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***Margaret De Wys is a composer living and teaching in the Hudson Valley region of New York. Her music has been premiered and performed in arts festivals and concert halls around the world. She has collaborated with artists Joan Jonas, Charlie Ahearn, Glenn Branca, Maryanne Amacher, Rudolf Grey, and Kiki Smith. With Branca she was a founding member of the legendary NYC no-wave group Theoretical Girls. Her collaboration with Smith, "Daughter," is the first sound piece purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The cover art is by artist/photographer/musician Barbara Ess (a member of late '70s no-wave girl/toy trio Y PANTS) and liner notes by reknowned language poet George Quasha. This composition developed as a music-centered response to my personal work with 'liminal states of consciousness' that arose in a non-art context generally characterized as healing. Based on casual recordings of my own voice that I made during actual sessions, my soundtrack focuses on sequences of highly stimulated vocalization ('excited', 'ecstatic', etc.), particularly those that seem to embody a unique and intense experience of knowing, something like a direct encounter with vitality. The effects: sound, vision and emotion in the rawest possible state. Truth shot through me like a whistle. |
