MITCHENER, ELAINE - Solo Throat

"Solo Throat is the first solo LP from vocalist, composer and movement artist Elaine Mitchener. Drawing on the work of African-American and African-Caribbean poets Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Aimé Césaire, Una Marson, and N. H. Pritchard, these twelve new vocal compositions disrupt semantic sense, play with the margins of lyrical translation, and give rise to new voicings. Elaine Mitchener is a veteran of vocal expression in the global Black Avant Garde, traversing free improvisation, cross-disciplinary music theatre and contemporary composition with clarity and joy. Most recently, Mitchener has been improvising and composing with the written word as source material -- challenging classical ensembles with her piece, and commissioning composers Matana Roberts, Jason Yarde, and George Lewis to respond to the work of Sylvia Wynter. Her performance of Umbra poet N.H Pritchard's text "FR/OG" at OTO in 2021 was a revelation-- a solo vocal recasting of the powerful visual-material form that Prit