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METAGEUM '07
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Workshop: Shamanic Sound Ceremony in the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum
Music performace: Electro-acoustic Temple series
Book now for whole or part of the Metageum event. |
About Wende Bartley
Wende Bartley is a composer of electroacoustic and instrumental music using her widely varied skills in state-of-the-art digital audio technologies to design innovative musical and sonic textures from original sound sources. Her works include electroacoustic and instrumental concert music, music-theater and opera, as well as music for dance, radio drama, independent film and video.
Bartley has been investigating sound images important in the collective stories of women developing new timbral textures while giving voice to women's cultural experience. Her more recent work has concerned itself with explorations of voice as sacred communicator, creating a field of sonic energy through the connection of breath and voice, awakening the forces of internal healing held within the body through sound vibration.
She has received numerous commissions and awards from the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, and the Laidlaw Foundation. Her works have been performed and broadcast throughout Canada, the U.S. and Europe. Her works are released on the empreintes DIGITALes label, the Artifact label, and Hornblower Recordings.
The Temple Project
"Oracle is a piece that exists at the moment primarily as an electroacoustic work - meaning it is pre-recorded material to be played back on a CD in a concert setting. In the premiere performance (June 2006), it was played back over a twelve-speaker spatialized setup that was created specifically for the SoundAXIS concert. As part of that event, there was also an installation component within the unique architectural building of OCAD (Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto). This installation included projected video of an animated sequence of images I took at Hagar Qim and Mnajdra, focusing on images of the oracle holes. A live cello part accompanied the images. The installation was experienced during the intermission of the concert and when the audience members came back into the concert hall, the electroacoustic work began.
"The source materials for the full concert electroacoustic work included soundscape or environmental recordings from both Greece and Malta. The Malta recordings include some dialogue excerpts from a tour by Marlon Briffa (then a curator at the Hypogeum), and then concludes with a seven-minute section that is based entirely on my own vocal recordings made in the Hypogeum. Marlon's singing voice also is present in that section as well. Eventually I have plans to extend Oracle into a work for soprano, tenor, cello and percussion, but that part is not yet complete.
"Currently I am just completing what I call the Temple Project. Two years ago I travelled to Crete, Greece and Malta, visiting the ancient sites, and making a series of vocal recordings based on my intuitive sonic readings of the energies of these places. My focus was to access connection to the same spiritual energies that were once honoured and revered in ancient times, and allow those energies, or those ' spiritvoices' to come through my voice. I recorded these vocalizations and improvisations while walking the grounds of the various sites with my portable recording equipment.
"Now I have just completed composing an entire series or cycle of 'songs' from these recordings which I intend to perform live with electroacoustic accompaniment - which is primarily more layers of my own voice. I have one piece for each of the following Maltese temples: Mnajdra, Hagar Qim, Ggantija, Tarxien, and a second Hypogeum work. I also have pieces from several temple/palace sites in Crete and Greece." -- Wende Bartley
For more information, please see Wende's web site: wendebartleytempleproject.blogspot.com.
Marlon Briffa, whose voice is used in the recordings. Now site manager at the Mnajdra Temple. Photo: Peter B Lloyd
Review of Oracle
Oracle (the first part of the Temple Project) was performed at the Ontario College of Art and Design in June 2006. Here are excerpts from a review by John Oliver.
"Oracle, by Toronto composer Wende Bartley, was a work in two parts, the first of which was, I believe, the only proposition during the festival to play and recontextualize the architecture and aural and visual memory of a space. (Other events focussed on the musical.) This is a real shame considering the theme of the festival: architecture and music. ... I appreciated the simple elegance of the Bartley’s proposition: to place a cellist, two singers, an image collage (ice flow/clouds) of approximately 30 square feet, and an electroacoustic soundscape, in various locations of the open spaces so that one could create one’s own pathway through the sounding or visual spaces, thus creating your own version of the composition by your own movement. If you stood in one particular spot you could hear and see all of the events as one single composition. In any version of the piece, the soundscape and image created a synaesthetic echo that played the role of textural underlay to the weaving, wandering melodic lines of the cello and voices. Very nice realisation, ...... This first part took place during the intermission. The second part began back in the hall with the musicians seating in traditional concert position on a stage in front of the audience. A sonic environment emerged surrounding the audience, consisting of overtones singing being moved around the room, creating a berceuse of lovely sound." - John Oliver
Premiere of the full Temple Project at Metageum
Wende Bartley's full Temple Project will be performed for the first time at the Metageum '07 conference, on the afternoon of Sunday 11th November.
Shamanic Sound Ceremony in the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum (Thursday afternoon)
Shamanic singing is a form of sounding with the voice that creates a deep connection and communication with the life force of nature. During the Metageum conference, a sound ceremony in the Hypogeum will be lead by composer and soundhealer Wende Bartley that will enable participants to enter into the magical womb of this megalithic site and experience the power of sonic vibration. We will begin with introductory vocal exercises in the exhibition area and then descend into the oracle chamber for the ceremony. This ceremony will focus on connecting through sound with the ancient soul of the world, the ‘anima mundi’, the life force that permeates all forms of nature and pulses through our human bodies. Through sound created in this primeval place, we will co-create with the spirit beings a vibrational healing for all sentient life on our precious earth.
Wende's album, "Openwork -- Letting the Light Through"