Pamela Z

Pamela Z performs a suite of solo works for voice and electronics to open a concert by Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra (in partnership with LA Philharmonic's Noon to Midnight Festival) on Sunday, November 19th, 2017, in Santa Monica, CA. She is processing her voice using custom MAX MSP software and manipulating sound using gesture-controlled MIDI instruments. Excerpts in this video include:
0:00 Quatre Couches
3:21 Badagada
6:14 Typewriter
7:47 Breathing

© 2017 Last Letter Music (ASCAP)





And the Movement of the Tongue
composed for string quartet and tape by Pamela Z
(commissioned by Kronos Quartet)

Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra premiered this new version for string orchestra in partnership with the LA Philharmonic’s “Noon to Midnight” Festival on November 18-19, 2017 in Los Angeles.

00:00 I. Born 01:46 II. Home 04:00 III. Rain 05:57 IV. Learned in the South 07:19 V. English 09:17 VI. A Piece of π 11:59 VII. Coffee 13:14 VIII. Cupertino 15:57 IX. The Tongue 17:19 X. Henry in Cuffs 18:59 XI. I Don't’ Know 21:00 XII. Mother

And the Movement of the Tongue is a work about speaking accents—specifically accented English. It started as an exploration of the profusion of broad-ranging accents that abound in the San Francisco Bay Area. But my last 2 1/2 months of composing the work were spent at an artist residency in North Carolina, so I couldn’t help but to expand the scope of the piece to include some of the richness in speaking accents I found there.