictions here in Australia, which is very clear: you don't sing. Singing is the worst thing you can do. So we have had to really look at our processes over the last year and look at how do we still create and keep everyone safe and ensure that we are still hitting what we're supposed to be doing, At the crux of things, we are an organization that is designed to help young women really raise their voices and particularly create local outlets. So the House was created six years ago and it was a bit tongue in cheek. It's called the House the Dan Built, because in Sydney, the most expensive thing for artists is space to be able to create work. So I called it The House That Dan Built because I wanted someone to give me a house. And everyone laughs...
Giacomo [00:04:28] But it's the most successful thing you can do in business is be highly specific.
Danielle [00:04:34] Exactly. And as Australians, that's not one of our fortes. We will speak around things and we will have lots of color, but we're not specific in the way when I've worked with Americans and I learned a lot from doing some work with a company over in New York and decided, right, we've got to call this what it is: that we want and we really require space. We need a home somewhere that work can be not just created but cultivated. And over a long period of time when we're not spending all our resources on being able to be in the room together. So, The House That Dan Built was a little bit tongue in cheek, but within the first year we were gifted a house in a very nice area of Sydney. And so we suddenly had a home so the work could take on a whole new meaning and actually be given a lot more depth with being able to take away that requirement of a home and a place where we would be able to fill the walls with ideas and really start working on compositions in a very, very collaborative way. So that's one of our processes in working, is really how do we play with vocal works in a way that sits in the hybrid of collaborative but also composition. So how can we really play in collaborative composition, I guess is what we're looking at and the house is integral, the actual home is integral of that work for us.
[00:06:19] So we have four different pillars that we work to. So we are constantly pushing towards excellence in all that we do and here that's something that we speak to quite a bit, because it is something that's not what all arts organizations are trying to do. Some are really about participation or community, but we are really pushing towards vocal excellence. And for us, that means actually our integrity and our rehearsal processes and in making sure that we're able to maintain vocal excellence. So that's looking at vocal health and education.
[00:06:56] So that's our number one, first and foremost pillar. We have access and opportunity. So that is making sure that young women are given an opportunity to be able to learn skills, to really look at how to use their voices. Now, there's two prongs of that. So, learning an instrument and being able to master an instrument really requires a long time, and if you're coming from a more disadvantaged background and you don't have access to the opportunity of learning a musical instrument, how do we start to address that for young women? And so I looked at finding a cohort. This is where we talk about that army idea. And that is where young women who have been trained now are teaching quite early on in their own education process. So we say, "as soon as you can do, you teach." [Music excerpt: a young girl from Toy Choir sings a cute song about her cat sneezing with ukulele accompaniment]
[00:08:21] So it is really about, okay, you've learned how to put together a simple chord structure, one, four, five, one or something. And okay, you've been able to write a little song about that, so straight away, you teach that. And once you've been able to teach that, you're starting to really master. I'm using my fingers. I'm quite animated, obviously, when I speak—the conductor in me.
Giacomo [00:08:43] It's okay, it's fine, I'm Italian, I fully understand it. It's great.
Danielle [00:08:49] And as soon as you have mastered that, then we go on and learn the next step. So that sharing and skills cycle and an immediacy of that skill cycle is really important to our process.
Giacomo [00:09:01] When you talk about the process being both integrated, you also mentioned it being inclusive and the idea that you're reaching out to folks who are from different backgrounds. And what is it when it comes to choral music, what are the ingredients that make that inclusive process? Is it different from, say, the ingredients you need for an inclusive corporate environment? I mean, what's the difference? I love the description of how you're saying that you join, and the learners or the students become the teachers immediately. And that feels like a really important process of empowerment. But what else? I mean, what is it about? What are the ingredients that make the process inclusive?
Danielle [00:09:43] So one of the things that I do with the girls, the younger girls, is as soon as they've got a few skills in their toolkit in terms of being able to sing well in tune, listen, work on harmonies, understand simple songwriting skills, I immediately take them to regional remote communities. And that's when we run full-day workshops with girls out there who might not have had that opportunity in the past. I'm passionate about that because I grew up in a small town that we didn't have that opportunity. I played the violin because that was the only teacher that was around, you know, I didn't have a plethora of options. So I'm passionate about going into communities where they might not have had the opportunity in the past of singing and vocal workshops. So in terms of diversity of voices, though, in the room, so that for us here and we're constantly working at how to do this better and how to keep workshopping these, but it's about going into places that we haven't been before and actually having workshops and doing collaborative processes and saying, "hey, we're here, who's interested in playing." There's that aspect. It's not about asking people or expecting people to come to us and saying, "hey, our door's open." That doesn't work. That hasn't worked for us in the past. We go to other places and I actually really try and see who's who's interested and who wants to play.
Giacomo [00:11:33] Are there are there multiple ensembles within The House That Dan Built? I feel like I saw on the website that there are a few different ensembles. The Toy Choir was one which caught my eye. But are some of them more or less dedicated to like outreach or work or like what distinguishes one of the ensembles from the others?
Danielle [00:11:55] We're very fluid in our lines. So it's something that it's because you're working with teenage girls and girls who are emerging artists. So they might be doing their Masters of Opera Performance right now, so they're not someone who's going to be able to at this point come away because they're in exams or things. So we have to make sure that there's enough of us so when a workshop is being run, we can always facilitate. So there are different access points in which you can come into. The first one would be Akin. And Akin is just an introduction. It's just a taster. And then there's online things that we can do now as a response to COVID, where you have more one on one mentorship and that's with an older girl. Or even peer based, like often if it's a younger person teaching, it's not about age. It's about what information you have and what information you're looking for. And then there's Toy Choir. Now Toy Choir is where we're really more specific as a dedicated thing on weekends—this is what we're doing and it's more structured and formal. And then once you've got that structure, then it's back into an ensemble group and that's when we start playing with chaos again.
Giacomo [00:13:10] Let's hear a bit from the toy choir mentorship concert. Here's "Soul Song" by Toy Chorister Claudia.
[00:13:40] [Song with solo voice with simple electric piano accompaniment]
Danielle [00:13:43] So you've got the structure, you understand how music works and now we can play, yeah.
Giacomo [00:13:53] I love that. You focus on working with young women specifically, obviously young girls and young women. What are your thoughts about those types of spaces for those conversations, specifically gender specific groups of musicians? What are your thoughts about why it is so important to have gender specific groups of musicians, particularly for young women?
Danielle [00:14:15] And it is specifically for young women.
Giacomo [00:14:19] It is, it is.
Danielle [00:14:20] I think there's importance and there's a lot of work that I think would be great for young men, that's just not my realm. I'm all for supporting it and championing young men's voices as well. But what we're passionate about is the girls. There's a couple of areas I'm really interested in, actually, the texture of girls voices. [Music excerpt from the Angelica Mesiti's Venice Biennale project titled "Assembly," which is textures and tones on a clustery chord]
Danielle [00:14:46] The actual textures that we're playing with is one thing that I started to get quite charmed by when I was listening to the amount of female voices in social discourse.
[00:15:06] In Australia, we had a female prime minister, I want to say maybe, gosh it's 2021...years just keep flying. And she has a particularly nasal sound to her voice.
[00:15:22] [Recording of Julian Gillard] "And in so doing, I say to the leader of the opposition, I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not."
Danielle [00:15:32] Now the majority of issues around what she was saying had to do in how it was being said. Her persecution had a lot to do with the she has a higher register. She has a very nasal tone into her voice. And it was less important what she was saying than how she was saying it. And I started to really get frustrated by that, because at the time I was living in the outback and I was hearing young people talk about "this witch. This witch, this witch, this witch." And it is because it's that nasal sort of sound. And so that's not listening to what she was saying, but how she was saying it. And when I really broke that down, it came to me that we're used to hearing positions of power coming from those dulcet male tones, which are much deeper, and they are slower in the way that they are speaking because they've not been interrupted all the time. Female voices often speak faster because we're so used to someone jumping in on us. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing. When a lot of the research that I've done has been listening to women talk and...I don't know how to explain this in words, but in fingers... what we do is we're on top of each other and bouncing in the...and finishing sentences like that, the hive vocal textures that take place in female only rooms is different to what I have experienced in multi gendered rooms or male gendered rooms. So I was interested in that, that cacophony of sounds that women often speak with is incredibly infectious and powerful and delightful and interesting. But we don't hear it. It's not platformed, I guess.
Giacomo [00:17:34] It's quite true. And that sound is very, very unique. And it's the way you describe the emotional landscape. You describe it as jumping into the chaos. You've described it now as this cacophony of sounds and voices that are jumping all over each other. And what's interesting to me, one of the things Zane and I were talking about was that as choral artists we're often called upon to access some deep emotion to lend character to a piece we're performing, especially during the rehearsal process, when we're exploring a piece. What does that part of the process look like with your musicians? Because I know that for us as adults when we're performing, it's you know, I will be bawling, you know, in a rehearsal or something, but then suddenly need to think about, okay, when it comes performance time, my job is to evoke that feeling in people, maybe not to have it for myself, but there's a lot to unpack in there. And I guess the first question would be, what does the process look like for you when you deal with some really heady topics with particularly some of your younger singers?
Zane [00:18:36] And before you answer that, what's the age range of the girls in your program?
Danielle [00:18:44] So if we speak to the, not the top group, but the ones that are playing with that really experimental work and the ones that showcased in the Venice Biennale, they're... well, actually, we've just re-calibrated it and said, okay, we're going to work together for a year with just one group and it's the first time we've said "it's closed." Now we're just focusing with this group of 14, and it fits in with the restrictions and what we're able to do by closing the bubble for 2021. And they are between 12 and 26.
Zane [00:19:24] OK.
Giacomo [00:19:25] So a good, healthy range, I mean, you have some young some some young ladies as well. So what does that I mean, when you're unpacking some pretty heady topics, I imagine you've got a range of receptiveness to the topics and a range of understanding of what the topics are and certainly a range of emotions.
[00:19:53] [Music excerpt from Howling Girls: young women created unique guttural and gaspy sounds and breathing heavily, ending with a screaming-type sound effect also created by the girls]
Giacomo [00:19:55] What does that process look like when you unpack a particular piece of work that might have some emotional resonance to the group?
Danielle [00:20:01] So we work with the physical practice as well. So it's not just for us about singing, it's about the whole body. A lot of what we're doing is really extending... We work with a very, very long phrases. And it really is about controlling breath and working with straight tones. And I mean, the project that we're working on at the moment, we're attempting to slow down time. That's our objective. And so to do that, we are really requiring these very, very long, elongated breaths that help us to slow everything down. So it's about doing a physical practice. That's something that we can fall back on. So the physical practice really helps us to get strong in our bodies. So it is that we can speak to where in our bodies things are sitting and where is it resonating and bring it back to the body. Because I talk about us in terms of how our role in performance is, as how can we be the vessel for the sound? So it's how do you actually let your body hold the sound to give us a little bit as a gift without you having to feel it to perform it. Now, that's not to say that there are times where sometimes things happen physiologically, sometimes when I'm singing certain things, I have a physiological response to it. There might be tears in my eyes or something that actually takes place, and that's no problem. But I'm not sad in that moment. That's a physiological thing that's taking place. I don't have to go into the depths of that to be able to share that. I think for us, it really is about the physical work that we do as a group that helps us rely on each other.
Giacomo [00:22:00] So maybe as a means of discussing what's happening now with covid and before we talk about this piece that you're mentioning now about slowing down time, because I'm fascinated by that. And I'd love to ask you a bit about that, but I want to first talk about another piece your organization was involved with and which is Damian Ricketson's, The Howling Girls. And from that piece, there's a description that includes a quote from Susan Faludi that the piece is about a response, the trauma response to 9/11. And please stop me and correct me if I'm wrong about this, but it is essentially a response to 9/11 and the Susan Faludi quote in her book, The Terror Dream. I'd love to read that for folks. I think it's fascinating. But Susan Faludi says, quote, "In the weeks following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, five gaunt teenage girls had arrived separately at a Manhattan hospital complaining of identical symptoms. They were wasting away because they couldn't, quote, swallow. All five believe that some debris or body part from the destruction of the towers had lodged in their throats and produced the symptom. The surgeon who examined them found no obstruction and quote, needless to say, no body parts." That is a tremendously heady piece of work. Tell us a little bit about that piece, The Howling Girls and how you came to be a part of it.
Danielle [00:23:20] Yeah, it's a big one, because we talk in terms of the collective experience a lot as our collective in that when you try something, when something happens the first time that you do it, it's a struggle. It's work. You've got to really workshop something to get it cooking. Even if you then take that whole idea and then work with a brand new group of people—different conductor, a whole different group—the fact that it has already existed in the universe somehow makes it easier the second time around. And it was something that I heard Philip Glass speaking about with Einstein on the beach, and he talked about this experience, and it's something that I've noted in our work, like the very first time when a work is brand new and hasn't been heard by the universe before, that it's a struggle. Whereas from then on, it's easy to find the joy and the delight in that, even though it might be looking at dark material.
[00:24:37] So something like Howling Girls came about over a very long process. The director of that is a woman named Adena Jacobs. And Adena and I have worked on a project for Melbourne Festival here. We worked on this project, which, again, was all female focused and so it was through our ways of working, we saw how we should have worked and played. And so when we first start talking about this project, we were actually exploring the same thing, but from a different angle. I was using it. I was playing with this idea of voicelessness and obstruction here in a project called The Memory Project, looking at the original Little Mermaid, where she has her tongue cut out and loses her voice. And I've been exploring this with the girls and we're having fun with this and I've been exploring this with some quite young girls. And we've been playing, and then Adena and I start speaking. And she was playing with the same idea and reading this. What took place with these five young women in New York is incredibly fascinating to all of us for how we play with process. So I was like, well, that's really fascinating. There's no connection between these girls whatsoever and so that's the kernel and there's so much interest there and we're also playing with the same materials that, yeah, so you go, all right, something's going to happen here, you don't know what, but something's going to start. [Music excerpt from The Howling Girls: eery female voices singing nonsense syllables]
Danielle [00:26:31] So Damien Ricketson and Adena started working with, at that time, it was an ensemble of girls and I think we had 12 young women in the first development of this. So it was a playground. It was a weekend of playground sounds and working with the incredible soprano Jane Sheldon. [Music excerpt has continued behind Danielle's voice, with a brief feature of her voice alone. It is a spooky, yet beautiful soprano voice.]
Danielle [00:26:57] So it's at that stage like, okay, well, let's have a bit of playtime and see what's here. And then I think it was about two or three years later that the work started to actually take form into what became the hour long production. Yeah, it was it was a long, long process that one. If you're working with teenage girls, you really want to have an understudy because, you know, teenage girls... And anyone really. But if you're working on something like this, you really want to have an understudy. But in keeping our cycle of learning and the House ethos, we really need a young adult in the room who gets to watch the experience but doesn't have the pressure of performing. She was so extraordinary; I think she was 13 at the time. And of course, there ended up being six girls in Howling Girls, because you couldn't not have her on stage. So it became six girls. Yeah. So I look at that as being a devised process.
Giacomo [00:28:05] Well, it's extraordinary and it's amazing. I mean, the Susan Faludi quote, it's what's very interesting to me. Obviously it's a response to the erasure of female voices in response to trauma. And given what we're seeing now with covid, I mean, here in the U.S., we hear stories of folks like Dr. Susan Moore, who was an African-American doctor who died of COVID in suburban Indianapolis because she was ignored by her doctors. I mean, she was actually speaking and letting people know. And yet still her voice was not being heard. Given that the topic of the Howling Girls is 9/11, nearly 20 years ago, it'll be the 20 year anniversary this year. How do you think things have changed then, or frankly, stayed largely the same?
Danielle [00:28:48] I think the biggest change that's happened is the MeToo movement. I was listening to a podcast recently that was speaking about a woman who was being tried I think for being an accomplice to murder. It was one of those podcasts...and they were speaking about how she was so calm and still when she spoke that she seemed cold and calculating. And, the justification that was given was, you've got to remember, this was only 2003 or 2004. This was prior to the MeToo movement and it floored me, because 2004, I mean, I was already a fully fledged adult by then. And that statement, this was before then, of course it was like you weren't taken seriously before then. It wasn't the avenues that we have now available, because there has been a name put to it, there has been a movement. Yeah. So I think it still feels incredibly slow, but listening to that podcast, it literally blew my mind because 2004 doesn't seem that long ago.
Giacomo [00:30:03] Yeah, it doesn't. We were all fully formed adults by that point, I think. Yeah, it is shocking to hear that.
Danielle [00:30:10] Yeah. And that's when you realize, okay, things have shifted, just not as quickly as we would have thought. But of course it's going to feel that way while we're in it. You know, we talk about gender quite a bit because, lots of young women that I work with are exploring what are the gender neutral terms, we talk about this all the time. What is it to be a girl? Like, what is it I'm really identifying with and want to hold on to that, but I am a girl. And there's something specific about girl and girl-hood, that could be championed and enjoyed and relished and celebrated and delighted in. And so some are really passionate about wanting to actually be held under that label, whereas others aren't. And so it's the fact that we can have these conversations now and actually really explore. What does that mean and what do we mean? How do we want to play and how do we want to explore different voices in new and changing times?
Giacomo [00:31:21] And speaking of being a girl, a few weeks back, we chatted with Elena Sharkova and Jace Wittig of the Cantabile Youth Choir about how covid has been affecting their children's ensembles. And they had some really interesting insights about how covid has been affecting the people that they work with. What have you noticed about the response from the the 14 girls within your bubble? Is there something you're seeing, especially in light of the response to trauma and the explorations you've done on the Howling Girls and the piece you're working with now. Are you seeing a different response? Are you seeing different themes that are coming out in the work that you're working on now? But most importantly, how are the girls responding?
Danielle [00:32:07] The biggest thing I found, and this is more with the 14 girls than with the Toy Choir, is that they haven't sung. If they're not singing with someone else, they're not singing. So their voices were weak. Their voices is where they had trouble, trouble with their breath control. They were really, really unrehearsed and their muscles really were weak. And I think that was the biggest thing that we noticed. So they'll talk about the fact that how much they missed the singing, but when you do it on your own, when you're used to singing with such a group that really encourages and challenges and pushes each other, when you don't have that you are singing into the void, into the echo. And it's a different experience and one is important for rehearsal. And you can keep doing that when you're working towards something. So knowing that they're going to see me on Saturday, I guarantee they're all rehearsing because they're going to be accountable for it on Saturday and they're going to be standing up. So they would. But if there's no end point, then the desire or the impetus was lost to sing, I think also here, I don't know what it's like in the states around singing, but here we talk about, singing is...bad. Singing has had a really bad rap during Covid, that it's dangerous and it's just not something we should be doing and I think what that's done to us all is this idea of not like I know myself. I used to sing and hum all the time and then suddenly just not doing that so much, you know, you're just out of practice yourself. And the incidental singing that would take place as well—all the humming, the orchestration of what's going on in my head. So I think that's what covid has done and undone. Obviously, they're not being able to congregate, and get our harmonies working, and we are able to sing here in a group of five at the moment because we've got zero cases here. So you can sing in five, but you all must be facing in the same direction and five meters away from me as a conductor and depending on where we're sitting in the restriction, either 1.5 or five meters apart from each other. So there's things that we can do, and we've been we've been doing those things. But it's a different experience. And taking away performance out of repertoire as well. When you're singing, but no one gets to hear it, what's that, too?
Zane [00:34:56] Yeah, I watched that video. It was through your website. Oh, shoot. Now the name is escaping me, but it's the Little Red Riding Hood story. What was that called?
Danielle [00:35:12] Tender Young Creatures.
Zane [00:35:12] It's called Tender Young Creatures, right. Yeah. You just mentioned, you know, what's making music without the opportunity to perform it and to share it with with the public. And that performance, I mean, the singers, the kids were walking among the audience. I mean, there's no way that that could happen. [Music excerpt from Tender Young Creatures, which includes some spoken dialogue and percussion]
Zane [00:35:38] And you know, when it comes down to it, I feel like for us choral musicians, covid has been a traumatic event. It's been a trauma for us. And, you know, trauma often has this period of recoil, you know, an initial response and then reflection on it. So I wonder, Danielle, how far do you see the trauma of covid resonating into the future works of new composers?
Danielle [00:36:06] The composers that we're working with at the moment are still having the opportunity to create and have their creations sounded. So what we're doing is, a composer sends me something and we are doing things digitally, so there is still a voice being placed into the compositions and so you are getting that feedback. It's just a different sort of feedback on their work. But I think the trauma is going to be down the track.
Zane [00:36:47] Hmm.
Danielle [00:36:48] So, yeah, I think it's something that in the arts, we're going to really feel this in a few years' time. I think we'll have a void of performers from a certain age bracket because they will have gone off and done other things because there is no possibility at the moment. I think here particularly there's been a crack down on culture and art. Well...ever since we had a cycle when one of our politicians started the war on artists and it has infiltrated down through how arts are created and maintained, and specifically for young voices in Australia that are deeply underfunded. So therefore, you are working with young people who have the finances to be able to be learning music, you know, actually getting across a spectrum of diverse group at all in coming up through the ranks. So I think we're going to see this in the next five, 10 years. The trauma will be felt down the track for us.
Danielle [00:37:58] I also feel that there's an exhaustion that has happened for most artists and particularly vocal artists who are just trying to connect and sing and work using tools that really are not meant to be used that way. And so, therefore, you are working twice as hard in the lead up and you're feeling unsatisfied in the moment. And then the aftermath of how much clean up or whatever you need to do to be able to create anything means you're working not only outside of your skill set, but so many more hours than what would have been required to just be in the room.
Giacomo [00:38:38] It's true.
Zane [00:38:39] I know that very well because I'm in the midst of editing a virtual choir project for my choir and spending four hours every day sitting at the computer just listening to every voice and trying to match it up. And man, it's a lot of work to get only one song done, you know, as opposed to the same amount of work to put on an entire concert.
Danielle [00:39:05] Yeah. And with that, there's so many voices that sing in response to other voices, and that is the beauty of choral work. It isn't about 16 solos or 13 solos. That's not it. It's because there are some people in their pitch is really found by being immersed in the other voices. It's not in having perfect pitch to a computer. It's not how that works. It's not how they've practiced. So the errors that take place and... Yeah, I find that it loses a part of its little soul when it's done that way. And that we are so used to hearing things that are so well produced. I think if your job is working in film sound recordings, then you're used to being able to produce something at that quality. Whereas I'm used to getting a performance to that quality and that relies on the space and that relies on the environment and time. And, you know, there's a whole bunch of things that are taking place there that have nothing to do with the recording aspects.
Giacomo [00:40:20] That's true, I mean, so many of your works actually are quite interdisciplinary and are space dependent. I mean, the video installation pieces and the movement and the actual lived-in space that most folks are actually performing in. Yeah, it's quite unique. You can't really replace that or find it. We've all basically been robbed of a year, I mean, or at least the better part of a year, which is strange to imagine. But the counterpoint to that, of course, is that there's a Buddhist mantra, which is "from suffering comes beauty or teaching," I think is roughly what it translates to. What do you think we're potentially learning right now from this experience and frankly, what's been the mud—the muck—that we're all kind of living in?
Danielle [00:41:13] Well, we do deal with a lot of really dark matter in our compositions and in our works, that is true. But there's a real delight that we play with as well as a counterpoint to that. And so that's why the Toy Choir was created. I went, all right, I'm going to be working with a project of teenage girls talking about what it actually feels like to be a girl walking through a city on their own and actually attempting to not even take up space, but just to be in space. What that feels like then I really need a counterpoint of something delightful and playful. And so that's where Toy Choir comes in.
[00:41:59] I think for...as a Danielle...is, how do you keep the joy alive when you're trying to... I don't want to say that we're just surviving at the moment, but there's been a possibility of pivoting and, you know, we're able to pivot. But there's a joy that's lost in terms of being in the room and collaborating and creating works. From a space that is lost and so from my perspective, it's how do we actually find a new way of cultivating that joy and delight, or shifting focus entirely so that that becomes a focus point again? I think that's what the world needs right now. I mean, if you look at works that are created in different times of hardship after the war, you're looking at some really happy and light and joyous works again, because that's what we need. When we go and say something, we actually need something that's going to lift up our hearts and spirits and souls. We don't want to be looking into the darkness. It's only when things are going well or when things are stable that we're actually able to delve into these much bigger, bigger issues that exist. But, you know, when you're just trying to keep afloat, I feel like what the world needs at the moment from us is something that's beautiful. So exactly what you're saying is through the suffering, how do we create, that beauty and that's something that we're in the struggle of at the moment. Like, how do we create something that's really beautiful and has a delight and raises the spirits?
Zane [00:43:48] Do you have some ideas that are percolating in that brain of yours already, of what you can envision of the light and the positivity when we get the chance to emerge from the depths?
Danielle [00:44:01] Yeah, look, we haven't been so successful in playing with technology on the cheaper level, so we've gone all right, we need to go a bit more high end. What we're playing with at the moment is a data arena which has a 360 data arena, so we have 14 inputs into the space. So an audience member can come in and actually have the decentralized Carl experience all around them as if the girls are around them in that space. What's beautiful about something like that is that we've often talked about what would happen if our works were on a loop and you were actually able to have different voices feeding into it. So the work is continuous and the girls come and go, so you've got enough girls, like we're talking about Tender Young Creatures which has a hundred girls in it. So you ask what could happen here? This allows us to do that. To be able to actually give that decentralized choral experience to an audience member in the setup of this data arena. The trick with this is though that it still needs to be recorded in person. So for us, we need to find a space. And so that's what we're looking at the moment, is a great big giant, vacuous, factory like space, where we're actually able to be this far apart and still feeding in at the same time. Because, we're attempting to play with, you know, there's a lot of breath that takes place in this. And it does rely on seeing each other and singing into each other. So how do we make that happen?
Giacomo [00:45:53] Is this the piece that you're actively working on right now that you had mentioned earlier about the slowing down of the breath? And is there is there a name for that or are you still in the fun exploration phases of it?
Danielle [00:46:04] Oh, no, we're in the, "okay, let's do this" phase right now. We're calling it Salt 360. So we're playing with... we filmed some of the work under water. And so it's about what sound is being made under water. What we found was if you record the ocean, so we put some mics right into where waves are crashing. And if you slow that down, you get an A, is what that sound is. The note that the ocean is singing to you at that point of crash, it's melodically an A.
[00:46:47] [Music Excerpt from Salt 360: girls singing an A and saying "Look up and see the moon above."]
Danielle [00:46:54] When you get girls to gargle, and record that, then slow that down, it is the same sound that is in the actual ocean. So a single body can create the same sound as the Pacific Ocean, just by playing with space and time. So that to me was really fascinating. And so we started to make work from there.
Giacomo [00:47:22] That is fascinating. Danielle, do you have space in your group for middle aged gay men? Because I'm ready to come over and perform with you all. I mean, really just sounds absolutely fascinating. The technology, the thoughtfulness around it. It's just really extraordinary.
Danielle [00:47:37] Well, what's so lovely is when you have, like, the same ensemble playing together, we all know each other's voices and they're specifically chosen because of their vocal textures as well. So they complement each other so beautifully with the warm beautiful tones, with some of the girls. And then you've got coloratura but very, very thin, angelic sounds. And the way in which we can play, because we've been playing together for a while, means that we get to go a bit deeper in our exploration.
Giacomo [00:48:13] So that's a no, that's fine. It's okay. I've heard no before.
Danielle [00:48:17] We know how to talk around something without saying "no.".
Giacomo [00:48:20] Perfect. Thank you. Thank you for demonstrating for us.
Zane [00:48:27] So diplomatic. Fantastic
Giacomo [00:48:34] So looking forward, Danielle, what else that's out there right now is inspiring you? I mean, aside from your group and the things you're hearing from what you're creating, are there pieces of work or people or anything that's really just inspiring you right now that gets you to jump up in the morning and say, "yes, I'm ready for another day"?
Danielle [00:48:56] Look, I'll have to admit, I'm not really jumping at the moment, but sometimes I'm like let's go. And then others like it's taking me a little while. I think that's something that's been interesting around covid is that I'm feeling much more creative towards the end of the day and into the night, whereas it used to be in the morning. So it's a slow cook for me at the moment. But artists that I think are extraordinary at the moment, Meredith Monk is my go to. We sometimes go around residencies and we'll watch different works as a group and then we'll discuss and talk about what's happening and what does that mean and then have a play. When I had 12, 13 year olds watching Pina Bausch, and then five years later they might see some extraordinary works. I think I'm interested in now of how we can start to play the technology in what we're doing. So how do we create that cross of live performance and prerecorded but still keeping the integrity? So one of the things I'm playing with at the moment that has been inspired by some work that I've been watching coming out the UK is if I have straight tones happening in a composition. So if we actually really push for those very, very clear straight tones and then having to sing against your own voice, and there's times where you let the vibrato swell, but it's against your own voice and I don't know what's in there yet, but having the possibility to be able to actually play with that is, your own avatar, I guess. Like singing against my own voice is interesting if it's done with the proper technology. Whereas often we were working with really cheap technology. Until this year we'd basically recorded everything on my phone. We didn't do anything with that recording. It's all about being in the room. And we spoke very clearly about why it's important to be in the room and the shared experience between the person who is receiving the gift and the person who is giving it. So things were recorded on phones and now we upped our ante a little bit.
Zane [00:51:25] Yeah, singing against your own voice, that's something that I've played around with, especially now during covid times. When I first got my audio interface out and started setting up microphones and planning to do podcasting and recording virtual choir stuff as I sat and recorded myself singing something and then sang against it. And it's amazing how incredible the blend can be because it's literally the same exact voice. So all the overtones are the same, all the timbre is exactly the same. But at the same time it can go awry so quickly because the slightest fluctuation can make the intonation go wonky and change stuff. But if that's the point is to explore that, I think that's fascinating, hat's a really, really cool.
Danielle [00:52:14] And to be actually looking at different techniques. So often when I'm making a rehearsal track or something that's just my voice, the hollowness it has because of what you're speaking about, there's a hollowness to it. But if there's an intention behind it and particularly playing with that, letting your voice open up into vibrato or actually really keeping, you know, trying to keep pitch in straight tones over a period of time, like what is actually happening to the sounds of the voice there. And you keep singing into that sound. What's there, what can we play with?
Zane [00:52:50] We yeah, absolutely.
Danielle [00:52:52] Plus that gets our choir of 14 up to 28, while still being covid safe.
Zane [00:52:57] Oh right. Yeah exactly. The the double fourteen.
Giacomo [00:53:05] Danielle, thank you. This has been a spectacular conversation. I feel like we could talk for hours and hours and we have every intention of calling you up again and asking you for another chat at some point, because I really am going to need to hear these Zane stories about Up With People. So we may...
Danielle [00:53:19] I was only 17 when we went to Up With People, and it's funny because I actually haven't heard—obviously I've seen it written—but I haven't heard the words said, and I was like, oh, yeah!
Giacomo [00:53:29] That was it. That was the thing.
Zane [00:53:32] That was the thing.
Giacomo [00:53:34] Is there anything as we're kind of wrapping up here, is there anything we can we can mention for you about The House That Dan Built? What can we plug for you? What should our audience be on the lookout for in the in the coming weeks and months?
Danielle [00:53:48] Yeah, I mean, I'm not very good at the social media aspects of explaining things, but we're getting better at that. And I have some young people who are now just going, "alright, this can be my job." Yeah, jumping onto our Instagram would be great. We have just started something and it's called it's Toy Choir TV. So what I'm trying to get girls there to do, is when they've written their own song, is to teach it and then be able to collaborate with others in terms of possibly orchestrating it. But it's just really getting them to take ownership of "I wrote this, and this is how you play it." And that's why we use the ukulele. The ukulele is really just there because it helps keep people in key. And also just really helps with their ears when they're learning. There's something really delightful about being taught to play the ukulele by some preteen and teen girls because the stuff that they've chosen to write about is quite different. There's a little cat who has covid right now, who's gotta sneeze. And, you know, it's just sweet little things that do make you happy. So in terms of keeping that joy, if you're looking for it, yeah, we've got a little ukulele program you can do online.
Giacomo [00:55:05] Toy choir TV. We should definitely check it out. And for those listening, you can follow The House on Instagram and Facebook @thehousethatdanbuilt. Their website is thehousethatdanbuilt.com. You can sign up for their mailing list there. They're on YouTube and Vimeo. We'll put the links in the show notes. And there's something also that I think you might want to mention to folks about picking up a pack for safe singing. What's this about? We picked up on your on your site.
Danielle [00:55:33] Yeah. So we've got a covid pack. Just not sure about how that might send us bankrupt if we're sending it, um, across to the states. So, year, check it out, but I'm just going to do a quick little Google to see what the cost of sending to the U.S. is...
Zane [00:55:51] You just have to charge a little more for shipping, but that's okay.
Danielle [00:56:00] Actually, I sent Kalan a little pack for her daughters, one of the women we traveled with. And to Morgan. I sent Morgan one for Christmas for her boys as well.
Zane [00:56:12] Oh, wow.
Danielle [00:56:13] Yeah. So we have a package that is something to do at home that's just completely contained in and of itself. Yeah. With a little e-book that we made. For a bit of delightful fun singing.
Zane [00:56:27] Fantastic, that's great. Well, hopefully our listeners will check out your website and go watch some videos on YouTube and Vimeo there. The little clip of the Howling Girls, which we'll put a link up for that as well, it was just so cool to watch these young girls just exploring their voices and making sounds and just being so raw and exposing themselves. It was really such a great experience. So we'll put a link to that as well in the show notes.
Danielle [00:57:01] Yeah, we actually got to take that show to Japan for the world festival over there, so we represented Australasia at the World Music Festival over in Tokyo. And what was quite extraordinary about that is that when I talk about the home that we were given—we literally are in a basement—that's where we do our work. And it's a basement. And then all of a sudden we were thrown onto the Metropolitan Theater in Tokyo and hearing people talk about the process of devising work where it just gave the girls, like this agency to really speak up about what they were doing and why they were doing it. And yeah, it was really great to hear their perspective, given a real platform over in Japan.
Zane [00:57:48] Wow, that's great. Well we admire the work that you're doing, Danielle, in Australia, and we hope that it's infectious and that we get people all over the world that do the same thing because, you know, empowering young women and making sure their voices are heard, I think is something that we should all be focusing our attention on these days. So thanks for what you're doing.
Giacomo [00:58:13] And a stateside joint concert at some point very soon, we hope.
Zane [00:58:18] Mm. Wouldn't that be cool?
Danielle [00:58:20] That'd be cool.
Giacomo [00:58:22] Just put it out there. Just say it's the trip that Dan built. There you go. It's going to happen now. We've manifested it.
Danielle [00:58:28] Well I've got a hundred capes sitting in my garage at the moment, ready for one hundred girls if you can find one hundred girls we're there.
Zane [00:58:39] What's the shipping? What's the shipping going to cost on those capes, though? I don't know. I'm worried.
Danielle [00:58:43] I just have to get my girls to wear them all.
Zane [00:58:47] Yes, exactly. Well, it's been great. Giacomo, you have anything further?
Giacomo [00:58:55] I don't This was wonderful. Thank you so much.
Danielle [00:58:56] Thank you.
Zane [00:58:57] Yeah, really great. Thanks for connecting with us. And we'll share your story far and wide and we'll look forward to talking to you again soon.
Danielle [00:59:04] Thanks so much. Lovely seeing you both.
Zane [00:59:06] Yeah. Good to see you, too. Bye.
Danielle [00:59:09] Cheers, Thanks.
Outro [00:59:10] Hey, thanks for listening to this week's episode of the In Unison podcast. But before we go, do you sing in an awesome choir that people should know about or maybe know a composer or conductor you'd love to hear on the show. How about any recent or upcoming performances that touched your heart, tickled your fancy or made you go? Well, then we would love to hear from you. Please shoot us a note at ideas@inunisonpodcast.com with your thoughts. And who knows, maybe Chorus Dolores will ask us to talk about it during announcements.
[00:59:40] In Unison is sustained, nourished and fostered by. You are loyal, loving listeners. And don't forget to subscribe to In Unison on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. You can find us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @inunisonpod. And hey, if you like what you heard, tell a friend or a section mate. Thanks again for tuning in. See you soon.
[01:00:03] Printed scores hole punched by Chorus Dolores, who knows that milk is an absolute no-no on show day.
[01:00:13] In unison is produced and recorded by Mission Orange Studios. Our theme music is Mr. Puffy, written by Avi Bortnick, arranged by Paul Kim and performed by the Danish vocal jazz ensemble Dynamic on their debut album This is Dynamic. Special thanks to Paul Kim for permission. Be sure to check them out at www.dynamicjazz.dk