S3E01: A Volti SF Premiere: Pamela Z’s “Ink”
This week’s episode is a conversation with composer Pamela Z about her new premiere with Volti SF, titled “Ink.” The composition unfolds in five sonically distinct movements that variously use standard notation, graphic elements, instructions, and rote transmission of sung and spoken vocal material.
We also catch up with Volti’s Artistic Director, Bob Geary, to get his thoughts on the piece and its premiere.
Episode Transcript
Intro [00:00:01] Hello! And welcome to In Unison, the podcast about new choral music, and the conductors, composers and choristers who create it! 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 SF Symphony Chorus. And this is, In Unison! (I like being in unison!)
Zane [00:00:34] Joining us today on In Unison is Pamela Z, and Pamela is a composer, performer and media artist who works primarily with voice, live electronic processing, sampled sound, and video. She's a pioneer of live digital looping techniques and processes her voice in real time to create dense, complex sonic layers. Pamela's solo works combining 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. In addition to her solo work, Pamela has been commissioned to compose scores for dance, theater, film and chamber ensembles, including the Kronos Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, The Bang on a Can All Stars, Ethel, and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. Pamela is also known for her interdisciplinary performance works as well as her installations, all of which have been presented at venues around the world. And today we'll be discussing Ink, Pamela's new composition, premiered by Volti. Ink unfolds in five sonically distinct multimedia movements titled, "Drink," "Blink," "Think," "Link," and "Ink." The movements variously use standard notation, graphic elements, instructions, and rote transmission of song and spoken vocal material. Thanks for joining us, Pamela. Welcome to the show.
Pamela [00:02:02] Thank you for having me.
Giacomo [00:02:04] So we like to start these conversations with an icebreaker and we know that from our composers and cocktail series and from having met you a few times through the Volti series, that you are an avid drinker...perhaps... We thought we might ask, what is your favorite cocktail?
Pamela [00:02:27] Well, I have several favorites and I go from one to another. But I get you know, right now I'm quite fond of the Aviation, which is gin and maraschino liqueur and crème de violette and lemon juice and a brandy cherry as a garnish. So that's one of my favorites. Another favorite that I've had for a while is this thing called The Pivot. And it's a variation on the old fashioned. So it's Maker's Mark or Bulleit or whatever bourbon you like. And then, you know, then simple sirup and some dashes of chocolate bitters.
Giacomo [00:03:11] Mm.
Zane [00:03:13] Yum yum yum.
Giacomo [00:03:14] OK, add that to the list. We were drinking Aviations in your honor as we were watching Ink. It's a very...
Zane [00:03:20] Although without the branded cherry. I missed... I missed the garnish. I didn't realize... I feel like a failure...
Zane [00:03:31] All right. This seems like a good time to introduce you to Ink. Here's an excerpt of the final movement of the piece. The title track, as it were, "Ink."
[00:03:41] [Music Excerpt: Fifth movement of the piece: “Ink.” Music description: Treble voices begin singing a melodic motif that is handed back and forth between voices. Then lower voices enter, echoing the motif. They sing the text: “Millions of microscopic droplets of water based ink are precisely spraked from a print head onto the paper producing photographic prints. But the text is not as sharp or as crisp because the liquid in soaks through the fiber of the paper and bleeds before it dries...jet...jet….alignment...alignment...” At seemingly random intervals, the singers begin singing the sound of ink blots - as if the inky music on the page had been smudged by water, and the singers are determining how to make a sound that matches this notation.]
Giacomo [00:05:40] Perhaps we should start off by asking Pamela, what is Ink?
Pamela [00:05:44] I don't know how to answer that question. You mean do you want me to, like, encapsulate the piece in a in a sentence? [laughs]
Giacomo [00:05:58] [laughing] Unbounded. It can be it could be the answer to the universe, it could be whatever. How would you describe it to someone who was just experiencing it for the first time?
Pamela [00:06:03] I mean, I guess it's, you know, it's it's it's weirdly almost a piece of conceptual art because the theme that it hangs on is something that's so conceptual and not and not based in any kind of a story or ideology or, you know, it's it's really I started with this idea that and I honestly can't remember when I first decided that that's what it would be. But I had this idea that there would be that all the movements of the piece would have that "ink" sound in the name. So it would, you know, and I think, wow, I you know, I'm trying to remember, like, if that if I had started working on it and then that came to me or if I actually knew that I had this weird feeling that I kind of knew that before I had made any of it. I mean, I knew conceptually what these different sections would be. You know, it came to me really fast that, oh, they'll be the "Blink" section and in "Blink" they'll, you know, they'll be using each other's blinks as a score. There'll be "Ink," which will be this, you know, bleeding inkjet print of of a score with the inkblots and, you know, "Link" with with the with the URL, with all the URLs and, you know, and all and all of these things just, um...
Pamela [00:07:35] It's not like they came to me whole cloth, but the idea and the concept was pretty fast. Like I knew pretty early on that there were these five movements and what the names were of the movements. And I didn't want to reveal too much because for one thing, I was afraid it would influence—it would affect their behavior. And I didn't want that to happen, so, you know, it was easy to reveal to them that the final movement was called "Ink" and and they knew right away that there were going to be ink blots that they were going to have to interpret vocally, because that was that's the only movement in the whole piece that was presented to them as a full score. When they received it and they learned to sing it as a full score, and they understood from beginning to end what was going to happen in it, and that's why it was useful to have Bob. All the rest of the movements were presented to them in little fragments. And individual little fragments that I made by having them sing. And I actually created these sort of slides with, you know, two bars of music with repeat bars on each end so that they could sing. And a lot of the phrases I already knew were only going to happen once. But I needed to make sure because they couldn't hear each other, because they couldn't, you know, that they didn't have a feel for how this was going to fit together, I needed to make sure that they had enough time to sing it, that in all of those times they might get, you know, one or two good takes. And so for each little phrase, I had them repeating them, you know, eight or 10 times. And and, you know, but they were all separate. And so they just were like, OK, this is a fragment. Sure. I'll do whatever you ask, you know? And that's how I sort of fed it to them. But yeah, I feel like I've wandered from what I can't remember what your question was... [laughing].
Giacomo [00:09:52] No, that's it. I mean, I just it's interesting to me because it's... Would you call it a, I mean, it's a piece of art, but it's a piece of wordplay and it's a composition and it's conceptual art. And it's interesting to hear you talk about how you would describe it. I mean, it's this experience.
Pamela [00:10:08] Well, I think of it as a composition. And furthermore, I think that it's me and I actually in the behind the scenes, like each week when I came to them with all these little fragments leading up to that rehearsal, I was structuring that movement. So I already had the placement in mind of the order that those events would occur in; how they all fit together. So by the time I would bring the fragments to the rehearsal, I had already composed it. And I now just was like, in order to make this, it was like coming up with a meal plan. And figuring out what the what the what you're going to fix and then, you know, sketching out the order of like these are the courses and this is what's going to be in it, and then you're like, OK, now I need to go to the market and buy those ingredients so that I can then assemble this thing, you know? So that was kind of what it was like. I assembled it using my own voice as a stand in. And and then I and well, my voice plus I was able to construct...so a good portion of this has to do with text collage that's built out of their speaking voices and a lot of the vocal melodic motifs that are in it were pulled from the actual melodic material of the sound of their speaking voices.
Pamela [00:11:33] So the very, very first thing I did, the first rehearsal we had was replaced by a series of interviews and I interviewed them all individually and then I had to scramble between that and the following week when there would be the first rehearsal to begin one of the sections. And I had to structure it in Pro Tools, and I built all the little text collage part out of their speaking voices. And then I had to notate, you know, what were the notes that they were singing in and among that. And then I created the slides with all these little fragments. Then I came to the rehearsal, presented them the fragments, had them do that, and then they had to send me the clean recordings of them doing it. And I had the zoom recording of their faces. And then I wanted really badly to finish constructing that section, but I couldn't. I had to move on to the next one so that in time for the next rehearsal, I would have those slides ready for them with the fragments for whatever that was. So I had to build the next one. So each week I would build one of these movements and then I would get to the rehearsal. I would rehearse them, get them to sing and record for me those fragments. And then once I had all of the fragments in place, I said, you don't have to come to rehearsals anymore. And then it was my job to, you know, fit it all together. And, you know, build the piece, replace my part, my vocal scratch tracks, with their voices and so on, and refine, you know, the audio mixes and then build the video, the image that goes with it. So to me, it's definitely a composition.
Pamela [00:13:19] But what I started to say earlier is, I was really hoping that I would make something that even though this piece was the first piece I've ever made that was designed to be presented in this virtual situation, I also in the back of my head had it that I really hoped that I could make it in such a way that it would have a life after this and could be done on stage by the chorus. But I told myself, you know, I'm under so much pressure to get this finished in time for the premiere, I can't worry about that. It's a hope I have, but I can't, like, put any energy into making that, making sure that that will work. I just had to put all my energy into making sure it'll be a good piece in this format and then I thought, then I can sort that out later. But after I was done, I realized I thought of all these ways that I feel like at least most of the movements can very easily be performed live and have an in-person life.
Giacomo [00:14:31] Do you imagine and that just I was very curious about that. And we asked Joel about this as well, because it feels like there's a component of this that feels very site specific and very now and very much like tailored for this specific audience in this specific moment. But do you imagine that in the future, like one of the thoughts or one of the questions we have later is that they're also much of this felt like the process of a documentarian. And in fact, you use that term that you interviewed folks and you got the sounds of their voices. Do you imagine that being potentially part of what you might push into the future? It was fascinating...
Pamela [00:15:07] That came from my past. Like, if you know any of my other work, I have so many pieces where I use interview material. I mean, I've been doing that for years.
Giacomo [00:15:16] Do you imagine that the like let's say a new choir was going to do this or Volti was going to take it? Would you repitch things based on or find new motifs or new cadences based on that?
Pamela [00:15:25] That I don't think so. I don't think so. I would say this piece if it were done, you know, this is really interesting because I made a piece last year. I want to say "last year," I keep saying last year, but I'm just skipping like the dumpster fire of a year that we had [laughs].
Giacomo [00:15:42] [laughing] Yes.
Pamela [00:15:43] You know, just like not counting it. But in 2019 I made a piece for Eighth Blackbird. And that piece involved a lot of interview material. I started that piece by interviewing the sextet individually and then I built all these movements out of fragments of their voices and then, you know, there's always changeover over the years in chamber ensembles. But for some reason in the year following my piece that I made for them, the entire ensemble, there are two members left from who were in it when I made that piece with them. And all the rest of the people have moved on and they've been replaced by other people and so, you know, Matthew sort of contacted me and said, we really like the peace and we want to do it, but we're wondering if you can if you you know, if you think you're going to... If you would redo the text part or something, you know, and I meant I pointed out to him that, you know, even though in a way it's sort of a portrait of the ensemble because it uses all of their voices, it's music. And it doesn't...I've made a lot of these pieces with other people's voices where the voices that were used were not the performers. And so to me, it's like even though it seems very personal to them, I feel like it's perfectly, it's a perfectly acceptable thing for a different ensemble to play it, but with the same track, you know? I made a piece for Kronos Quartet in 2012 and it was about speaking accents. And so I interviewed upwards of 30... I think I interviewed like 35 or 36 people. All who had different, you know, they either had different regional American accents from different regions of the country or they were from other English speaking countries or they were from other countries and had English as a second language. So there were all these different accents. Now, included in that were the four members of the quartet. But, their voices were four out of like 30-plus voices. And so the fact that their voice... And then I also have them doing some speaking in the piece. So, you know, it's not a matter of that I would need to go back and redo that text part because it's of different members of the ensemble. I mean, when Sunny came in and replaced Jeff as the cellist, they, you know, I had just finished the piece and so and she is so wonderful she's like Korean and South African. And so I was like, OK, I'll interview her and I'll slip in a few of her because it was just fun to like, add her to it, but it wasn't necessary, you know what I mean?
Pamela [00:19:01] And I feel like. In a way, with this ensemble. I think and I think another completely different chorus could sing it and have the track be the other people's voices, you know, the speech, the speech. You know. In my opinion. I think, you know, people feel I think people get attached to it emotionally, like I think this thing with Eighth Blackbird, I think they're not really quite sure about this idea that they could keep doing this piece with these with other people's voices in it. But I don't see any reason why not. [laughs]
Zane [00:19:41] Well that would be really interesting to see Volti bring this to the live stage at some point.
Giacomo [00:19:46] Well Pamela, we loved this piece, actually. We thought it was really extraordinary.
Pamela [00:19:50] Thank you.
Giacomo [00:19:50] And one of the one of the things that struck me a few weeks ago that I wanted to ask you about the process as you sort of put this together. A few weeks ago, we chatted with a woman named Astrid Vang-Pedersen. She leads a group out of Denmark called Dopplers, and she has studied and pretty extensively this notion of concert design. And the basic elements, of course, are you've got some performers and you've got a piece that you're going to perform and then you've got an audience. Boy, we're living in some strange times right now, and I'm wondering how the thought of sort of approaching this piece where, you know, the natural sort of pieces. I mean, you're someone who works in very interesting methods with looped voice and all of the things that Zane mentioned in your bio. When you approached this project of putting Ink together, how did you think about that? I mean, how did you think about folks who'd be sitting in their living rooms? And was that part of your process, as you thought about the ingredients in putting together this performance of this piece?
Pamela [00:20:48] Well, one thing I've thought about a lot during this time period, and this is even something I've thought about in my solo performances because I've given quite a few streaming solo concerts in this time period. And one thing that I've thought about is that if you try to make a piece that is, that's trying to emulate what we would have done in a live concert hall for this platform, it's just going to end up being sort of a sad shadow of of what of what it wishes it was, you know? So I thought it's important to design a performance that's going to be virtual to, you know, exploit the attributes of this venue, as it were. And that uses things that this has that other things don't, you know, that live concert halls don't have. So that, for example, I've been thinking a lot about working really close in to this little camera that we're playing to and being very intimate that way in a way that you couldn't do. And you can have things little details can be visible to your audience that would not be visible to them or not be very clear to them, even if they had a front row seat, if it was in a big concert hall. And so then by making a site specific piece, as it were, then it makes it so that it's more engaging for somebody who's experiencing it. If you know that they're going to be experiencing it on a screen, then you can make it so that it's engaging on a screen. And so I thought about that a lot. And in the design of Ink, I was really thinking about also, you know, how I could, in a way, sort of comment in a way on or just not not necessarily comment, but notice, you know, just regard like what the world has looked like for us for the past year and a half. And you know that it's, you know, this idea of people in their own little cells. And the strange concept of being in these separate little cells, but yet doing something that we're all doing together, you know, so I just thought about that and I thought about a lot of things like that in the design.
Zane [00:23:21] Since we're talking about it, here are the first couple of minutes of the third movement of Pamela's piece, "Think."
Unidentified [00:23:47] [Music Excerpt: Third movement: “Think.” Music description: Basses and tenors provide a rhythmic underlay, pulsing on the tonic tone on the word “ thought.” Treble voices intone various melodic and harmonic fragments, against pre-recorded sung and occasionally spoken words. The text fragments include: “Think” “I think…” “I think more...I tend to think…” I’m thinking...I think it used to be…I’m thinking about the time….time is in my thoughts… thought of you… I started to think.”]
Pamela [00:23:47] The other thing I wanted to think about was how can I depart from that or how can I take it in a slightly different direction in each movement. And so, and like what can, what other things can be echoed by this other than just making every single movement look like a zoom grid, you know? So that's when I was thinking about things like in the movement that's called "Think." So it's all about thought, and so immediately I was thinking, oh, instead of rectangles, I could have thought bubbles. And so I started to think, oh, I could put like one of the choristers could be at the bottom of the screen and all the other ones could be in little thought bubbles above their head. And then I thought, well, that's too many thought bubbles. And then I was like, oh, wait a second, thought bubbles kinda go with comic strips so I could do a grid that looks like a panel for a comic and then put each one of them in one of those and then put and then when somebody has a thought, it's a chorister in a thought bubble, you know, that they're thinking. And so, you know, I was just really kind of trying to be a little bit creative with this so that I could, you know, I was pretty much married to the idea of a grid because you got 16 people. And if you want to show 16 people, I mean, I could, like, put them all in little circles, but then it would look like, you know, Apple icons or whatever. [laughing].
Giacomo [00:27:00] I have to say, though, I love that. An observation that I made and the comparison between... And for the folks who don't know, there are five movements and they're all, it's wordplay, so it's very fun: "Drink," "Blink," "Think," "Link," and "Ink." And I hope I haven't given away the M. Night Shyamalan twist here, but it's very fun. And two of the things that we thought about a lot was the juxtaposition between "Think" and "Link" and the visual language that you use. My husband is finishing his MFA right now in comics and so he loved your piece because he very much saw like the visual language of the thought bubbles and how that had changed was very, very interesting. But you play with that in "Link" because folks were in what I think, or what looked like little app squares.
Pamela [00:27:44] Yes, I was you know, that was so, you know, it was the same kind of thought process. What I was trying to think, like, what can I do for "Think"? When I thought about "Link," I was like, I want to do something that's different than what I've been doing in the other movements. And and because the piece... That movement is really kind of about a computer interface or a you know, it could be iOS. It could be... But it's like somebody, it's like people trying to navigate through this virtual world. And I suddenly realized, oh, my God, they could become like the lock screen of your iOS device with all of those little icons for all the different apps. And each one of them could be an app. And so I was like, oh, and that just that idea came to me really at the last minute. And then I was like, OK, I have to make a mask that has those little rounded corner squares that, you know, and then I have to, like, figure out how to put, you know, so that was like and, you know, I was like, OK, there's 16 of them. So it's going to be a matrix of, you know, these, you know, and I had to, like, work out all of that. And then I thought, well, the fun thing about that, too, is that then I was like, oh, because I had already had them do these swipe gestures. I was like, oh my God, they can swipe the screen and move to the next set of apps, you know? And so I had to animate that in Premier. [laughing] So that was it was crazy. And I can't believe I was able to do it in the amount of time I had left because I came up with that idea at the really last minute. But, yeah, that was really fun for me.
Pamela [00:29:35] And then the other thing I thought was interesting is that so I had these squares and the squares were, I had them filled with these sort of soft colors. So the colors were removed and the people were, their faces were showing through those openings. But then I wanted there to be some places where the faces go away and that you just had the icons. And so I had and I was going to put actually like little shapes, like maybe a phone receiver and a, you know, an email icon or something. And I said, no, I'm going to make it more abstract than that. And so I'll just have them empty. So I made them empty for when they're not there. But they were these colors, they were these soft colors. And what it started looking like to me was a watercolor palette, or pastels, or like maybe a makeup kit with little eye shadow, you know, like there were these soft colors in these little forms. And I was like, oh...! I don't know, it's just like sometimes these things you think of the visual idea and then the concepts that get attached to it emerge later, you know, when you're least expecting it. But so that was sort of fun that those things kind of morphed for me. At least in my eyes they morphed from being these little like, you know, apps to being almost like maybe little color palettes that people could use for something.
Zane [00:31:02] Let's jump into that movement for a little bit. Here's an excerpt of movement four of Pamela's piece, "Link."
[00:31:11] [Music Excerpt: Fourth movement, “Link.” Music description: The piece opens with a vocal tongue pop click (mirroring the sound of a mouse click), and then moves to singers speaking various tones, tongue pops, and sound effects that mimic the idea of creating a vocalized web URL, set to the text “https - colon - swipe.” Then the singers almost randomly begin intoning on different segments of the words “h - t - t - p - s - colon - slash - slash - underscore - colon.”]
Zane [00:31:11] So that was movements three and four we just talked about. "Think" was movement three and "Link" was Movement four. So we take a little step back to "Blink" and "Drink," I want to talk about those two next. So, I want to talk about "Drink" first. So I'm actually, I spent over twenty years in the restaurant business and my most recent gig was actually a bartender in Napa Valley at a restaurant. And I had a great time making cocktails. And so as a bartender and a food and drink aficionado...I don't know if I really like that label, but nonetheless... I have some very specific ideas about cocktails. And so that movement resonated with me immediately because it was clear that a lot of the singers also had some specific ideas. And so I was wondering if you found yourself surprised by how specific some of them were about different cocktails? Or coffee...? It sounded like some of them were very specific about their coffee making.
Pamela [00:33:38] Yeah. So the cocktails, I wasn't that surprised because people do have these very strong opinions... shaking is better, stirring is better, blah, blah, blah. Or never use vodka, it's got to be gin, you know. But the coffee and tea making, especially the coffee making where she measures out... I mean, I had heard about people with the thermometer, like checking the temperature of the water, but I had not heard about like 240 grams, you know, I don't remember what the figure was. But there was a specific amount of water that was like very measured.
Zane [00:34:16] Yes.
Pamela [00:34:17] And so, yeah. So I was like, oh, that's very specific.
Zane [00:34:22] Yeah. I have a friend who makes his coffee on a digital scale and that's where he makes his coffee because it has to be a ratio by weight, you know, because, yeah, oh my gosh.
Pamela [00:34:35] So I think it's fabulous. I mean it's just that people nerd out that deeply about these things, you know?
[00:34:42] [Music Excerpt: First movement, ‘Drink.” Music description: The singers each speak about their favorite cocktail drinks, and how they are made.]
Zane [00:34:55] So just as an aside, how do you feel about a martini? Does it... Can it be made with gin or vodka?
Pamela [00:35:04] I'm not a huge martini person, but I do think I prefer a gin martini. I think I generally like a gin martini, but I'm not so particular about it that I'll turn down a vodka martini. [laughs]
Zane [00:35:22] [laughing] I love it. Same.
Pamela [00:35:23] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Zane [00:35:23] Let's listen to some more of that opening movement, "Drink." And if you want to go make yourself a martini, go ahead and pause the podcast. We'll wait.
[00:35:45] [Music Excerpt continues: Pre-recorded spoken interview fragments are interspersed between sung and spoken words, occasionally melodically mirroring the cadence and melody of the spoken word. The text is: “Take a shaker...shake shake shake… fill it with some ice...add the bourbon...add a dash of oat milk...I just wanna mix something...Vodka, Gin. Stirring, It must be made from gin, not vodka; I would rather pour it...I tend to stir them. Shake! Shake! Stir! Shake, I tend to stir; I take my coffee black; Hmmmm; I grind 24 grams of coffee.” “That’s very specific!” “320 grams of water at 240 degrees fahrenheit … I pour my coffee in”. “ I pour myself that much milk.” Pour it stirring, shaken, stirring….I pour some champagne into a glass.”]
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Zane [00:37:15] So then moving on to movement two, which was called "Blink," which, of course for the audience, the very first visual we get in that movement is one single singer, nice and full screen, just staring into the camera until eventually she blinks and then the choir sings a chord right at that moment. So I was wondering, was this like a chance composition? Did you record the blinking videos and then choose the rhythms based on that? And also, did you choose all those chords first or did you let the rhythm determine kind of how it musically developed?
Pamela [00:37:56] So I'll tell you the whole process. First of all, the concept of the piece, just to make it clear for anybody who's not seen it. And just from a listening standpoint, the concept of the piece is that it is a chance piece in that the music is conducted by people's blinking. And so the decision about when a sound happens is based on when someone blinks. So I consider all of those videos of their faces to be the score for the piece. But because I was going to shoot video of them, I was going to have... Actually, on most of the movements, the video came from Zoom and I went to great pains to make sure it looked as good as it could possibly look. I made sure that everybody who wasn't a member of the chorus, including myself, had their cameras off so that we had a grid of only 16 and that they wouldn't get any smaller than that. So that was how I got most of the video. But for the "Blink" movement and "Ink," for those two movements, I wanted really beautiful, pristine video with clean white backgrounds, not people's bookshelves or their bed or whatever in the you know, I wanted beautiful, soft, white or light colored backgrounds. I wanted them either wearing black or white. And I wanted them to look, you know, nice and have a good distance at, you know, fill the screen in a nice way. So I directed them very specifically how to shoot the video of themselves for those two things. And for "Blink," what I asked them to... I didn't tell them it was called "Blink." I told them I need a silent video and I need for you to just be still, relaxed, don't move around a lot, but just be relaxed and just look at the camera for two minutes. And record that yourself. I was afraid that if I told them that the piece was called that that movement was called "Blink," or that blinking had anything to do with it, they would become self-conscious about their blinking. And so they would have been like, you know, blinking a lot more than they usually do or not blinking at all or, you know. And so, you know, I just didn't say anything about it because I thought people naturally blink. And so they'll just if I just have them do what I asked, I'll get these videos of them blinking.
Pamela [00:40:32] And then, I took those videos, and from those I determined the, you know, the spacing of the notes. And, you know, ordinarily I would—and what will happen, I think in the live version, which I am confident will happen—is that they will look at someone and actually be singing to the blinks. But for this process, I didn't want them to be self-conscious in the rehearsal, like when their face was up on the shared screen and "now everybody sing that person's blinks," and so I followed the blinks myself. I basically, I sang or said blink or something when I saw the blinks. And I collected those and I made these guide tracks and then I replaced that with me clapping. [claps]. And so then in order to get all of their voices singing at the right times, I played the guide track for them and I said the thing that I want you all to do is I want you to come up with a duration of time after which... Like, I want you to just like when you hear the clap, you sing the tone and whatever time it takes, you just keep that consistent. So if it's like, [claps and sings "ah" several times in repetition], you know, just always follow whatever you did as a duration on each one the same, and then and then I just and so there were several different versions. And you might have noticed this in the piece. In the opening, it was unison, I think, when you had Celeste, the first blinker. They were singing unison, and for that one I actually played tones on the piano. And I improvised those, but I just came up with an order of pitches that were, you know, kind of atonal, not like a, you know, not a melodic thing that was not really obvious kind of tonal melody, but I just played random pitches. And so what I did was that for that one, they got a clap, but it was accompanied by a piano note. And then they were to do their tone to whatever pitch they just heard, and I said, if it's in an octave that's not comfortable for you, just put it up or down an octave. And so that was one of the passes. And then for another person's blinks, I asked them to just sing random pitches that they choose. And I said, you know, just choose a different pitch for each one. And then if there are two really quick blinks, right, one after the other, it's OK to just repeat the same pitch because it's really hard to come up with a new pitch that fast. And so that was the sort of direction: if you hear, you know, [claps and sings "ah" on random notes in quick succession], you know, like that, so they were to repeat, if they got a really quick one.
Zane [00:43:52] Here's an example of what Pamela is talking about. Movement two, "Blink."
[00:43:58] [Music Excerpt: Movement two, “Blink.” Music description: Best described as a “chance composition”, the rhythm of the piece is relatively random. The rhythm of the singers intoning the chords for each time they sing “blink” is set against each time the person in the video blinks. The chords are alternately tonal and atonal, creating various chord tone clusters. The singers move from singing the word “blink” to then singing a more natural “ah!” sound on various tones, matching the rhythm of the blinker. The segment ends with the singers all saying the word “blink!” in unison.]
Pamela [00:44:14] They did remarkably well and so because what I wanted for that section was tone clusters, and so I ended up with some beautiful clusters with them just singing randomly. They're choosing their own random notes. They couldn't hear each other, so they were just each choosing their own random notes. And then there was another section where I asked them to just say the word "blink" at the risk of them guessing like why this was happening...
All [00:45:53] [laughing].
Zane [00:45:53] Unpitched? They didn't...just speak the word?
Pamela [00:45:55] Just speak, just say "blink, blink" every time they heard the clap. And then I combined them, so for the first person's blinks, you had all of them on...playing this sort of atonal melody all in the same pitches in unison. And the second thing was these chords, clusters, they were like tone clusters because of the random pitches that they were all doing their own individual. The third section was with a pair of faces and that was where I had them, saying "blink." And you had like I think it was Joel and Victoria. And so I just put all the men on Joel's face and all the women on Victoria's face. It was male voices saying, you know, and female voices. And then the final movement, I gave them all their own voice. So because in the end, you had all of them on the screen. So I guess, you know, in the final I guess the final little section of that movement was 16 faces and each one had a single voice, which was their own voice following their blink. So that's how I constructed the piece. When it gets done live, my plan is to use the audience as the score.
Zane [00:47:27] Oh! That's cool.
Giacomo [00:47:28] I want to ask a little bit more about that, just to lean into this notion of when this will become a live piece, because I'm so excited about it. But I have to say, one of the things that struck me overall and Zane and I were talking about this, too, there's a... You constructed an experience that has this very intimate sensuousness to it from the language that you play with to the visual imagery, to even just the topics, right, "Ink" and "Drink." And you feel very they're very universal, but you also feel very like they're immediate, there's a sensuousness to them. And I wonder just how else you might play with that live, because I feel like we had such unfettered access. I mean, strangely, nothing in the experience was liquid. Right? It's all digital coming at us. There's nothing in there. You've created this experience. What, how might that translate? What are some of the ways you might...
Pamela [00:48:18] Well, I had immediate ideas as soon as I had finished the piece. I was like, oh, I know how this is going to go. For one thing, I'm going to ask that we use projection for the final movement because I want the audience to see the score. So it'll be like score follower. There'll be like this, the pages will be on the screen behind them if I can get that to happen. I just think that in that particular piece, it actually matters that the audience knows, like why are they going off the rails at certain points, you know, so that's how that part will be handled. Some of the other things, you know, I think can just be scored like, you know, movements like "Drink" and and and "Think" and also "Link." I think those can be scored and they can learn to just sing them and they'll have a track, which will be the tape. The tape part will be their speaking voices. That collage of the speaking voices that goes with the pieces, that's you know, that's a layer of the piece. And then they'll be singing with that. And then, you know, probably I'll try to have the, you know, encourage them to, like, actually use the props for drink so that there's actually, you know, and things like that, you know.
Pamela [00:49:40] And then for "Blink" and I have to be honest with you about "Blink," I came up with that idea a long time ago and the first time and so it became a movement of this piece. But the first time I ever did it was when I used to have this avante chamber series called the Room Series that occurred in a performance gallery that was on the first floor of the artist's building that I live in. I live in an artist's... I live in a warehouse with a bunch of artists. And on the first floor we had this little performance gallery and I used to do this avante chamber series, which sadly ended... I got the reprise, I went to Rome, and while I was in Rome, COVID happened. And when I got back, there was no more live concerts in the gallery, you know, and so I couldn't... So I don't know in the future. I don't know what the future of the Room Series is going to be. But in the past, I had all these wonderful evenings that I did and one of the evenings I did was called Mouth and it was eight experimental vocalists. So it was myself and, you know, several other really interesting people were in it, including... Trying to think of the people that were in it that you might know. Randall Wong was in it, and, you know, Julie Queen Aurora was in it. A lot of all these, you know, Amy Foote. So there were all these great singers that were in this show and in the show, we all did individual pieces of our own. And then I had these sort of graphic score pieces that we performed together throughout the evening. One of the pieces was "Blink," and we used the audience. And so every person in the group chose an audience member as their, you know, as their as their score. And so that's, you know, so I'm thinking for the for for the, you know, giving away secrets that I was, you know, but, you know, I'm thinking for the for the Volti version of it that I'm going to have it in sections kind of like I had in there, because it was much more developed in their piece than it was the night that I did it in the Room Series. It was a quick one off thing and it was more like it lasted for 30 seconds or something, you know. But this is much more developed and has all these little sections. So I think it'll be like there'll be one section where the entire chorus is only using one person and then there'll be sections where they're each using for like maybe each section is using a person. So you have four different, you know, it'll develop until they've each got their own blinker, you know, or whatever. But so that's going to be interesting. And that will work best in an intimate hall. You know, that's not going to be the kind of thing that's going to be easy to perform in, you know, on the stage at Davies or something...
Zane [00:52:54] So we've touched on it a couple of times, the final movement of the piece, which, of course is the title track, as it were, called "Ink." And as you mentioned, for our audience, though, you know, obviously everyone listening to this should go and watch this video because it is fantastic. But, and we'll have links in the show notes, but the final movement, "Ink," starts off with a piece of standard notation sheet music on the screen. And we as an audience, we see an alto part that is the beginning of a fugue, actually. And so we get to follow along with the music and the choir singing along what we're seeing, and it feels very normal. And then all of a sudden there are inkblots that start to show up obscuring individual parts of the piece. And at that moment the singers do various things. And so what I wanted to know, what were the instructions for the singers, for the inkblots? And did you offer any examples to them or did you just say, here's your instructions, just go hog wild?
Pamela [00:54:00] So the answer is that I did give them guidance and the guidance was that I guided them in two ways. One is I descriptively explained how they should interpret the inkblots, and I told them to actually watch for the form. Like, if the inkblot is, you know, grows in size because they're moving, you know, they're moving across the music from left to right. So at the beginning of the inkblot, it's narrow and it grows in size. So they should open up and then close back down at the end of it. And I told them that they could sort of change from a vowel that was kind of an "uh" to "ah," you know, as they got bigger. I gave them that as a suggestion. And I also told them that if the inkblot was more splattering or rough around the edges, that they should make their tone more growly. And if the inkblot was smoother, they could make it smoother. And if there were a lot of little splatters that splattered off onto some of the music where there wasn't a big fat inkblot, just a bunch of little dots, that they could go to, it was sort of a pointillistic, like [quickly singing sharp tones on various syllables], you know, which happened at the end. And so those were the instructions. But also in order to make sure that they you know, the tricky thing about this time period that we're in is that singers are used to hearing all the other singers in their section and in the whole ensemble, and that's how they can tune and blend together. And so I was worried that it was going to be hard to fit all of their voices together if they had all independently sung these parts without having a guide. So I created guide tracks for all of the movements and all of the things that I asked them to sing. They were hearing my voice singing it. And so because of that, they also were hearing my interpretation of the inkblots. And so they probably emulated that somewhat, you know what I mean?
Zane [00:56:15] You didn't want to just leave that silent for that moment?
Pamela [00:56:19] I guess I could've left that silent. I could have left that silent, but I felt like I didn't want them to be self-conscious about what noise they made. And so I wanted them to feel like they were supported in their noisemaking.
All [00:56:34] [laughing].
Zane [00:56:34] So do you hate printers? Do you have something against inkjet printers?
All [00:56:38] [laughing heartily].
Pamela [00:56:38] I love printers. I don't... But I'll tell you, you know, there are advantages to both ink... So laser and inkjet, that's kind of like vodka and gin, right?
All [00:56:51] [laughing].
Pamela [00:56:53] So I'll tell you, inkjet printers... Laser printers make much crisper type. Like if you have text, it's much crisper, the edges are, you know, the inkjet, it's softer because it's literally little dots of liquid ink. And so they bleed a little bit, even though they're tiny. So inkjet will never look completely...like the text will never look crisp. But inkjet photo prints are so much more beautiful than LaserJet photo prints, so I like both. It's, this one's good for one thing and one's good for the other thing. But the disadvantage of, other than the softness of the text that you can't get crisp text in an inkjet printer, you also cannot get any moisture anywhere near those prints. Because they will bleed and that's what that's where the idea of the piece came from is just this visual. I've had many printed out documents that accidentally got a drop of water on it. And then it has, you know, this blob and that doesn't happen to laser prints. But inkjet prints, any water or moisture, even on it at all, will, like make it start to bleed. And so so, you know, it's not it's not a hate of it or a dislike of it, it's just that it's interesting to me. Those are its attributes. That's what you know. So the text for those who haven't seen the piece, the text to the fugue is just a clinical description of how inkjet printers work.
Zane [00:58:36] Yeah, yeah. We noticed that.
Giacomo [00:58:40] It's hysterical.
Zane [00:58:41] It's great. Maybe we'll have to make that one of our future icebreakers, Giacomo, when we talk to choral directors and composers and say, "when you print your sheet music, do you prefer to print it on a inkjet or on a laserjet?
Giacomo [00:58:53] No, Pamela, you just have to give us the Pamela Z Rorschach test. So we're just going to say, what sound is this? Tell us.
All [00:59:04] [laughing].
Pamela [00:59:04] Yeah, that's yeah. The you know, that's really interesting, too, is because, you know, the Rorschach test, it was inkblots. Right. And so, you know what I should add that I should have asked them, like, what do you see?
Giacomo [00:59:16] Yes.
Pamela [00:59:18] And then they one oh, that looks like a cloud to me. OK, so now sing a "cloud.".
All [00:59:23] [laughing].
Giacomo [00:59:23] That's very telling. Very telling.
Pamela [00:59:29] Yeah. Oh dear.
Zane [00:59:31] So I just have one final question and then Giacomo, we'll see if you have anything else and then we'll talk about what's coming next for you, Pamela. But you know something that struck me and it actually struck both of us because we talked about this after the concert when we had dinner, Giacomo and myself. It struck both of us that the whole composition, you know, Ink and its production, the singers didn't get printed scores. There were no programs printed. Your conception of the piece was that it was going to be conceived of, created and presented all in a digital medium. And so not being printed, not using any ink. So, why "Ink"?
Pamela [01:00:11] Haha. Well, that, you know, who knows. Who knows where these ideas come from because that is just that is the idea that came to me, you know. And it was. It came very early in the process. And I do have a little story I can tell you about that, which is that my original desire in creating that score was to also use a little bit of chance operations in the choice of where those blots, inkblots were. I wrote the entire fugue without the inkblots on it, and I printed it out and then I tried to ruin the score with, but the problem is, it doesn't... Well first of all, I bought a new printer. I got frustrated with my inkjet printer a while back and I bought a new printer and my printer is a laser printer and so it wouldn't bleed. So then I was like, well, I could go to one of my neighbors in the building who has an inkjet and I could ask them to print it out and then I could wet that one. But I picked up some old prints that I had from back when I still had the inkjet printer and I was dripping water on them just to make sure that it was even going to work. And, you know, it would blob up, but it just wouldn't blob in as... It wouldn't blob and it wouldn't blob well enough, you know? It just, it would bleed and it would get mushed, but it wasn't giving me these nice big inkblots that I wanted. And so then I got out some actual ink and I got like a pen and I started trying to splatter the ink onto it. And then all of a sudden I was like, Photoshop...
All [01:02:09] [laughing heartily].
Giacomo [01:02:09] When all else fails, Photoshop.
Pamela [01:02:12] Yeah, so I had to use Photoshop to make the inkblots, but my original... I really believed when I thought of the idea for the piece that the blots were going to come from, you know, wetting the paper.
Zane [01:02:27] Let's go ahead and finish things off with the final bit of Ink by Pamela Z.
[01:02:45] [Music Excerpt: Fifth and final movement, “Ink.” Music description: The movement continues from the initial description of singers intoning the instructions of an inkjet printer, but now the ink blot sounds become more frequent and aggressive, as it feels that some of the ‘alignment’ of the inkjet printer has gone askew. The singers come into unison on the final motif, until everything ends on a miasmic blob of sound representing the final blob of ink!]
Zane [01:04:17] Well, Pamela, it's been so wonderful to talk to you about this fantastic composition. I just think... I was quite moved. I've watched it a few times already, and I just think that it's just such a great representation of kind of where we are right now in the world of technology and music all coming together. And obviously, your reputation is to be doing that exact thing, bringing technology and music together. And I think it's so fascinating. And I personally hope to be able to work with you in the future and make some music with you.
Pamela [01:04:49] Well thank you.
Zane [01:04:49] All right. Well, thanks for joining us and chatting with us. And we will look forward to talking to you again soon.
Pamela [01:04:56] All right. Nice to talk to you.
Zane [01:04:58] We also had the chance to get Bob Geary, Volti's Artistic Director, on the call with us while we were chatting with Pamela. So here's just a bit of our conversation with both of them.
Zane [01:05:08] Joining us right now, we have Mr. Bob Geary and Pamela Z at the same time to chat about Ink, the new premiere that we're discussing on this episode. And Bob, we wanted to start off with a quick question for you. And that question is, what was the assignment for Pamela? And is this the first time that the two of you have worked together?
Bob [01:05:30] Well, I'll take your... I'll go in the opposite order. Yes, it is the first time we've worked together, but we've been around each other a little bit more than that. And we did share a stage when we were successive parts of a production earlier by Innova Recording Artists event in San Francisco. And we spoke at that time. I guess that was about three years ago, Pamela, something like that?
Pamela [01:05:59] Yeah, something like that, time flies, right?
Bob [01:06:02] And we just said we should do something together and kind of when the universe changed here. And I was thinking, who, you know, who's out there that would, you know, maybe be interested in working with the singers on a project, you know, Pamela, which came very quickly to mind. And one thing led to another. So, yeah, the other part of your question was what was Pamela's assignment? Pamela's assignment was to give us anything from ten minutes, to hopefully longer, which thankfully she did of her own creation. Using up to a balanced chorus of 16 vocalists, four on a part: soprano, alto, tenor, bass. And with, you know, we were able we can offer a small amount of technical support. And, you know, Pamela is the fourth in our series of four composers that we worked with and each did things slightly differently in terms of what they wanted to do with the visual aspects and how they wanted to do the prerecorded aspects and all of that. So it was really kind of an open slate. Thankfully, Pamela and the other three composers that we worked with all were very knowledgeable and competent or at least learned on the job how to put together a movie. I mean, it was... Pamela spoke after the concert the other day saying, you know, "all composers are movie makers," you know, and that's one of the byproducts of our times.
Zane [01:07:38] Yeah, no doubt, and those other three composers were Anne Hege...
Bob [01:07:43] Danny Clay.
Giacomo [01:07:43] Danny Clay.
Bob [01:07:45] Joel Chapman.
Zane [01:07:45] And Joel Chapman. Awesome.
Bob [01:07:48] And serendipitously, I think, Anne kicked it off rather wonderfully, because she showed some of the things that are possible, and I don't I don't think Joel, for instance, had probably, even though he's well trained in technical electronic music and all—that is one of his Stanford degrees—and in that so he knows his technology, but I don't think he'd ever put something like that together. Danny probably had I'm sure he had. And Pamela's, you know, Pamela, have you done a lot of things with visuals?
Pamela [01:08:21] I do, but not in the way that this was. A lot of my work involves video. And I've come to a point where I'm making a lot of the video for my works, and this is for live performance with projected images and sometimes multiple channels of projected images. And I have also made some installations that involve video components. And so the video was created for a gallery setting. So I have you know, I have experience with making video and I have experience with documenting live performances on video and figuring out for live works or or or or, you know, installations or whatever. And so I have ideas in mind and I have an aesthetic about how I like to work visually. But this is the first time that I made a project where I was using all these multiple faces and where I have where there was such an enormous amount of sync sound necessary, and also I did a lot more animation in this than I have done in the past. So that was yeah, that was new.
Giacomo [01:09:41] But during the creation of this, what was the back and forth between the two of you? Was there a conversation going or was this I mean, I know that the marketing for the program, there was a lot of mystery and we didn't even know what the name was going to be, which was very exciting. Bob, was it as much a mystery for you as it was for the rest of us and the excitement of what was going to happen on Saturday?
Bob [01:10:01] I would say that I was not shocked or surprised with what happened on Saturday, but the way Pamela farmed her material, or mined her material, was actually kind of similar to Danny Clay, to where she went to the singers with a whole bunch of, you know, the checklist, I guess, of things that needed to happen in that particular rehearsal. "And now I want you to do this, you know, sing this or say this or bring a..." And she would, you know, let everybody know before rehearsal, you know, in the notes leading up to the rehearsal what to bring or how to look for the rehearsal. And then she, Pamela, to your credit, pardon me if I call you she. But Pamela put together all of this that I think was already in her imagination. But for those of us participating just as bystanders, basically, which was my role after the first rehearsal where Pamela was very careful to make sure that if I had a little conducting actually or not even conducting, but leading to do in the first recording session at the first rehearsal and then was liberated from the project because I think everybody was comfortable that Pamela was... You know, the singers loved Pamela and and I've mentioned this before, the singers, the relationship of singers to the composer radically changed with this series of three or four performances we did in a wonderful way. I mean, usually I've got some interaction with composers when we're working on new music and such, and the composer will maybe come to a rehearsal or two or at the most three along the way. In this case, it was all about the composer and the singers working one on one and and composer to the group. And the conductor was really off to the side. You know, there was no real conductor.
Zane [01:11:57] What did that, uh, you said that you led a little bit in the very first, what did that look like exactly?
Bob [01:12:03] The last movement where Pamela actually wrote it out and the score was printed, which I thought worked beautifully, by the way, Pamela. So we were watching the score and the ink spots. And Pamela asked me to kind of just train the chorus for that in the way that we would do a normal repertoire, you know, but, you know, the music went out to the singers ahead of time. The singers are great singers. So there really wasn't very much that needed to be done other than, you know, maybe I don't even remember, but a cut off here or there or, you know, I mean, there was no intonation issues or, you know, any technical issues that really had to be solved. So my role was really quite minimal. I can't take any real credit.
Zane [01:12:52] We're ushering in a new realm for the choral conductor, you know, we just turn it over to the composer now and we just sit back and just say, alright, have fun, go. I think this would be a good time to get Bob's thoughts on the piece's overall impact. So overall, what do you think, Bob?
Bob [01:13:11] It was a very positive, actually, you know, I'm calibrating that based on several factors. One is, after each of these performances, we've then had a Zoom chat with the audience. And I think we had 60 or even slightly over 60 people there. And, you know, an hour later when we were basically, you know, it's a lot of self-congratulation is going on with those things. But an hour later, we were just kind of breaking down to some relatively innocuous stuff and no one had left, you know, I mean, three people left or something like that. So that was one indicator of people just wanting to be involved in the process. And again, I think that's really different than the, you know, our live performance situation. I don't think you get that degree of participation, partly because, you know, you got the composer up on the stage with whoever's interviewing that person and the audience out in the audience. And there's a kind of just, you know, dynamic which has great positive things and historical things about it. But it's not intimate. But anyway, the discussion was very strong, and then I watch also the chat box and the singers were having an emotional moment saying, thank you, Pamela. You know, this was really a beautiful experience. And then I have board members and I have I have at least one board member who's not afraid to say when—it's a he so I'll say "he"—when he doesn't like things, and has not liked all four of the compositions. And he really liked this one. And I thought, OK, it carried him along. A person with less of a musical... Is very musical, but not really in, hasn't been part of the evolution of vocal music over the years. He has, you know, expectations based maybe on older models of what that or what singing together means. And I was pleased. I was actually relieved a little too, that he really liked it because I was a little worried about, you know, some of his previous reactions.
Pamela [01:15:18] Was he just really like completely, you know, uninhibited about saying, "eh, I didn't like that."
Bob [01:15:25] Oh, God, you should have heard him after one of the shows. I won't say which one, but he just, he's a smart guy and he listed off, you know, like ten things that he thought were terrible, you know [laughing].
Pamela [01:15:41] I'm relieved that he liked mine.
Bob [01:15:43] Yeah, well, we know that, you know, I mean, we're all in this all four of us talking right now. We're in this world where 90 percent of the feedback we get is very, very positive feedback. We probably don't get and I should say ninety. You know, there's a percentage of things that we never hear. Either other people absorb them for us or they get left unsaid, at least to us. But they're out there somewhere, you know, each in our own way. But it's easy to kind of live in a little bit of a bubble where people are celebrating and supporting creativity and and and just expression and all.
Pamela [01:16:27] Well, and I think it's partially because we are in this very rarified... We are like we're in this very specific community. And it's peopled by people who love experimentation and love new things and so, you know, we've surrounded ourselves with the people who... We're giving ourselves, like almost a false sense of, you know, security because, you know, most of the world doesn't even know this kind of work exists. Not even you know, it's not even a matter of like, you know, although I mean, I think that's changing now because of the I don't know, because of the Internet or whatever. But, you know, things are getting a little bit more widely spread, you know, into the world.
Bob [01:17:13] Yeah, I agree.
Pamela [01:17:13] But, you know, but we have this... I used to make this joke that there's like there's only 40 people who go to new music concerts, but they go to all of them. And it doesn't matter where you are in the world, you could be like in, you know, Tokyo standing on line to go into a new music concert. And the same people are in line with you.
Zane [01:17:37] Well Bob our hat... My hat is off to you, director to director, because I think that what Volti has done with these four concerts has just been, I mean, it's been groundbreaking. It's been new. It's been exciting. And yet it's been as you said, it's been so accessible. And the after concert conversations with the composers, and even two weeks ago when we got a chance to have the cocktails and composers moment, in fact, Pamela, you should know that Giacomo and I had Aviations...
Giacomo [01:18:05] In your Honor.
Zane [01:18:05] ...as we watched your concert on Saturday because, you know, we knew that that's the drink you've been bringing to the composers and cocktails.
Giacomo [01:18:13] And frankly, Bob, even bringing us together on this podcast, in this episode, to have this level of access and this kind of a continuation of the experience is really wonderful, so we really appreciate it.
Bob [01:18:22] Yeah, yeah. I think your idea of continuation, I, I totally agree with it. I really do think I don't know to what extent we're breaking musical ground, but we're breaking ground in other ways of the music community expanding and the music community integrating and different ways of getting the music out there or the projects out there. You know, there's wider circulation. We're not geographically limited with this. You know, there's just it's just so, so different. I mean, it's you know, I'm an old dog and I've had to learn a lot of new tricks in the past year.
Pamela [01:18:57] It's kind of remarkable how adaptable we are, humans. I mean, it's like everyone, when when you have to, everyone gets on board. It's like the entire world has said, "OK, we'll do Zoom." And it's like nobody is like not doing it. It's just... [laughing]
Bob [01:19:20] Yeah.
Pamela [01:19:21] It's kind of it's it's interesting.
Zane [01:19:24] Well, Bob, we look forward to seeing what's in store for Volti as we move, you know, post pandemic world, we start to see live performances come back. And the way that the new technologies in the new experimentations that you've been dabbling in effect, the music making that goes on with Volti. So, you know, keep up the you know, the great work, and thanks for joining us here today on this call with Pamela.
Bob [01:19:47] Thanks again, Pamela. And thanks to both of you, Giacomo and Zane, for getting us all together. And as you say, extending the life of this a little bit. So we're reaching out a little more with it all. OK, take care.
Pamela [01:20:00] Thanks, Bob.
Bob [01:20:01] OK.
Outro [01:20:04] Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of the In Unison podcast. Be sure to check out episode extras and subscribe at inunison podcast dot com. You can follow us on all social media @inunisonpod. And leave us a review on Apple podcasts to let us know what you think!
Chorus Dolores [01:20:23] Up With People alumni correspondence maintained by Chorus Dolores, because remember, [singing] "you meet 'em wherever you go.".
Credits [01:20:33] 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 dynamic jazz dot dk.