Gelsey Bell & Erin Rogers Will Release LP 'Skylighght' For Chaikin Records

Vocalist Gelsey Bell and saxophonist Erin Rogers announced their debut album as a duo, Skylighght, out May 10th, 2024, on Brian Chase's Chaikin Records. Along with the announcement, the pair shared the album's lead track "Echidna Chasm." 

The project draws inspiration from and gives a nod to, the infamous one-word poem “lighght” by Adam Saroyan, described by the poet as a way “to try and make the ineffable, which is light… into a thing. An extra ‘gh' does it…” Skylighght, in a similar manner, sets out to make the physical acoustic elements of resonance, timbre, and breath into intangible expressive energies. Single "Echidna Chasm" features a highly distinctive compositional and performative technique inherent to the album. Emphasizing their conceptual framework of sonic mergence, Bell sings directly into the bell of Rogers' saxophone; her voice travels through the brass windings of the horn, the fingering of the keys, and up to the reed, creating competing columns of sound waves to be manipulated while Rogers is playing. The physical vibrations and resonance tones clash, combine, and unite to create vibrant harmonies, harsh dissonances, and stunning difference tones. Two become one in a purely responsive, sensitive, and cooperative process.

 

Singer Gelsey Bell and saxophonist Erin Rogers have created a music built upon mutual sensitivity. The sounds from each musician join together and intertwine as they cooperatively build each composition, and neither can move without impacting the other. The interlaced vibrations from voice and saxophone unite and react in a dynamic interplay as the two musicians become one in sound. The acoustic resonance of physical environment plays its part as well to inform an interactive relationship between performer and space. Their interwoven resonances sculpt the compositions like a dance, with the two performers linked in movement of pitch and pulse. Moods on the album range from serene to yearning to discordant, often within a single composition, yet a sense of stillness is consistent from beginning to end.

 

Compositionally, the pieces of Skylighght are scored, each with its own emphasis on a specific set of techniques or strategies, though improvisation plays a primary role in determining structure and performance. Many variables contribute to this requisite spontaneity such as the acoustics of physical spaces and the relative unpredictability of the performers' interaction, key factors which determine the unfolding of the pieces. Both musicians follow the sound with the intention of reinforcing and playing off of the shared resonances of each other's sonic space. Performative techniques often include microtonal pitch frameworks and drones to help focus the music in this way. Perhaps the most distinctive performance technique of many Skylighght compositions is that of Bell singing into the bell of Rogers's saxophone while Rogers is playing. With this technique, Bell pushes her voice through the same curves and material of the horn as well as the same augmentations of Rogers's fingerings; Bell's voice also reaches and activates the saxophone's reed. On Skylighght, the duo of Bell and Rogers discover and articulate sounds, tonalities and multiphonics that are unique to their pairing.

 

Bell and Rogers have performed together for more than a decade, primarily in the new music composer/performer collective thingNY, a not-for-profit organization founded in 2006 dedicated to the creation and performance of contemporary classical, new opera, and genre-bending works. Over the last five years, their musical partnership has opened to their Skylighght project and to developing its repertoire and methodology. Breath and whistles, lip pops, and tongue clicks are all part of the Skylighght vocabulary. Even the thickness of the reed Rogers selects can have a ripple effect. Challenges and conditions also become necessary parts of performing these pieces. “The things that are hard for us force us to go to different levels of breath technique,” Bell explains. “I don't think I could sing the stuff  that I need to sing if I hadn't had operatic training.” Rogers adds, “I have to play louder in order to counter the sound wave coming from a different direction. If we're not pushing to that level, then the piece doesn't really exist. We're still studying the technique and how we can optimize every performance.”

 

In 2022, Bell and Rogers published a prose score to Skylighght in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies. The article serves as a document of their extensive research which they shared in hope that other performers would make their own discoveries within the written instructions. An excerpt of that printed score, for a musical section referred to as “Building Canyons” (heard on the album in the tracks “Echidna Chasm” and “Antelope Canyon”), reads:

 

"The saxophonist plays a concert Bb2 at mezzo-forte, straight-tone, droning as long as possible, circular-breathing freely to sustain sound at all times while shifting into the upper harmonics (Bb3, F4, etc.) smoothly and at will… Throughout the piece, the vocalist sings long phrases that slide into and out of intervals like a slug, sometimes ending with a downward glissando… The goal of this section is for the performers to find the pitches that make multiphonics and lean into them. The pitch and pressure of the voice in the bell pushes the saxophone tone into different harmonic regions, splitting the pitch at times, or coaxing it to matching distant partials."

 

Complimenting the performance techniques of the Skylighght project is the hyper-awareness of its acoustic environment. The sonic resonance of space functions like an additional performer to the pair of Bell and Rogers. For this album, two of the same pieces were each recorded in two very different locations: a small, stone catacomb in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery and a beautiful studio live room (at Oktaven Audio in Mt. Vernon, NY). The renditions of each piece stand as distinct interpretations and comprise four of Skylighght's five tracks.

 

Skylighght is an innovative album expressing a rare poetics of sound hinged on the union of musicians and environment. As physical vibrations radiate forth, rebound and combine, the performers coax their resonances and dynamics into intuitively felt energies. Stillness and discord alternately swell and subside in interlocked play with one another.

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