LISTEN
Portrait: Bob Gregory — Bebop in the Forest of Lonely Rhythm (1990) | 10′04″
3′58″ excerpt from the complete performance, with Robert Gregory reciting Bebop in the Forest of Lonely Rhythm
This was the first Sound Portrait I made. A Sound Portrait is a piece in which the electronic fixed-media accompaniment is derived exclusively from the speaking voice of the performer for whom the piece is created.
The raw material for Portrait: Bob Gregory came from an interview with Bob that I recorded specifically for the piece. The entire soundscape was extracted from a single audible: Bob uttering the word “and,” including every sound within and around it as he pronounced it.
Using a sampling process with something like scalpel precision, I gradually opened that brief gesture and revealed its timbral content. What appears at first to be one small word contains throat and vowel sounds, breath, humming sonorities within the “n,” and sharp, almost “t”-like percussive attacks approaching the final “d.” Sustained sounds remain as other transients begin. Nothing in the soundscape came from elsewhere in the interview: the entire ten-minute composition was drawn from that one remarkably rich—and entirely Bob-like—gesture.
To interact with his portrait, Bob took the composed tape home and wrote a poem titled Bebop in the Forest of Lonely Rhythm, in which the word “and” figures prominently. He then performed the poem in synchronicity with the recorded soundscape. The text unfolds as a succession of thoughts, images, and verbal associations whose unpredictable relationships seemed remarkably sympathetic to the behavior of the sounds extracted from his voice.
Special thanks to Stephen Malagody of WLRN-FM for his assistance with the recording, and to Steve Peters of Nonsequitur for selecting the complete performance of Portrait: Bob Gregory for The Aerial #5: A Journal in Sound.
PUBLICATION
The complete performance of Portrait: Bob Gregory was published in The Aerial #5: A Journal in Sound, Nonsequitur’s fifth audio compilation. Catalogued in 1992 and issued on CD and cassette in April 1993, the release brings together experimental music, electroacoustic composition, sound poetry and radio art.
Read about The Aerial #5: A Journal in Sound.
Selected Performances
October 26, 1991
SEAMUS ’91
Portrait: Bob Gregory — Bebop in the Forest of Lonely Rhythm (1990)
Performed live by Robert Gregory
Smith Music Hall, University of Illinois
Urbana, Illinois
April 5, 1991
18th Annual Electronic Music Plus Festival
Portrait: Bob Gregory — Bebop in the Forest of Lonely Rhythm (1990)
Acousmatic version
Mills College
Oakland, California
March 9, 1991
Festival with No Fancy Name
Portrait: Bob Gregory — Bebop in the Forest of Lonely Rhythm (1990)
Performed live by Robert Gregory
Experimental Intermedia Foundation
New York City, New York
May 17–18, 1990 — World Premiere
Sentences, Sounds and Portraits
Portrait: Bob Gregory — Bebop in the Forest of Lonely Rhythm (1990)
Performed live by Robert Gregory
The Strand
Miami Beach, Florida