The Squid's Ear Magazine


Steenberge, Laura: Piriforms (Sacred Realism)

Exploring the ethereal resonance of chant through intimate compositions for solo to quartet voice and bass flute, Laura Steenberge draws on the mysticism of medieval music, performed by Rebecca Lane, Catherine Lamb, Julia Holter, Yannick Guédon, and Evelyn Saylor in nuanced layers that reveal harmonic shadows, breath-bound relationships, and otherworldly sonic artifacts.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Rebecca Lane-bass flute, voice

Catherine Lamb-voice

Julia Holter-voice

Yannick Guedon-voice

Evelyn Saylor-voice


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Label: Sacred Realism
Catalog ID: SR022
Squidco Product Code: 36246

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2025
Country: Germany
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
"Piriforms", "72 Verses", and "Toile" recorded by Bryan Eubanks.

"Light & Chant studies" recorded by Sam Dunscombe.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"In medieval chant, music seems to have come from elsewhere. It is the angels that are singing, they said, like gourds hung up for purple martins. By the time notation started coming around, hundreds of chants were already hundreds of years old. New chants followed in their footsteps, trying to seem unwritten. In some monasteries, the monks sang for six hours a day. Through the daily toil of reenacting eternity, subtler shapes become audible. Sometimes the angels show up when the consonants are taken away, or some other change is made that renders the language unintelligible. Swedenborg said there are some angels who speak with U and O and other angels that speak with E and I, but that in the center, inmost heaven, language is made of patterns of numbers. The labor required to hear the angels is mundane and physical. Singing for hours a day sounds idyllic but also laborious. Singing for so long in such reverberant spaces, I wonder about the complexity of harmonics, combination tones or whatever other sonic artifacts that the monastic singers gained sensitivity to.

In this collection there is a piece for one performer, a piece for two performers, a piece for three performers, and a piece for four performers. But even in the solo it is about relationships, as the two parts are created with the same breath. The demonic energy is in between things, the sounds cast shadows upon each other."-Laura Steenberge


Artist Biographies

Rebecca Lane is a flute and bass flute performer from Melbourne who is currently based in Berlin.

-Squidco 8/18/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Following interacting points within expanding harmonic space, Catherine Lamb has devoted her structural work to the inner life of tonality, constantly searching through the limits of human perceptions and resonances in overlaying atmospheres.

Lamb's continued series Prisma Interius (2016-ongoing), made with her partner and frequent collaborator Bryan Eubanks, filters the outside environment into a harmonic field, basso continuo, tanpura, or bridge between the musical form and the perceptual listening space. Her first orchestral work, Portions Transparent/Opaque (2014), was premiered by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at the 2014 Tectonics Festival in Glasgow, Scotland. After an extended tour of her solo work Shade/Gradient (2012) through North America in 2012, Lamb received a travel grant from the Henry Cowell Foundation, allowing her to pursue work with Eliane Radigue and to form new relationships with European musicians.Earlier in her career, Lamb studied under composers James Tenney and Michael Pisaro at the California Institute of the Arts, where she also met director and dhrupadi Mani Kaul. It was during this time that she began diving deeply into her own practice of what she later termed "the interaction of tone."

Lamb is the co-founder of Singing by Numbers (2009-11), an experimental vocal ensemble formed with Laura Steenberge that focused on pedagogical research around pure ratio tuning. She has written for ensembles such as Ensemble Dedalus, Konzert Minimal, the London Contemporary Orchestra, NeoN, Plus/Minus, and Yarn/Wire. Lamb is involved in ongoing research with Marc Sabat on intonation; with Johnny Chang on Viola Torros; develops work regularly with musicians such as Rebecca Lane, Dafne Vincente-Sandova, and Frank Reinecke; as well as taking part in Triangulum with Julia Holter and Laura Steenberge.

Lamb is the recipient of a fellowship from Akademie Schloss Solitude (2016); an Emerging Composers Grant from the Wallace Alexander Gerbode and William and Flora Hewlett Foundations (2008-09); and was a Staubach Fellow at the International Summer Course for New Music in Darmstadt, Germany (2016). Lamb's writings and recordings have been published by another timbre, Black Pollen Press, Kunst Musik, NEOS, THE OPEN SPACE Magazine, Q-O2, sacred realism, and winds measure recordings.She received a B.M. from California Institute of the Arts, and an M.F.A. in music/sound from Bard College."

-Foundation for Contemporary Arts (https://www.foundationforcontemporaryarts.org/recipients/catherine-lamb)
8/18/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Julia Shammas Holter (born December 18, 1984) is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, composer, artist and academic, based in Los Angeles. Following three independent album productions, Holter released Tragedy as her first official studio album in 2011. Ekstasis followed in 2012. After signing with Domino Records in 2013, she released the albums Loud City Song (2013), Have You in My Wilderness (2015) and the live-in-the-studio album In the Same Room (2017). Most recently, her double album Aviary was released in 2018.

Holter has also collaborated with other musicians, including Nite Jewel, Laurel Halo, Ariel Pink, Ducktails, Linda Perhacs, Michael Pisaro, and Jean-Michel Jarre."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Holter)
8/18/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Yannick Guédon is a French born composer, singer and performance artist, currently living in Brussels.His work focuses on tiny variations of timbres, the inner pulsation sensations and subjective notions of time, silence and error. He pays particular attention to the place and context in which each musical situation is displayed.

In 2006 he wrote his first piece, pitulatif, for a solo voice. He followed it with ticdê (2007) a vocal trio, infimie (2007)for voice, electroacoustic, video and light, soupir (2009) and pause (2010), for clarinet, guitar, percussion, cello and voice.In 2011 he initiated the cycle of situations a _ t e m p _ s, which generates:

a t t e m p _ s 2011, for treble viola da gamba, voice, birthday candles and electroacoustic setupa t _ e m p t _ 2012, sound research on the absence of the artist previously in residence_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2013, counting piece for voice and electroacoustic setupa _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2014, for voice hidden in the sound of a treble viola da gamba hidden in a noisy environment_ _ t e m p _ _ 2014, the four previous sound situations re-actualized for an exhibition made by Thomas Bernardet.

For 2015, he is preparing a trio he will play with Radu Malfatti and Deborah Walker, and a piece commissionned by thededalus ensemble.He also works for composer Eliane Radigue on Occam XXII - piece for solo voice, and with the musician Mattieu Delaunay on Pas à Pas - soundwalk created in 2014 and for which a second step is being prepared for 2016.

He has also performed with the following musicians among others : Didier Aschour, Antoine Beuger, Jean-Christophe Camps, Mattieu Delaunay, Jürg Frey, Thierry Madiot, Michael Pisaro, Carole Rieussec, Patrice Soletti, Deborah Walker.As a performer, he has worked with Roland Hayrabedian's contemporary chamber choir, composers such as Rodolphe Bourotte, Pascale Criton and György Kurtag Jr ; and the choreographers Chazallon&Chaput, Philipp Gehmacher, Marcos Simoes&Lilia Mestre, and Rémy Héritier. Since 2002 he has been involved in many performances created by the choreographer Laurent Pichaud."

-The Sound of Culture (http://soccos.eu/artists/detail/yannick-guedon)
8/18/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

Evelyn Saylor is a composer and vocalist from New York City, now based in Berlin, Germany. Her compositions encompass electronic music for concerts, theater, modern dance, and film. Saylor's work often involves the exploration of found and created instruments, synthesis, processing, field recordings, and the human voice. As a performer, she is active as a singer, pianist, synth player, and live electronics technician. She has collaborated with artists such as Holly Herndon, Caterina Barbieri, and Ruben Reniers. Saylor holds a BA in Music Composition from Pomona College and a Master's in Music Composition from the Universität der Künste Berlin, where she currently teaches Electronic Music Composition.

-Squidco 8/18/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Piriforms 10:17

2. 72 Verses studies 19:53

3. Toile 1 06:00

4. Toile 2 02:44

5. Toile 3 04:07

6. Light and Chant studies 1-7 13:19

Related Categories of Interest:


Compositional Forms
Unusual Vocal Forms
Woodwinds
Solo Artist Recordings
Duo Recordings
Trio Recordings
Quartet Recordings
New in Compositional Music
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